But then she heard a big thump. When she opened her eyes, the dawn’s earliest light had broken across the sky and the Colorado king lay there in human form, naked as a jaybird, with his equally naked wife lying just a few meters beyond.
“Goddamit, not you again,” the king declared when he saw her lying there in the snow.
But the queen, the still very pretty Latina with the same light brown eyes as Rafe, framed by a polished bob, rushed over and fell to her knees beside Chloe. “She’s hurt. Really hurt, and in labor, I think.” The queen lifted her skirts up. “Oh my God, Dale, I can see the head crowning.”
And then Chloe passed out.
But apparently the alpha couple decided against letting her and her baby bleed to death in the snow. When she woke, she did so in the clinic’s hospital bed, dressed in a fresh hospital gown, with only the bandages on her side and the fact that she was wearing some sort of hospital diaper the only evidence she had been attacked by a wolf and forced into early labor.
“Where’s the baby?” she asked Doc Fischer when he came strolling in. “Did he make it?”
“Oh, he made it, all right,” Doc Fischer answered with an uncharacteristic smile. “Queen Lacey ended up delivering him right there on the mountain. The king had to run and get a Swiss Army knife out of his pants to cut the umbilical cord. But from what they told me, your pup shifted almost before King Dale could get the job done. Like he knew if he had any chance of survival, he had to let his wolf half have him as soon as possible. They showed up at my door with you passed out, looking like a Renaissance Fair murder victim, and this dark red wolf puppy in their arms. Let me tell you, my old eyes didn’t know what to think.”
He chuckled, like the drama of her life was some kind of campfire story. Then as if to confirm her assessment, he said, “Boyo, I’ll be telling your story at parties for years to come.”
“Can I see him?”
“Sure! He morphed back into his human form with fully developed everything a couple of hours ago. Hell of a kid, I tell ya. That Viking of yours must have some strong genes.”
The only thing that kept her from dissolving into tears at that point was her fierce need to see her son and assure for herself he was all right.
And he was. The nurse brought him in from the other room, and he was nothing less than perfect. A light brown butterball of a baby with a head full of red curls, and deep brown eyes that were very clearly her own.
“Hello,” she said, happier than she’d ever been to meet anyone.
He reflexively grabbed her finger, and squinted against the clinic’s bright light.
At that moment, Chloe knew love at first sight, and she wondered why she had ever had the audacity to fear love. For one look into her son’s bright eyes, and it was explained that what had happened between her parents, what had subsequently happened to her, was due to the absence of love, not a surplus of it.
Real love could never be toxic. Real love didn’t lead you to leave your pup at the side of the road in order to be with your mate. No, real love, she realized, had been Fenris sending her back in time if it meant both she and the baby might live. And real love would be what brought them back together.
“We’ll all be a family again,” she whispered to the baby, kissing his dewy soft forehead. “I promise you.”
CHLOE HAD PROMISED HER BABY they would be reunited with their father, and she’d meant it. She had every faith Fenris would keep his promise and return to Colorado for them.
Only, he didn’t. One full month—which Chloe was still counting in full moons—passed. Fenris Junior, or F.J., as she had taken to calling him, continued to thrive, breast-feeding like a maniac and charming his mother at every turn just by being alive.
But unlike when she went into mating frenzy with Fenris, this time she had some help with tackling this significant milestone. Much to Chloe’s surprise, on her fourth day back, the alpha queen showed up at the clinic to drive F.J. and her to Chloe’s old house, which she’d taken the liberty of dusting and converting the guest bedroom into a nursery.
“What about…?” Chloe asked, when she stepped into the room, which now had a crib and changing table on the wall opposite of the small guest bed.
“I’ll handle him,” Lacey answered, stringing her arm around Chloe’s shoulders.
The Colorado queen appeared on her doorstep every day that first month, ostensibly to bring her extra food, but really to hold F.J. for an hour or two while Chloe took care of certain practicalities like showering and packing up the house.
They had a few unspoken rules. They didn’t talk about the king and queen almost tearing her apart in wolf-form on the mountain, and they didn’t talk about Rafe, who from what Chloe could glean, still hadn’t returned from his Alaska trip. She wondered briefly if he would eventually become engaged to the king’s oldest daughter, Janelle, who was incredibly sweet, and who reminded Chloe of Rafe’s mother. But she didn’t dare ask.
Instead she rushed to get everything she needed to square away her modern life while she waited for Fenris. She turned off all the utilities, canceled all of her credit cards, closed her bank account, and either sold or liquidated all of her assets, so she’d have cash on hand until Fenris returned.
But then another full moon passed, and she realized unless she wanted to spend Christmas in an unheated house, she might need to apply a little of her DIY spirit to reuniting her family.
The day after the November full moon, she asked Rafe’s mother if she could babysit F. J. for the whole day. The queen quickly agreed, telling her to bring F.J. and all the supplies by in the morning.
Chloe thought it would be a simple hand off at the door. But after Lacey took the baby from her, she insisted Chloe come into the living room for a bit, where, to her surprise, they found the alpha king waiting.
“Is that little F.J.?” he boomed, rising off the couch to meet them at the living room’s arched entrance. “I’ve been missing you, little guy. Come here.”
“Shhhh! You’re going to scare him,” the queen said, swatting at his arm.
“What, this little guy isn’t scared of nothing, are you?” Without so much as a by your leave, he plucked F.J. out of his wife’s arms and settled him into the cradle of his own. “You should’ve seen him on that mountain, Clo. He shifted so quick. Told mean old death, ‘Hey, man, I’m not having none of that!’ Never seen anything like it. This pup right here’s going places.”