Diversion

WHEN WE FINISHED OUR RESEARCH, JEREMY HAD ME CALL Xavier to accept his offer and get David Hargrave’s new address. Clay and Antonio took care of Hargrave right away. And no, that didn’t mean they took him aside and gave him a stern talking to. Sometimes that’s all that’s required, but if a mutt catches the Pack’s attention, it usually means he’s gone beyond the “occasional slip-up” stage, and needs more than a warning.

They found Hargrave right where Xavier had told us he’d be. So we were ready to uphold our end of the deal. Yet it seemed that wouldn’t happen anytime soon. When I called Xavier, things weren’t going well on his end. Although he assured me he was just working out some kinks, I got the impression the buyer was waffling. When a month passed, with no word from Xavier, we figured the deal had fallen through.

Two more months passed. Spring became summer, then headed toward autumn. I was racing through the forest, hot breath billowing smoke signals into the cool night air. Adrenaline rippled through me with each stride. A glorious late summer night, capped off by a perfect run.

I lunged through a stand of trees and launched myself. In midflight, pain ripped through my abdomen, and I crashed sideways to the forest floor. When I tried to get up, machine-gun bursts of cramps doubled me over and pushed me back down.

I lay on my side, moaning, claws scrabbling against air. A burst of wetness under my tail. The smell of blood filled the air. Still racked by cramps, I managed to twist around. Blood pooled in the leaves under my backside. Fur clotted the blood; fur too dark to be my own.

Oh, God, no. Please-

A tremendous wave of pain ran through me, so intense I thought I was spontaneously changing back to human form. Then a horrible wet plop, as something fell onto the leaves.

At first I saw only a dark lump, black against the blood. Then in a flash, I saw everything-the tiny limbs contorted by their own Change, the head nearly perpendicular to the body, neck snapped, broken by me, by my Change, my selfishness, my thoughtlessness.

I screamed.

“Shhhh.” The wind whistled through the trees overhead. “Shhhh.”

I tried to move, but something held me fast, something warm and solid. My eyes flew open and I saw the full moon overhead, bright blue against the night. A full moon? Hadn’t it been a quarter moon earlier? I blinked, and saw two moons hanging over me.

“Elena?”

Another hard blink, and the blanket of sleep fell away. Clay’s face, twisted with worry, hovered over mine.

“What did you dream?” he whispered.

I opened my mouth, but only a whimper came out. His arms tightened around me. I started to relax, then the images from the dream flew back and I jerked away. I ran my hands over my rounded belly. Still there. So big. Too big. I was barely past the halfway point, and already people were stopping me in the supermarket to ask how many weeks-or days-I had left.

Jeremy insisted it was the wolf blood accelerating my pregnancy, but he was only guessing. No one knew. I ran my fingers over my stomach again, trying to feel a heartbeat or a kick, but knowing I wouldn’t. For as far along as I seemed to be, my baby was strangely quiet. Jeremy assured me he heard a heartbeat, though, and I kept growing, so I had to tell myself that was good enough.

Clay laid his hands over mine.

“I can’t Change anymore,” I whispered. “It isn’t safe for the baby. It can’t be.”

“If it wasn’t, then you wouldn’t need to Change while you were pregnant. You can’t have a species physically incapable of reproducing-”

“We are not a species!” I said, pushing myself up. “They are a species, not us. They inherited it. We were bitten. Don’t you get that? You’re infected, I’m infected, and no sane person with something like that intentionally tries to reproduce!”

I took a few deep breaths and concentrated on hearing that voice of reason in my head, telling me I was overreacting again, that everything would seem better in the morning. But my pounding heart drowned it out.

Goddamn it! Why couldn’t I get past this? After I’d Changed that first time, everything had seemed fine. But every Change since had been just as nerve-wracking.

Logically, as my pregnancy progressed without complications, my fears should have eased. Instead, they grew worse, like a shipwreck survivor swimming to an island, with each stroke thinking, “Oh, God, I’ve made it this far, please, please, please don’t let me fail now.”

As hard as I tried not to, every day I made new plans for our child-“I can’t wait to show him this” or “I have to remember to teach her that.” If something went wrong, I’d lose hopes and dreams and plans, and a baby that was already as real to me as if he or she were lying in a bassinet beside my bed.

“You’ll be okay,” Clay murmured. “You’re doing great so far, right?”

I took a deep breath. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m so-”

He put his hand over my mouth. “You’re worried. Nothing wrong with that.” He lowered me down to the bed. “What did you dream?”

An image flashed. The blood, the clotted fur, the-

Heart hammering, I crushed my face against his bare chest and took a deep breath, grounding myself with his scent.

I pulled back, not looking up at him. “I just want-I need to sleep.”

A slight tensing of his shoulder muscles, as if fighting the urge to prod. After a moment, he relaxed, pulled me against him and, eventually, I fell back to sleep.

I woke up the next morning to the sound of Clay’s snoring. I eased out of bed so I wouldn’t disturb him, then leaned over to brush my lips across the top of his curls, too light a touch to wake him.

As I headed downstairs, I heard Jeremy in the kitchen. When I smelled what he was cooking, I knew he’d heard me wake up screaming last night. I leaned against the wall and cursed my performance, knowing even as I did that it wouldn’t be the last. No matter how embarrassed and guilty I felt the next morning, in the darkness of night all my fears and insecurities came out to play.

I took a deep breath, pushed open the kitchen door and looked at the tottering stacks of pancakes and sliced ham on the counter.

“You don’t need to do this,” I said.

Jeremy fished the bottle of maple syrup from the back of the fridge. “The plates are already in the sunroom. Can you carry the pancake platter for me?”

“Really, you don’t need to do this. I’m being silly, and what I need is a swift kick in the rear, not comfort food.”

“What you need is baby furniture,” he said, handing me the platter. “Plus a nursery to put it in, but I thought we’d start with the furniture and choose the decor from there. I’m sure Syracuse has fine stores, but I propose a trip to New York. We’ll spend a couple of days, stay with Antonio and Nick, make a trip out of it. We’ll leave today.”

I shook my head. “I’m not ready, Jer.”

“We’ll go whenever you are. We have to wait for Clay anyway, although if we’re lucky, we’ll be able to leave him with Nick while we go into the city and shop.”

“I don’t mean-I’m not ready for a nursery. If something went wrong-I’m not ready.”

Jeremy laid down the ham and looked at me. “That’s why this is exactly what you need. Everything is going fine, and the best way for you to recognize and accept that is to keep moving forward, making plans and preparing.” A quarter-smile. “At the rate you’re progressing, we’d better get cracking, or we may end up with a baby and no place to put him. We’ll be fashioning diapers out of dishcloths.”

I tried to return the smile, but my lips wouldn’t budge. I looked away. “I can’t. Soon, I promise. Just…not yet.”

The kitchen door opened before I got to it. Clay popped his head in.