Chapter 116 - He Stole My Heart, I Stole His Child

My eyes zero in on my mate, my arms flexing at my side. The damn bandage on her arm makes my teeth clench as I’m watching her rub her swollen belly with an angry look on her face, like she has any reason to be mad at me.

“I don’t know what you are getting so worked up about,” she turns her nose up, looking so much like Aly that I almost want to laugh.

Almost.

Seems my daughter isn’t the only one getting spoiled and acting out of line lately. Maybe she’s learning the behavior from her damn mother.

“I’m not even hurt. It was like getting bitten by a kitten,” she cringes, and I know it hurt her worse than that. I fucking felt it. “It only happened for a second and then she was back to normal. You’re being a jerk over nothing.”

“Nothing?” My voice was low and deep. This is the fucking tone I use when I’m pissed and about to fuck something up, and my mate is the only one who doesn’t tremble in fear of hearing it. Oh, how I fucking want to make her tremble and beg for my mercy right now. If she weren’t fucking pregnant and dying, she would be tied to our fucking bed and I’d have her screaming from now until morning.

The second that this curse is gone and those babies are out of her…..

“Axel, you’re being ridiculous,” she sighs, not affected by my tone at all.

“No, Bailey, I’m not. You putting yourself and our daughters in danger….that is fucking ridiculous.”

She sighs, still unwavering as I lean over her bed, my aura menacing and wild. I’m fucking exhausted, and feel unhinged enough as it fucking is. She’s pushing me too fucking far today.

“I didn’t think she was going to bite me. You should have seen her, Axel. She was hurting. She was fighting herself and the damn silver in her restraints was hindering her, not helping her. I wasn’t going to let her suffer alone.”

“You weren’t fucking thinking at all, Bailey,” I spit at her venomously, “The doctors could have called for Addison or Stephanie. You did not need to be the one to help her.”

She scoffs, “So you would have preferred for her to just lay in bed screaming until one of them could get there? She’s a child, Axel. If it was Aly or Taegan I would hope some other mother would step up and try to help one of them if I wasn’t with them.”

“I would to, unless it was a psychotic pregnant woman on her fucking death bed and high-risk enough as it is.”

“Don’t you fucking call me psychotic you jerk! You’re being mean. Go back to work. I would rather have loud mouth Casey in here than you right now.”

A deep growl vibrates through my chest, and I’m seconds away from fucking snapping on my mate.

“Don’t you growl at me. I get that you were worried, but that doesn’t mean you get to be a jerk to me. I saw her face, Axel. I saw the pain she was in. I know I’m not going to fucking die and these babies are going to be just fine, so I helped her. I’m her fucking Luna and I wasn’t going to let her suffer. If you want to be mad at me for that, fine, but do it somewhere else.”

She’s fucking pregnant. She’s fucking pregnant. She’s fucking pregnant. I have to remind myself over and over again before I bend her over and start spanking the fuck out of her right here.

This fucking sucks not being able to fuck her into submission. That’s the only way I can ever really get my way with her when we are fighting like this. Not that it happens often, but when she is being particularly stubborn like she is right now, I can win her over with sex. That's off the fucking table now.

“How the hell do you know you won’t die and the babies are going to be okay? Huh? You have no fucking way of knowing that. Forget the shit you put me through thinking the worst happened to you. Again. How the fuck could you risk our unborn daughters like that?”

“Because the moon goddess told me too!” She screamed right in my face.

What the fuck is she talking about?

I opened my mouth to ask, then closed it again. Why the fuck would the moon goddess tell her to do something like that? And she’s not a werewolf. I know she’s got goddess blood in her, but it just doesn’t make sense.

“She told you to get fucking bit by a teenage rogue vampire?” I eventually asked, my tone dubious, which just seemed to piss her off more.

“No, jerk. She told me that me and the babies would be fine.”

