Chapter 337 – Fatherhood
Cora
I don’t really notice when Ella leaves. I’m too busy crying.
I think I scare Roger again when I start, because it’s just a few tears at first, but then suddenly I’m blubbering against his shoulder because it feels like every single emotion I’ve ever had – every single one – is racing through me at once.
–
“Cora,” Roger whispers, concerned, pulling me to him. But when I don’t stop he just holds me tight, shushing me and rubbing a hand up and down my back. Then, when I continue, he slowly walks backwards with me in his arms until his legs hit the bed, and then he sits down, pulling me into his lap, and lays back, taking me with him.
I start to calm down then, curled against Roger’s body, breathing in the warm scent of him as he makes soft comforting noises and kisses my head and whispers to me that it’s all right and that I’m lovely.
I’m embarrassed when I get myself together – seriously, the guy finds out that he’s going to be a dad and all I do is cry about it for five solid minutes – but when I look up at him he gives me a gentle smile, like he doesn’t mind at all.
“I’m so sorry, Roger,” I murmur.
“What?” he asks. “Cora, I’m the one who grabbed you and flipped out and spontaneously transformed into my wolf in a panic –”
“Yes,” I concede, nodding, but still feeling guilty. “But Roger, I didn’t call you for five days
“That’s all right Cora,” Roger replies, dismissing it way too easily as he strokes my hair.
And I shake my head at him as I realize that he’s just completely overwhelmed by his excitement about the baby right now – that he’s willing to forgive me anything in this moment because he’s not thinking straight. But then his hand pauses on my hair and I see him start to figure it out. “Wait,” he says, hesitating and looking at me more seriously. “Cora, why didn’t you call me for five days?”
–
“Because,” I answer, holding his eyes but blushing regardless, not wanting – at all – to talk about my other sex partners with my mate. Especially now, when he’s probably newly volatile and protective with his new dad instincts to kill anyone who threatens to take me away from him.
“Because, Roger…until you came into this room right now, and sensed your connection? I thought the baby was Hank’s.”
“Oh,” Roger says, his eyes going wide as he stares at me. Then, slowly, he rests his head back
“I mean,” I say, hesitating. “I didn’t want it to be. It was just… the logical thing to think at the time. I can’t smell the baby’s bloodline, and had no reason to assume that I – unlike literally any other human woman – could, somehow, carry a wolf baby…”
“No, I get it,” Roger replies evenly, still staring the ceiling and I think sorting through his own feelings.
—
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I should have told you – I was a coward. I just… I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to face it, especially if it meant…” I bite my lip, not wanting to face it.
“Did you think I would leave you?” Roger asks, his voice quiet, looking down at me now.
“I don’t know,” I answer, honest. “Would you have?”
“No,” he replies instantly, but then he hesitates. “I mean, Cora, it would have been…incredibly difficult for me. And I love you – I don’t think I’d ever find another mate – but,” he sighs and puts a hand over his face as he shakes his head, admitting the truth to himself. “If you were carrying
–
another man’s baby….it would have put an incredible strain on our relationship.”
I sit quietly, looking at him for a few moments. “But,” I say after a long pause. “It’s…not someone else’s child. It’s yours.” The words are shaky as they fall from my mouth, because I still can’t believe it.
“Yes, that’s right,” Roger replies, moving his hand down his face and looking at me, a little smile on his mouth. “So…do we even need to…think about it?”
“Do you want to?” I ask, curious.
“Not…a lot…” he confesses, grimacing.
“I mean,” I say, cocking my head to the side. “Do you forgive me? For…sleeping with him?”
“Cora,” Roger murmurs, sitting up and obliging me to sit up as well, considering that I’m laying on his chest. Then he takes my face in his hands again. “There’s nothing to forgive. I don’t I don’t care if you’ve had a romantic past – we weren’t even together when you slept with him. I didn’t like it, but I’d never hold it against you.”
—
I blush, realizing that I’ve perhaps been feeling…well, feeling a little slutty about the fact that I slept with Hank two days before I slept with Roger. But as I look up into Roger’s eyes I realize that that’s a completely human emotion – that wolves, unlike humans, are not precious about chastity or prude about sex. They’re incredibly fierce about their mates, of course, but….we weren’t mated when it happened.
“All I care about,” Roger says, shaking his head slowly from side to side as he stares at me, “is our future. All right? Me, you, and this… weird little baby…” he murmurs, looking down at my stomach.
“Is it weird?” I ask, looking down at my stomach again, suddenly scared that Roger can smell something strange about the baby –
“Well, yeah, it’s weird,” he says, but when he looks up at my face he sees that he’s scared me a little bit. “No, Cora –‘ Roger says quickly, laughing and pressing a quick kiss to my mouth. “Not like that – just…we didn’t think it could exist. Right?”
“Okay,” I say on a relieved exhale of breath. “Okay.” And then I lay my head against Roger’s chest again as he lays back down on the bed, wrapping his arms around me, and I close my eyes and let myself feel…
Safe.
For the first time in days, I feel safe.
As I exhale again, though, I hear Roger take a deep breath and hold it. I look up at him, curious. ” What is it?” I ask.
“Cora,” Roger says, staring guiltily up at the ceiling. “You’ve taken most of the blame for this whole Hank situation,” he sighs, shaking his head again. “But honestly…it’s all my fault. I haven’t been fair to you.”
“What?” I ask, frowning at him. And then Roger moves to sit up again, folding his legs together on the bed and taking my hands. Unnerved a bit, but curious, I do the same, sitting across from him so that I can see his face.
“Cora,” Roger says, holding my gaze like a penitent man even though guilt is clearly written all over him, “you didn’t call me for five days this week. But I…” he sighs, looking down at the bed and shaking his head again. “I didn’t call you for weeks when we got back to the capital, after our time
in the desert.”
–
“But,” I whisper, frowning at him. “It’s different,” I point out. “We we weren’t mated.”
“I know,” he says, meeting my eyes again and nodding. “But…I never told you why I stopped calling you.”
And I go a little pale as he says this. Honestly, I just thought that he had lost interest in me – or that he decided that wanting to be a father was more important to him than his attraction to a
human woman.
But now he tells me that there’s a reason? A real, concrete reason, why he didn’t call?
And I hold my breath, not sure if I actually want to know.
