Chapter 62: Like Mother and Daughter
Edrick I couldn’t believe my ears. Moana was pregnant, just as I had suspected… but she was pregnant with my child.
At first, I didn’t want to believe her, but the pleading look on her face told me all I needed to know. I could tell that she was being truthful — there was no doubt about it. But at the same time, I couldn’t quite tell if she was being truthful about her original intentions. Was this really just an accident, or did she intend on getting pregnant with my child from the beginning?
I thought back to the night that we had our one night stand as I walked back to my room. I was drunk that night, so the memory was hazy, but I remembered how she seemed to be unable to resist me in the back of the car. When I took her up to the hotel room I’d booked for her, she had practically leaped on me and began kissing me all over.
Don’t get me wrong: I couldn’t resist her either, for some strange reason. I normally had very few issues when it came to women, especially human women. But that night, I remembered wanting her just as much as she wanted me. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if she knew exactly what she was doing that night, and I wondered if her intentions were impure.
After she told me that she was pregnant, I knew that I couldn’t live with myself if I sent her away or disowned both her and the child. Beyond the fact that I was too responsible to be an absent father, regardless of how I felt about the mother, I also knew how much Ella loved Moana. Ella had forced every Nanny we tried to hire out of our lives, but she had a special connection with Moana that I didn’t have the heart to break. Ella was the light of my life, and I couldn’t bear to send Moana away if it meant seeing Ella sad.
I did, however, tell Moana that I couldn’t marry her. Not only was she a human of low social standing and it would never go over well with my family, especially my father, but I also simply didn’t believe in marriage. After what happened with my mother and father, and then what happened with Ella’s mother, I felt that marriage was just a way to open myself up to unnecessary pain. I would provide for Moana and our child, but I would never get romantically involved, and I would certainly never make her my wife.
In a way that I wasn’t going to admit as well, I was excited about the prospect of having a little one.
As I laid in bed that night, I thought back to how it felt to hold Ella for the first time. She came out of her mother too early, and she was so incredibly tiny — but her personality was big. Right from the start, she was a fiery little ball of energy. I remembered, when I first held her, how she scrunched up her tiny nose and let out an ear-piercing wail, but then wrapped her tiny little hand around my forefinger and held it so tightly I thought she’d break it off.
Even though I could never see myself admitting it, I was over the moon to experience that feeling again, regardless of whether the baby was a werewolf or not.
I just hoped that my own family wouldn’t treat the child poorly. I knew my mother would treat the child just the same as she treated Ella, but my father was a different story. Even with Ella, he was cold and indifferent because she was illegitimate. For the new baby to be illegitimate and half human?
There was no telling how he would act.
…
The next morning, after a fitful night of sleep, I woke up with the urge to spend some time with my daughter. As I emerged into the living room, I was surprised to discover that neither Ella nor Moana were awake yet, so I went to Ella’s room to wake her up.
I knocked softly on the door, then cracked it open, expecting to see her still fast asleep or even playing quietly with her stuffed animals — but as I stepped into her room and approached the pile of blankets on her bed, I quickly realized that she wasn’t there.
Strange… I decided that she might have been with Moana, so I walked next door to the other room.
The door was already cracked open when I approached. Figuring that they were already awake, I opened it further.
I felt a pang in my chest as I looked over to see Moana still asleep, and beside her, wrapped tightly in her arms, Ella was fast asleep as well.
For a long few moments, I stood in the doorway and looked upon the scene in front of me. Sunlight was streaming in through the open window, casting a warm amber glow on Moana and my daughter. They slept so peacefully in each other’s arms that it was almost as though Ella was her own daughter, too, and that she wasn’t just the nanny.
The way the sunlight hit Moana’s hair made it look even more red and fiery, and it illuminated the freckles that were dotted across her nose. The blanket was pulled down a bit, exposing her bare shoulders and shapely breasts in her nightgown. Her chest moved up and down gently, and in that moment, she was… beautiful.
But then, her eyelids moved, and she cracked her eyes open. I took in a sharp breath and stepped away before she saw me.
As I walked down the hall to go to my study, I shook my head to dispel the inappropriate thoughts that had accumulated there as I watched them sleep. Moana wasn’t, and would never be, a romantic partner. What had occurred between us was brief and lustful, and although a baby would come out of what happened, I couldn’t go back to it.
I was a wealthy Alpha CEO from the extremely well-known and powerful Morgan family. Getting involved with a lowly human servant would be a detriment to my image, to my company; it was already difficult enough to hide Ella’s existence from the public eye. Thousands upon thousands of dollars had been spent paying off journalists and paparazzi. I even went so far as to purchase the mountain estate so that I could send Ella away from the city whenever there was any sort of speculation going on. Adding a half-human child as well as a relationship with a human employee would be ten times worse.
I briskly walked to my study and shut the door, letting out a deep sigh once I was inside.
If Moana wanted to keep the baby, then I would do the right thing and take care of it. I would ensure that the child would have the best life possible, just like Ella. But, also just like Ella, the child would never publicly be revealed — not as my own, at least.
In my mind, I even wondered if I should reveal the baby to my family, or if I should produce a lie that the baby belonged to another man. My father was already furious enough about Ella.
He would only be even more furious about a baby with the human au pair.