I groaned in frustration, “So, because she told you that, you chose to just be as fucking reckless as possible? Did she tell you to drive your mate mad too?”

Bailey scowls, which I usually find adorable, but I’m still too mad to find any of her behavior cute right now. Well…maybe a little cute, but she is still a fucking pain in the ass.

“I don’t want to tell you if you’re going to be mean about it,” she turned her nose up.

“Oh, I’m about to get really fucking mean unless you give me a reason not to.”

We stare heatedly at each other, neither of us budging, her chocolatey brown eyes looking just as fierce as mine feel right now. Then, she has to go and lick her pink, plump lips, and all it takes is my eyes flickering down to catch the action for the fire of rage burning inside to take a different course.

My mouth collides with hers, the fury burning inside me being poured out between us. She gasps in her sweet, melodic voice, then moans, being taken by surprise by my sudden attack. Once the surprise wears off, I feel it in the bond when her arousal turns back into anger, and she bites my lip hard enough to make me growl and pull away.

“We were having a serious discussion,” she snaps.

“Oh, we still fucking are,” I growled, dipping down to try to kiss her again after licking my sore, throbbing lip. She moves her head away to the side so I can’t reach her lips.

“We can’t talk if you’re going to start that! And don’t start something you won’t finish!” she snaps when I growl at her for moving away from me.

“I’m going to fucking finish,” I muttered through clenched teeth.

“No you are fucking not,” she snaps back. “You said I’m too high risk, jerk. You are not going to yell at me, growl at me, call me psycho, be a butt, then get me all hot and bothered and leave me wanting.”

Fuck. She’s right.

“I can still get both of us off without putting it in,” I offered.

“Are you kidding me?! No you can’t. Not until you say sorry.”

“Say sorry?! Are you fucking kidding me right now, Bailey?!”

“No, I’m not,” she huffs.

I rub my temples, my wanting mood is all but gone now.

“How about you say sorry for putting yourself and our unborn daughters at risk, again, then I’ll say sorry for getting mad at you for being a pain in the fucking ass.”

“I told you, I knew we would be fine!”

“Because the moon goddess told you that you would be peachy fucking keen and walk away unscathed if you baited yourself to a rabid vampire? That makes total fucking sense,” I retort, letting my frustration with her pour into each fucking syllable.

“No!” she yells, “Not exactly,” she says in a much weaker voice.

“Then what, exactly? Why are you being so fucking reckless?” I moaned out in desperation, “It’s not just fucking you, Bailey. You are carrying our daughters! Why?! Why can’t you just fucking behave and stay in the fucking bed when I tell you to?”

Her eyes narrowed for a moment, then her lips began to tremble just enough for my heart to drop. She looks down at her belly and begins rubbing it, her bandaged hand making my heart clench more and more. “Because I’m not meant to sit back and do nothing, Axel. I’m the Luna. Taking care of the pack is my job too. You keep trying to take it all on by yourself, and I get why, but it’s not supposed to be like this. You’re not supposed to shelter and hide me away all the time like you try to do. Rieka told me. Well, she’s been trying to tell me, and I’m just now kinda getting it.”

“Bailey,” I groaned, ignoring the crazy moon goddess thing for now, “I’m not trying to hide you away.”

“Yes you are,” she murmurs, “You always have been. I know it's because of what happened with Levi and then because I’m a human, and the threat of the curse.” She bites her lips, then looks up at me through those thick, beautiful dark lashes. “I’m not going to die, Axel, and I’m not as weak as you think I am. I don’t need you to exhaust yourself trying to protect me all the time. If you can’t be with me, you make your dad babysit me. If not him, someone else. It’s not just exhausting for you. It’s exhausting for me too.”

My heart plummets. Of course I want to keep her safe. She’s my entire fucking world. “That’s my job, Bailey. That’s what I’m supposed to do.”

