Seduction (The Journal of the Wolves of Spruce Hollow) (35 page)

Part of my problem stemmed from having a hard time letting go of the fact that Aspen wasn’t a kid anymore. Getting her pregnant kind of made me feel like a bastard or like I had done something wrong because she was ten years younger than I was.
 

Even though she was legally considered an adult, a part of me worried that Aspen would always be a little girl in my mind. She was
my little girl
, of course, but an innocent, defenseless little girl, nevertheless.
 

Caver and Griff hadn’t mentioned Aspen’s name or a word about her being pregnant since we’d arrived at the bar. I think they sensed that I was not dealing with the news very well. Perhaps it was my brooding silence and monosyllabic answers that gave it away.
 

One thing was sure, my impending fatherhood made me think of my own father.
 

He was a great man and had been a terrific father but he died when I was just a kid. I didn’t have him around long enough to impart his wisdom and teach me how to be a good father.
What if I was a terrible father to my own child because of it?
What if I wasn’t a good enough with the skills and experiences that I’d gathered on my own?

If I had to narrow my reluctance to my impending fatherhood down to one emotion, I would say it was fear. I was scared shitless and feeling fearful wasn’t something that I was used to feeling. I was used to being in control of the situation and always knowing what to do.
 

With Aspen being pregnant, I wasn’t in control at all and therefore had no fucking clue what to do about it.
 

So, tonight, I was getting drunk and wallowing in misery and self-hatred.
 

Later, I may even get in a fistfight or two and expend some of my excess emotional distress. Then, I would peel myself off the floor and drag myself back to Aspen with my tail between my legs and beg her forgiveness for having such a pansy for a mate. But that was tomorrow because
tonight I was getting drunk.

Fuck, I was acting like such a pussy.

“Where are all the women tonight?” Griff complained loudly over the music.
 

“Why, are you looking for your mate?” Caver asked as he took a swig of his beer. “Look at poor Roan, would you? He has a mate but does he look happy to you?” He laughed out loud as Griff shot him a dirty look.
 

“Fuck you Caver, you’re just jealous,” I called out as Griff held up his beer bottle and we tapped the bottoms together in a show of alliance.
 

“Jealous of what? Fucking the same woman over and over again for the rest of my life. Yeah, not so much. Sorry buddy, finding a mate is not for me.”
 

Griff howled with laughter at our little banter and I shot him a dirty look. “Listen, dickhead, you couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to have sex with a mate. So, shut your fucking mouth before I shut it for you.”
 

I wasn’t really mad, I knew that Caver was just trying to get me going. He was like that.
Shit Disturber
was his middle name. But it was okay, one day he would meet his mate and then he would understand what I was going through. Frankly, I hoped it was sooner rather than later so I could make sure to rub it in his smug face, the little bastard.
 

At least Caver had broken the tension with his needling and I finally relaxed into my seat. The three of us slowly started to talk and joke around like we normally did. I knew that I could count on my brothers to pull me out of my dark mood.
 

We mostly talked about the auto body shop and how the day-to-day operations had been going since I’d gone to the training camp with Aspen.
 

Griff was responsible and trustworthy and I knew that he could hold down the fort whenever I had to go away on pack business. And, Caver? Well, I don’t know how much help he actually was because sometimes he was more trouble than he was worth. Mostly I kept him on because he was like my little brother and I loved him. But I also did it to keep him out of trouble. The problem with Caver was that he was hot headed and impatient with customers. He was smooth as hell with the women whenever sex was at stake, but he was terrible with the customers that came into the shop.
 

He just didn’t know how to talk to and reason with them. He was more likely to get ticked off than anything else whenever they dared to ask questions or had issues with the bill.
 

While I understood that Caver knew what he was doing and could change out an engine bloc with just a screwdriver and a wrench, it wasn’t good business to be so “in your face” with the customers.

 
Caver subscribed to the “if you want your car fixed, then piss off and let me do it, already” mentality. Which wasn’t a very good approach if you wanted repeat customers, so I had him working in the shop only. He wasn’t even allowed to answer the phone, I let Griff handle the customers and take care of the business end of the shop.
Me?
I did everything when I wasn’t off fulfilling my Beta duties to the pack. I loved getting my hands dirty underneath a car; there was nothing better in my mind.
 

My favorite part about working in the shop was when customers brought in their older trucks, jeeps and motorcycles for repair. You know the ones with over 200,000 miles on the odometer.
 

That made me extremely happy.
 

I hated the newer cars because they were all computer driven. There was no tinkering involved, you just plugged the car in and the computer told you what was wrong with it.
 

Where was the fun in that?
You didn’t even have to put it up on the hoist and take a look at it. It was a rip off, that’s what it was.
 

I wanted to look at the car and touch it’s parts.
Get my hands dirty.
I liked relying on my brain to tell me what was wrong with it, not a computer. My father had certainly instilled a love of mechanics in me, that’s for sure. Even thought he had left me far too soon, that was one thing he’d left me with.
I wonder if my child would come to work with me as I had with my father?
I felt somewhat comforted by that thought because working on cars was something I knew well and was therefore something that I could share with him or her.
 

There.
I now had one thing that I’d be good at, as far as the baby was concerned.

The baby
. Fuck, my mind immediately started racing again as I sat in the bar. My demeanor was outwardly calm but thoughts of my unborn child caused a maelstrom to whirl inside me.

Relax and take a deep breath, pussy.

