Page 40 of Wolf

Before I can protest and add in my own thoughts, she cuts her eyes across at me and continues. “That doesn’t mean you can’t be mad at him. You can, absolutely. He deserves your anger and upset. Without that, he won’t learn.”

I nod.

She continues, “I don’t know Wolf very well as he went to jail before Steel and I got together properly, but he’s a good man. He didn’t do that because he wanted to hurt you. He definitely was just trying to protect you, even if he went about it the wrong way.”

“I get that,” I reply, and I do, even though I’m definitely still angry. “It just feels awful, having that kind of choice taken out of my hands. He decided for me. Who knows how things could have turned out if he had just talked to me?”

I’d still have been pregnant. Would I have stuck around and waited for him to get out of prison? Maybe knowing that I was waiting would have led to better behavior and he would have gotten out sooner instead of serving the whole sentence.

Leah grabs my hand. “Don’t,” she warns. “Don’t think about things you’ll never know. The past is done. It can’t be changed. You need to keep looking forward.”

“You’re right,” I sigh, and hold onto her hand. “Of course, you’re right, you are the queen, after all.”

She laughs. “Not the queen of everything, just Steel’s queen, the queen of our household.”

“Mommy?” Artie and Liam walk into the kitchen holding hands. “Can we have cookies, please?”

I smile at their big puppy dog eyes. “Yes, of course.”

“I’ll get them,” Leah says, and goes to the pantry with the kids trailing after her.

After the visit, I ask Artie if he wants to take a nap with me. He rubs at his eyes while agreeing. I pick him up and take him with me to his room. We lie down and he becomes my little spoon, his back to my stomach. I kiss the top of his head and breathe in the scent of the fruity shampoo I wash his hair with. I wrap my arm around him, and he wiggles to wedge himself even closer to me.

In seconds, his breathing becomes slow and even. He goes limp like a puppy or kitten, sleeping that almost frighteningly deep sleep of all young animals. I give him another kiss on the head.

I’m not exactly tired enough to nap. It does feel good to be lying down and quiet, though. We probably have about an hour before Mom comes back. She’d actually gone out with an old friend. Something I couldn’t have imagined her doing just a few weeks ago, so I encouraged her.

I’m just considering closing my eyes and relaxing when my phone buzzes in my pocket. I grab for it with my heart thumping. It won’t wake Artie, he’s very tolerant of noise while sleeping, but the life I’m currently living is one where calls need to be answered. I don’t recognize the number, so I reject the call and lay my head down again.

A few seconds later, the buzzing begins again.

Annoyed, I check again. I didn’t memorize the number before, but this looks identical. A really determined scammer. I reject it and shake my head.

The screen lights up in my hand once more. Definitely the same number now.

I untangle myself from Artie, frowning, and step out into the hall. I jab the button to answer the call. “Who is this?” I hiss.

Silence.

“Hello?” My blood pressure rises. “Hello, who is this?”

A low, rasping breath quivers through the speaker. My blood runs cold and all the hair on my body stands on end.

The caller breathes out, then in again. I hear a faint wet noise, like lips being peeled apart. “You’re going to regret this,” the caller whispers. Male, almost certainly. “I am going to make you regret this. Regret. Regret. Regret.”

I hang up as the fourth “regret” begins to form, shivering all over. Wolf caught the stalker responsible for the previous problems. Did Malcolm hire another person to harass me, to leave me with that two-syllable word hanging hauntingly in my mind? He probably has a bunch of them lined up and ready to go.

I go around the house, checking that the front and back doors are locked. The uneasiness remains, like a pinching in my brain, and I check all the windows, too.

Through Mom’s bedroom window, I see a biker idling across the street, fiddling with his ride. He looks up every few seconds, checking the street. It makes me feel a little better to actually see the person that I know should be out there. Only a little, though.

If anything was to happen, he would be in danger.

Every person who comes in contact with me right now is in danger. If anything happens to one of them, it will be my fault, and I don’t know how I’ll live with that.

Chapter 17

Wolf