“No, Axel,” she shakes her head. “I think when I left you seven years ago, and then came back years later abused and guarded, it made you hyper vigilant to keep me safe and keep me sheltered. Even Carli and Simone pointed out last time we went down to visit that you never leave me alone. Everything is always about protecting me. It’s become your and your dad’s sole focus in life to make my life as sheltered and secure as possible. It’s bled into the pack, now everyone sees me as someone to be protected and not the mother of the pack like I am supposed to be," her voice trembles for a moment, but then she continues, "When Thyra came, I was so relieved. I was happy for your dad and Thyra, of course, but I was relieved. Thyra doesn’t seem like the type to let him hover over me all the time, smothering me by trying to keep me safe. It has made you worse than ever, though.”

“Baby,” I groan, “Can you blame me? I mean, look at what happened today! It may have turned out fine, but there is no way you could have known that it wouldn’t hurt you if she bit you. Hell, she could have fucking lost control and gutted you with her fucking claws. You didn’t know what was going to happen. I bet you just ran in there with no regard for yourself.”

She looks down guiltily. “I’m sorry. I just….I couldn’t let her suffer. My body moved before I really thought about it, and then when she bit me, I just felt like it was going to be okay. I don’t know how to explain it to you without you thinking I’m more crazy, or psychotic, than you already do. I just knew me and the babies would be fine.”

Doubt is still weighing heavily inside me. She keeps telling me she will be fine, but I can’t turn the worry off. I can’t turn off that endless, intense drive to protect her.

“Try me,” I told her, “I really can’t think you’re crazier than I already do, so why don’t you try trusting me by telling me, and I’ll try to listen with an open mind in return.” I’m sure as hell not going to let up on trying to keep her safe, so whatever she tells me will change nothing. I still want to understand what’s going on inside her head and why she thinks the moon goddess is telling her to be so reckless.

“You won’t growl at me while I tell you?” she asks hesitantly, “or make fun of me?”

“I can’t promise the growling. That’s a knee-jerk reaction you seem prone to drawing out of me lately, but I won’t make fun of you,” I tell her, “and I promise I’ll listen.”

She rubs her belly repeatedly, looking down lost in her thoughts for a moment. She’s probably debating if she wants to tell me or not. I gently place my hands over hers, smiling when I feel the babies moving. She looks up and her small smile makes my heart pound. I hate that she is hesitating this much to tell me anything.

Maybe I do try to shelter her too much.

She quirks her lips to the side of her face, making her dimples poke out, and I resist the urge to poke a finger into them. She’s so fucking adorable. How could I not want to protect her?

“I thought it was just recurring dreams I was having long before I found out about the babies,” she started to talk, and I resolved myself to keep my mouth shut and listen. “It’s been going on since Aly was born, I think. I was having the same dreams every single night, and I always woke up trying to cling to them, but the exact contents of the dream would never come back to me. I would have this lasting feeling of comfort, though. I felt to my core that everything, everything, was going to be okay. Then,” she bites her lips, looking nervous, “I, uh, started to remember the dreams.”

I try to keep an open mind, still not convinced that the moon goddess is coming to her in dreams or whatever the hell it is she is trying to tell me. I softly asked, “What did you remember?”

She bites her lips, “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”

I rub my hand over her belly, strumming my thumb on her belly button that is starting to poke out. She hates it when I do it, but it’s hard to resist. She narrows her eyes at me, wiggling under my touch. I chuckled at her annoyance, but then sighed heavily, moving my hand to grip hers.

“I won’t think you are crazy, baby. Just tell me.”

She purses her lips. “Fine. Don’t touch my belly button and I’ll tell you.”

I smile, “Okay, baby. I won’t.”

She sighs before she continues to talk again. “Well….She talks to me.”

“Talks to you?” I repeated.

Bailey nods. “I thought I was talking to myself when I started to remember bits and pieces of my dreams. She looks just like a really pretty, skinny version of myself. Only, she’s so much more gorgeous.”

