Page 37 of Bad Wolf's Nanny

“She’s too good,” he whispered, “and I’m not sure I can ask her to stay.”

Because that was the other thing. The clock was ticking. This arrangement, temporary, always meant to be temporary, was working better than it should.

Which meant it couldn’t last.

And the idea of that, of waking up one morning and finding her gone, her scent fading from the hallways, her laughter no longer filtering through the kitchen, hit him like a body blow.

He hadn’t even kissed her.

Hadn’tdared.

Because if he did, it would mean something. And once it meant something, there was no going back.

Dane rose carefully from the rocker and laid Sam back in his bassinet, tucking the blanket around him with more tenderness than he’d ever admit aloud. The baby shifted once, then stilled.

Dane lingered for a second, then stalked quietly out into the hall.

The kitchen light was still on. Lola had washed up, of course, every bottle dried and put away, every towel hung. The table was wiped clean. His leftover stew was in the fridge, labeled in her neat little handwriting with‘DO NOT FORGET TO EAT THIS ACTUAL NUTRIENT-DENSE MEAL’in block capitals.

He stood there a moment, staring at it.

For a moment, he had a wild urge to go to her apartment, to knock on her door and demand she come back. Insist she stay with him and never leave his side.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he turned away and went to his own room, stripped off his ruined clothes, and collapsed into bed.

He stared at the ceiling for a long time.

Trying not to imagine a future with her in it.

Trying even harder not to imagine a future without.

Chapter 9 - Lola

Sam let out a sigh so tiny it barely stirred the air, then curled closer into her chest with a sleepy grunt. He was warm and heavy against her, a solid weight that felt like both a responsibility and a comfort. Lola adjusted the blanket tucked around him and gave the rocker a gentle push with her foot, the chair creaking softly beneath them.

The late evening light cast the living room in a mellow glow, golden threads sliding across the floorboards. Somewhere down the hall, she could hear the faint hiss of running water, Dane in the shower, scrubbing off another long day of patrols and brawling teenagers. Again.

She looked down at Sam’s scrunched little face and smiled.

“Your father is a menace,” she whispered, “you’ll learn that eventually. Might as well prepare yourself now.”

Sam made a hiccupping noise and wiggled one socked foot out from the blanket. She adjusted it gently, tucking it back in.

Her book was lying forgotten beside her on the coffee table, but her laptop sat open on the arm of the chair. She reached for it with one hand, careful not to jostle him, and tilted the screen.

Her thesis glowed in pale white text against a deep gray background.

“Okay,” she murmured, settling back, “where were we?”

She scrolled to the paragraph she’d left off at.

“The cross-cultural symbolism of blood rites in alpha crowning ceremonies in pre-Imperial Northern Europe is oftenoverlooked due to the late-day moral panic of the Roman Empire…”

Her voice was soft and even, and to anyone else, probably mind-numbingly dull. But Sam didn’t seem to mind. He liked the sound of her voice. Or maybe he liked the gentle rhythm of the words, the low hum of her chest as she spoke.

“…but such rituals are as indicative of the naturalistic connection of shifter species to their regions, as any scholarly reports indicate, and reveal a greater degree of homogenic cultural tendencies than previously assumed…”