Maybe I could teach my child to hunt and fish...and ride a bike, just like I had done with Aspen? The thought made my chest feel tight. Whether with fear or pride, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps both.

Maybe I wouldn’t be such a bad father after all? I knew that I would probably be a half decent parent after they turned five years old or so. Before that age, I felt totally lost as I had no idea whatsoever how to care for a baby.
Babies terrified me.
They were so small and delicate with floppy heads. And I had male Were hands.

I think it was definitely time for those shots.

I was returning back from the bathroom, beer number eight in hand, when I caught a faint whiff of a familiar scent.
It was as familiar to me as my own
. It was the scent of my mate.
 

Aspen? I whipped my head around, looking for the source of the smell. But I couldn’t see anything through the throng of people. The bar had really picked up in the past hour and the dance floor was packed. I must be imaging things, there was no way Aspen would be here at the bar.
 

I must have been catching her scent off my leather jacket. It was currently draped over the back of our booth and the smell seemed to be coming from that general direction.
 

Smelling her started me thinking about Aspen again. I missed her and hoped that she wasn’t upset about me leaving so soon after we’d had sex. She’d been out like a light and had been drooling on my chest as we dozed on the couch, so I knew she was worn out. She’d looked so peaceful after I’d tucked her blanket around her, that I didn’t want to disturb her by waking her up to tell her that I was leaving. So I left her a note telling her where I’d gone.
 

I hoped to god that she didn’t take that as a sign that I was brushing her off. Because I wasn’t. But since she’d been turned, I never knew what would set her off. Because something that I may think is totally fine, would send her in to a hysterical fit of rage.
 

My entire life, I’d never understood women. They could be emotionally fragile and so sensitive about everything. It was almost like the act of allowing a man into their body weakened them somehow.

I kept pushing through the crowd of boisterous drunks, on my way back to our table. As I got closer, I heard Griff and Caver talking in a quiet, hurried manner. It seemed like they were talking about something they didn’t want anyone else to hear about. I focused my wolf hearing on them and caught the tail end of a sentence,
“Roan’s going to fucking flip out
”.
 

I managed to extricate myself from the crowd and slid into the booth beside Caver. He shot me a wary glance as I slung my arm over his shoulder in companionable familiarity. “Roan’s going to flip out about what?” I asked congenially.

“Um, you heard that, did you?” Caver said as his eyes flew to Griff. They both looked a little green around the gills, so it must be something that they really didn’t want me to know about.
 

“Yeah, wolf hearing and all. I’m going to flip out about what? Did something happen at the shop?” I asked, my tone measured until I decided whether I needed to be upset or not.

“No, but you might want to turn around and check out three o’clock on the dance floor,” Griff said calmly.

I quickly craned my neck with a groan, half expecting it to be Stacey or one of my ex girlfriends. Scanning through the crowd, I was completely stunned when I zeroed in on something so shocking that I had to do a double take. My eyes
must be
deceiving me because there was no way in hell that my pregnant mate was at a seedy bar dressed like a skanky slut on the prowl!
 

To say that I was shocked and horrified would have been an understatement.
 

Unfortunately, my wolf eyes had perfect 20/20 vision and there on the dance floor, surrounded by drunken, horny men was
Aspen
!

Chapter 39

~Roan~

“What the
hell
is she doing
here
?” I roared as I stood up and slammed my beer on the table. Griff and Caver both jumped up and grabbed me by the upper arms as they muscled me back down into a sitting position.
 

“Calm the fuck down, you’re the pack Beta. You can’t go around bashing drunken idiots in the face, not while you’re in this state at least. Jesus, Roan,
think
, you could kill someone,” Griff spat out as he tried to reason with me.
 

Huffing heavily, the air leaving my lungs in ragged breaths, I turned and looked at Aspen again. I wanted to go over and confront her on the dance floor and then smash in every idiot’s head who dared to be in close proximity to her.
 

“Listen to me, calm down!” Griff continued, “she’s not doing anything wrong, she’s just dancing with her friend. I know there’s guys around her but she’s your mate, she’s not interested in them.”

His words wouldn’t register in my brain. I had tunnel vision as I watched my pregnant mate dance seductively while surrounded by strange males. Griff and Caver were holding me down but they couldn’t hold me forever. Even though we were all pretty much the same size in our human forms, I had spent five years in the military and was in peak physical condition.

I knew that I could take both of them, but someone would be getting hurt in the fight that would ensue. I was raging with blinding fury. They were preventing me from going to my mate and although I didn’t want to hurt either of them, I needed to get Aspen out of here. She was too good and pure for this place.
 

I didn’t want her here. She was pregnant with my baby for fuck sake! I wanted her at home, with her feet up and eating ice cream with pickles or whatever food it was that pregnant women craved during pregnancy.

 
Isn’t that what pregnant women were supposed to do?
 

As I struggled against them and looked for weakness in their grip, I kept scanning the dance floor and getting little glimpses of Aspen and the men surrounding her. They were looking at her and their eyes roved greedily over her lithe body as she danced. She was with Sorcha, that little bitch. Of course, anger was clouding my current opinion of Sorcha as I generally liked her. She was like a sister to Aspen, but it seemed that every time Aspen got into trouble, Sorcha was involved in some way.
 

Aspen had been at Sorcha’s New Year’s party when she’d first met Jude and she’d also been at Sorcha’s house for dinner when Jude drove her to the train station and attacked her. And now here she was,
with Sorcha,
at a bar dressed like a whore and shaking her ass for these drunken douche bags.