I growl, and she narrows her eyes at me. “No one is more gorgeous than you,” I mutter.

She scoffs, “I’m your mate. You have to think that.”

“I don't just think that. I fucking know that.”

She smiles and shakes her head. “Fine. Agree to disagree.”

“Nope. I do not agree to that.”

She tilted her head to the side, trying to give me her best attempt at an angry face, but it just made her dimples stick out and she looked fucking adorably gorgeous. I don’t know how she could possibly think anyone could be more beautiful than she is.

“Anyway,” she continued on, looking exasperated with me, but I could feel her happiness in the bond. “She would talk to me, and I could never remember exactly what she was saying or telling me, the dreams were always intangible to me when I was awake, until a moment would come and it would just hit me. Like with Taegan, when he told us that he was scared of me dying while he was gone, it just hit me that he was meant to go and I would be fine. I didn’t remember the exact conversation before that, but at that moment, that peace I felt from the dream came back to me. I suddenly recalled that conversation, just enough of it to reassure him and I just knew everything was going to be okay.”

“So….,” I tried to wrap my mind around what she was telling me, “the moon goddess speaks to you in your dreams, and you can only remember the conversations when you need to?”

She laughs humorlessly, “Something like that.”

“Hmm.” I looked at my hand linked with hers, then glanced over at the bandage on her arm. “Did she tell you that you should get bit by Phoebe too?”

Bailey rips her hand out of mine, looking truly pissed. “I knew you were just going to make fun of me.”

“I’m not!” I tried to quickly backtrack, “I’m just trying to understand.”

“Understand my ass,” she mutters, making me chuckle.

“I do love your ass,” I teased her, making her glare at me more. “Baby, I’m just trying to understand. Tell me,” I took her hand again, only this time, I took the one attached to her bandaged arm. “How did the moon goddess tell you that this was going to be okay?”

She bites her lips in hesitation. “She didn’t, really. Not until after it happened did I remember her telling me that vampire venom couldn’t hurt me. Not even from a rogue. Moon goddess blood is safe from all negative supernatural influences like that, remember?”

“Okay… But how did she tell you you’d be okay to even go into her room in the first place?”

She sighs. “She didn’t tell me that specifically, but the first dream I remembered came back to me like a fleeting thought at that moment. I didn’t even realize it was stirring inside me until after everything happened. I knew it was meant to happen then and everything was going to be okay.”

“And what was this first dream you remember?” I asked.

She stays quiet for a few minutes, staring up at me, reading my face for something. For what, I’m not sure. “Protect them,” she whispers after a minute or so. “She told me to protect them. To protect everyone in the ways that you can’t, Axel. You are the Alpha, the protector of this pack in the way of strength and resilience. You could take on a whole horde of any kind of monster to keep your pack safe. You live and you would die for this pack. But there are things that only a Luna can protect her pack from. You weren’t meant to rule this pack on your own. No alpha is. That is why the moon goddess gives the Alphas a Luna to rule and protect alongside them. Your mother was not a good example of what a Luna should be. I’m not meant to be hidden away and protected. I am meant to stand alongside you, working together with you for this pack. You can tell me to stay in this bed, stay safe at home, stay on pack lands unless I have a protector, and you can even tell our son to take care of his mom and order all your warriors to babysit me, but now that I know what I am supposed to do, I’m going to keep trying to do it. Between the both of us, you know who has a better shot at getting her way. You would literally have to tie me to this bed and keep me under lock and key to make me stay put. I know you won’t do that, though, because you love me. You don’t want to hurt me by abusing your strength over me like that, just like I’m not trying to hurt you and am trying to meet you halfway by staying in this damn clinic, even though I want to be doing so many other things.”

My throat begins to swell and shame washes over me. I rest my hand over her belly and my other hand grips hers just a little bit tighter. “I don’t want you to get hurt, baby. I don’t want to lose you.”

