Stephen didn't say anything when leading me out of the building to his car. We drove around the back roads skirting our town. Even madly running through spring, the desert was hellspawn hot during the day. The air conditioner could barely keep up, but it was so damned comfortable that I fell asleep as he drove around. I hadn't been sleeping well, and at least part of me knew this guy was safe to rest with. I mean, I felt safer than in my own home. This guy hasn't touched me.

It might have been an hour in when I heard the engine cut out. "Come on, Rachel, you need to wake up."

We were in a grove of scraggly bushes and cacti, his car surrounded by them. There was enough room to get out, though, so I made my way behind him as he marched through the sparse greenery on a barely perceptible trail.

It took 5 minutes to reach what I thought was a clearing until Stephen started to shrink.

No, that wasn't it. I looked down and noticed the stairs cut into the ground. "Way to tell me about the steps, Steve."

He laughed. "You wouldn't have even hit my back if you tripped, Rachel. I've shifted. You're safe enough with me."

His broad back blocked my view of the place. "You sure I wouldn't hit it? I can't see past you for shit, and my aim ain't that awful."

That got a chuckle out of the man. "I'm sorry, my Luna, but I can't help the bulk. You will see it soon enough."

"You claiming me?" My eyebrows shot up. Wasn't sure how he intended to let this play out.

"No." He finally started to turn, leaving me to gape at what lay beyond.

"Well, then, don't be so sure..." It was hard to stay on topic because deep in this cavernous sinkhole was a temple. No doubt with it's mock-Grecian look that it was as recent as many state capital buildings. "I may carry his kid, but I was a bet he didn't even pick for himself. I doubt I mean all that much to him right now."

"He's a boy at play. Don't confuse a man at work with a boy." He said this as if it would reassure me.

"I'm not confusing who he is."

"It's what he is, not who," the amusement in the current Alpha apparent was almost as thick as the air gathered around the base of the temple. When he reached its stone door, he held it open for me. There are hinges that can take that kind of weight? "Even with pet dogs, you take a puppy and you put it in an adult world, and with the right creature, the innocence seeps out of them, turning them ruthless. Most of us need a small push to find out what we are."

He rounded on me once I was through, for the next part. It cut into any privacy we had, face-to-face like that. "I just got an early taste of that in the form of my own mistakes. He'll come about."

Now this is the closest I'd been to this boy, and my gosh, I already loved his mind. I was also aware that he had been avoiding me this whole time. So, I took a small step closer to him. "And if he proves to be an ill-equipped creature, what then?"

I'm fast finding out that I'm an incorrigible flirt if I let myself. I wanted him flustered, defensive, worried that I'd devour him alive. The problem is that these boys have been at this game for far longer than me. If anything, he closed what little distance there was and whispered against my skin. "I cannot taint his claim. He must give it—you—up of his own free will. Can you endure that much?"

What choice do I have? I'm bound to be forced to let got, somewhat. But I will be honest with myself...and damn, me, it's a rejection I didn't want to give. My words and actions couldn't match, being this close while in need. "No. I want to be chosen for being me, but between Goddess-ordained mates and this baby, I'm not going to get my way."

The unmentionable aspect was that if I wanted him, I'd have to take him however I could get him—doesn't matter which he. The core of my trying to stay out of their way was not liking the terms these boys offered, without room to even beg for more. Plenty of females lost in their wake, and my stakes were already unbearable, but it wasn't a lack of longing, at all. Can't help thinking that 10 minutes of my life thrust me into thoughts I shouldn't have to deal with. I'm not even thinking about just myself, anymore...

"Babies. Weres rarely have single pregnancies." He had the gall to say that although more than half of the wolves in school were singletons.

That got me to back up—I needed more space. "Hold up. How fast will this baby mature?"

"At least 3 of the families descended from the Cinnabar bloodlines, averaging about 5 months to maturity. The rest are closer to 7 months. Going a full term is an indication of the babies being human and not were."

"How at-risk am I?"

"I don't know." He turned from me. "I brought us to the oracle stone to find out. Touch it and discover what your fate is."

I don't fully believe in their religious superstitions. Mates? Mates are concrete, and could be a by-product of biology. This? This is loony.

But the one I thought of as rational asked me to touch the stone in front of the altar. It was vaguely shaped like a robed woman, and on the coarse shoulders was the wear of many hands clasping roughly where a mate's mark would be.

Looking at it put my hair on end. But my avoidance of all things werewolf was a goal that died with this child. I couldn't think of a reason to avoid the stone—nothing Stephen would agree to—so I placed my hand on that stain.

And it showed me glimpses of two lives.

I was laying back on some sort of lounge in early pregnancy—though further along than today. A blonde was worshiping my lady bits with his tongue when little fists began to bang on a nearby door. This lover pulled his face up to glance at me—it was Nathaniel, as expected—but he looked older, more mannish than of boy. He grumbled something unintelligible into my thigh as he nipped it, then yelled. "Boys, go away. Check up on your sister."

It was brief, but I could feel the strength of the bond—something we didn't have now. It was cloyingly addictive. Was this a chosen bond? Was it a natural one? Why did I expect it to be him? I don't know, nothing about it told me what it was that we had between us.

But we could have this much.

I was lost as the scene shifted. Robbing me of a near-climax and something more was gut-wrenching. That sense of belonging I couldn't even get from my own family dissipated into raw loneliness. This version of him hurt so damn much to let go of—it made a complete joke out of any of my thoughts on him, before this point.

This fucker could complete me. I could feel...whole.

When have I ever felt whole?

~~~

In the second, I sat at a large table, with many of the once-boys around me. Older Nathaniel sat at the head, while a woman I couldn't make out sat next to him—his Luna? I was between Stephen and another man—couldn't tell which one, if it was one of the pack. I could tell that these were the two I leaned on in a miserable life—just as miserable as my home now. It's something I thought I would escape soon, but this vision made it clear that I did not.

The future is still shit.

But there was nothing, no feelings, no pull between me and my ten minutes of infamy. If anything, seeing him made me miserably lonely, knowing he couldn't fill any role in my life except as a thorn in my side.

The unknown man next to me spoke up, at some vague question from another at the table. "We've decided to have a public wedding, of the human kind. She is done with living in the shadows of this pack."

Nathan broke the glass he held and stood, opening his mouth to say something from hurt rather than from what was best for us all. I can remember my dread of what he was about to do.

But Stephen was the one who stood against him, not the man by my side. "She gave you your daughter—isn't that enough punishment?"

The me of the dream clearly accepted this, but as I am now?

This is worse than begging.

No one should need permission from another to marry, and this was asking for a man who didn't choose me to let me go.

This damn stone was telling me to either make it with Nathaniel or to let some of my wildest fears become reality. That future didn't look like it was all my decision to make, so the threat loomed over me without a way out.