Page 25 of Found (Mate Rejected #8)

25

AERIN

T WO MONTHS LATER

It’s been two months since we came home to Winter Lake, from Karson, Michigan, and I’m in my favorite room in the house as Mack is mowing the grass in the garden.

The first thing Mack did when we came home was to carry me upstairs, tell me to close my eyes and show me the surprise he’d been busy working on.

He said that he nearly didn’t get a chance to show me at all and he didn’t want to wait for the perfect time to surprise me anymore.

Mack opened the nursery door, told me to look, and I fell deeper in love with him than I believed I ever could.

I sit in the new reclining rocker he set up in one corner, taking in the sight across the room, and I still can’t believe Mack did it himself.

I thought my surprise would be a toy for Thumper. A rocking horse, maybe. Something more for her than for me.

“I’m not an artist, but I did the best I could,” he had said as I struggled to contain all the love in my heart.

Mack didn’t set up a rocking horse for our baby. He created a happy ever after for all of us.

On one wall, he painted a mural.

It’s a forest scene in earthy and calming greens. But it isn’t the nature scene that made me cry my way through an entire box of tissues.

It’s the family of wolves he captured. Pups and a pair of wolves, one that I knew was him, and one that I knew was me.

I have spent more time sitting in this rocking chair, cradling a mug of tea, than I have anywhere else in the last two months. I joke that it would take a crowbar to get me out of this room. I love it that much.

“You ready to eat soon, love?” Mack calls out.

I set my mug aside and lever myself to my feet like the beached whale I resemble. No one calls me that, but I’m big all over, despite Mack assuring me that I’m the perfect size. My ankles are swollen, and it takes me forever to get from point A to point B.

Point B is usually the bathroom or the kitchen, depending how hungry I am, which, on most days, is often.

I amble across the room to the window, and nudge aside the drapes to take in Mack standing in the backyard on another blue-skied day.

“I’m always ready to eat,” I tell him with a smile.

He grins at me. “I’ll tell the others to come over for lunch then. We’ll have pizza and cheesecake.”

I make a face and hope he can’t hear my stomach grumbling. I literally ate thirty minutes ago, but try telling my growling belly that. “Including my dad?”

He laughs at me.

Mack has been handling my dad choosing to settle in Winter Lake better than me. I love the fact that Moses and his mate Lucy have also decided to call this place home. Moses, a dad to me when my dad was too busy leading the Boone Pack, had said he’d been beta for a long time. The new Alpha of the Boones needs a beta who will grow with him, instead of inheriting one.

But I’m not used to my dad being around. I’m used to him being busy with work and leaving me to my own devices.

Will we ever have a normal father daughter relationship? It’s hard to say. But he seems determined to try, making more effort to see me on a regular basis than he ever did before.

“Including your dad,” Mack says as his smile fades. “If it helps, I found it just as awkward with my dad. It gets easier.”

“To figure out what to talk about when we know so little about each other?”

He nods.

Ivy and Connall are back with the Lonergan Pack. They stayed with us for a couple of days after the fighting in Michigan, and are planning to come and stay for a week next time.

Connall will never be my favorite person in the world, but Mack’s dad calls him more often, and he actually apologized for scaring me months ago. He’s making an effort to be a better person—and dad—and I appreciate that. So does Mack.

I rub my lower back and Mack’s eyes deepen with concern. “More back pain?”

“The same one.” It’s been getting worse, making sleep almost impossible lately.

“I’ll put this mower away and come and get you,” he says.

I shake my head. “It’s okay. I need the bathroom.”

“I’ll get you, Aerin.”

He heads for the shed with the mower and I head for the bathroom, passing the stairs, which I still view as the devil. I disliked stairs when I was six months pregnant. At eight months, I wish for elevators on a daily basis.

I’m feet from the bathroom when there’s a sudden pressure inside me. As I stand in the hallway with one hand braced on the wall, I think I understand what’s happening.

No. I’m almost certain I know what’s happening.

Excitement and fear surge inside me.

“ Mack !” I yell.

Two seconds later, Mack yells back. “Are you okay? Do you need help getting up from the toilet?”

Yes, I’m at that stage and it is no longer embarrassing as it is frustrating to sometimes sit and not be able to stand up again since there’s no wall to push myself up.

“Um. Not exactly,” I call back.

He jogs up the stairs, his expression concerned until he sees my face. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Another hard pressure makes me wince and press a hand against my belly. “I think she’s coming.”

His hand tightens around the balustrade as something resembling terror passes across his face. “ Now ?”

“You’re going to be a good dad, Mack,” I reassure him.

He told me that because his dad walked out of his life that he wouldn’t know how to be a good one, but I think the opposite. I know he is going to be a better one because he knows what it is to lose a dad.

That seems to snap him out of his fear laced frozen moment because he moves, scooping me into my arms and carrying me to our room. “I’m supposed to be doing the reassuring, love. Especially right now. Are you in pain?”

“It’s not that bad yet,” I tell him as he helps me into bed.

He kisses the top of my head. “I’ll call Adela and your grandparents, okay?”

“Okay.”

I tell myself this can’t hurt as much as I’ve heard it does. I’m a shifter. Childbirth can’t be that bad, can it?

By the time Adela and my grandparents are walking into the room to help deliver my baby, I’m ready to forget about having another baby again in my life.

Hours later, when Adela places a screaming, red-faced baby with blonde hair and blue-gray eyes into my arms, every single second of pain was worth it.

Adela and my grandparents quickly clean up and leave Mack and me alone to enjoy our daughter before we introduce her to the rest of the pack.

Mack is sitting on the bed with me as everyone waits downstairs to meet the newest member of the Winter Lake Pack.

I’m exhausted. Everything hurts, but I can’t stop grinning.

Mack kisses the top of my hair. “She looks like a Janie to me.”

I lean against his chest. “She does, doesn’t she?”

On the sleepless nights when my back hurt too much to sleep, we talked about names and for some reason, Janie was one that seemed to stick in both our heads.

It just felt right.

And now, looking at the beautiful little girl in my arms, I know why.

That’s her name.

Janie Winters.

As I look down at her, the love in my heart swells until it pours out of me. And Janie, our screaming little girl, falls silent to stare up at me. She has my eyes, and it is the most surreal, unbelievable sensation to know I created this little person.

Mack kisses my head again and brushes Janie’s tufts of blonde hair. “Told you that your powers were needed elsewhere, Aerin.”

I don’t even care that my powers are back. All I care about is Janie and Mack.

That’s it.

“How’s your hand?” I ask him.

He grins at me. “Still there.”

I wince. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to crush your hand like that.”

I must have broken bones with how hard I squeezed as I pushed.

“I’m okay. Just—” He sucks in a sharp breath and my eyes dart from him to his hand.

“What?”

He’s staring down at Janie with wide eyes.

“Mack, what is it?”

He swallows so hard, I track the motion in his bobbing Adam’s apple. “Uh, Janie has a gift of her own.”

“What do you mean?”

He holds up his right hand. “I didn’t want to say anything because you felt bad already, but you broke a bone when you squeezed.”

Shit.

Wait.

“So?”

He looks at Janie, who is still quiet, as she peers up at us.

“Janie healed it when she grabbed my finger,” Mack says.

We’re staring at each other when the bedroom door open and the rest of the pack sticks their heads in. “Can we come meet her now?” Penny asks excitedly.