“You won’t!” she stresses, resting her free hand on my face. I lean into her touch, letting the sparks soothe some of the anxiety and fear eating away at me. “I know, Axel! I know I will be okay. That we will be okay. Just please, trust me, like I have always trusted you.”

I place my hand over hers on my cheek, then turn to kiss her palm before pressing her hand against my face again. “Okay, Bailey,” I whisper, “I’m….I’m going to try.”

She giggles. “I know you will.”

A slow smile spread on my face. “Is that another thing the goddess told you?”

“No,” she laughs, “I just trust you. If you say you are going to try, I know you will.”

My chest swells with my love for her. I could never thank the goddess enough for giving me a more perfect mate.

“Can I ask for one more thing?” Her sweet voice is so soothing, I might just agree to anything she asks.

“What, baby?”

She bites her lip, and I’m suddenly nervous. “I want to go home.”

I groan, not liking the idea of her being away from the care of doctors when she needs them.

“Not alone! I want my mom to come stay with us too. You saw her. She won’t let anything bad happen to me. She might be tougher than you.”

I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. I’m about to tell her that, but then a voice floats in my head, “It’s fine, dad. Mom should go home.”

That wasn’t no fucking moon goddess. That was Taegan’s voice, and that fact left me stunned for a few seconds, the impact of what I just heard shaking me to my core. I swear I can even hear my son laughing at my reaction in my head too.

Fuck it. I don’t think I have any choice but to trust my mate, and now my son too.

“Okay, Bailey. I’ll get you home by the end of the day.”

“Really?!” Her whole face lights up, and I suddenly want to do more things she asks of me to get the same reaction from her.

“Really,” I chuckle. “Goddess, you drive me crazy,” I mutter.

She giggles against my lips as I lean down and kiss her tenderly and quickly. “We can be crazy together.”

“Crazy together at home apparently,” I muttered. “You don’t seem to be the only one with a deity messing with their head.”

“What do you mean?” she cocks her head to the side.

“I’ll tell you later,” I whispered, pressing my lips to hers one more time, then pulling away from her, “Seems I got a job to do right now.”

“What?” she looks up at me questioningly.

“Gotta break you out of here.”

Her face lights up again, and I know I made the right decision. Fuck, I gotta let her go some. Give her room to fucking make her own decisions. It’s going to be hard to do. I didn’t realize how tight I was holding on to her, but what she says makes sense. After losing her after the night we first met, I never wanted to feel that feeling of loss again. I've been keeping her in a cage to keep her safe.

I need to trust her more and let her go. Let her make her own choices too.

I walked out the door and ran into Casey first. “You strap her down good and fucking tight, boss?”

I groaned, disgusted with myself for saying that. “No, the opposite. I’m getting her discharged and taking her home.”

“What?” he asks, stunned.

“You heard me. She’s a grown ass woman and the Luna of this pack. It’s time we started treating her like it.”

“But,” he sputters, looking from me to the room, “she’s dying, Alpha.”

“No she’s fucking not. Not with my son up there in some heavenly cloud doing the shit he needs to do, fucking talking in my head and shit. I trust him and I trust my mate,” I clench my jaw while scratching the back of my neck, “Or at least I’m going to start trusting her from now on. She’s not dying, she’s going home, I’m sleeping in my own fucking bed tonight, and that's that. If you want to argue with someone, take it up with her yourself. I’m telling you, though, you won’t win.”

“I bet I could,” he mutters, looking at Bailey’s room like he was itching for a challenge.

“You can’t even win against your own mate. Shit, I think I know why the moon goddess is a goddess and not a fucking god.”

“Why?” Casey asks.

“Because the women are all fucking stronger than us.

He scoffs, shaking his head like he thinks I just told a joke.

"You don’t believe me, go home and tell your mate you snuck a box of her twinkies to work with you.”

He looks scared shitless at the thought.

“See,” I smirked, “The women are stronger than us all.”