28. Take Caution: Brody's Pov
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Chapter Goal: 2k votes (for a bonus featuring Brody and His possible mate!!!)
QOTC- which picture should be the new cover? (Individuals below)
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*this chapter has a lot of POV changes
"They better not be boning." I growl, opening the front door of my sister's house. She gave me a spare key for emergencies. With the rogues and Dylan to worry about, I need to make sure that my baby sister is safe and that Xander isn't trying to make her have twins.
I begin search all of the rooms in the house and find them both curled up on the floor inside of the office room. Xander opens his eyes the moment he senses me in the room. "Fuck." he curses, blinded by the amount of sunlight flooding into the room. "What time is it, man?"
"It's noon and the two of you haven't contacted anyone in the last twenty-four hours." I answer, narrowing my eyes at where his hands are. As Alpha and Luna of such a large pack, things go wrong if they don't tell anyone where they are. "Why are you and Char sleeping in the office?"
"We were working until five in the morning." he grumbles, sitting up. "I woke up around seven and saw Charlotte doing some pack work, I had to tell her that the pup needs her to rest before she finally quit fighting."
"Damn." I mutter, noticing the bags under both of their eyes. "I didn't get any leads either. It's too risky to attack the hideout unless we just greatly outnumber them."
"We're not going to attack. Charlotte said that there are mines surrounding the area, too many lives will be lost if the go off." he informs me. "The rogues will attack us and that's when we'll take them out. Security has already been tripled, warriors are being sent to assist, and we've already changed the schedule and routes so the traitors can't catch us off-guard."
"Was all of that your idea of Char's?" I ask, raising an eyebrow. Xander's a good leader and all, but he isn't really good with generating ideas or paying attention to the big things that are disguised as small things.
"Charlotte's."
"Do you want me to discuss the new routes with border patrol?" I ask, picking up the thick binder labeled, 'Piani di frontiera'. I'm not too sure why Charlotte wrote it in Italian, but I can easily explain it to the other wolves later on.
"Yeah, you can take the day off afterwards too. You've been working your ass off this past week."
*** (two hours later)
Xander's Pov
"I don't think this is safe." Charlotte says, looking at the gun and the target forty feet away.
"I don't think so either." I agree with her, taking the gun of out her hands and unloading it in case of an accident. Since the rogues are going to be coming to us, Charlotte has to be able to defend herself if they manage to get past the borders. I told her that she would be by guards, warriors, Brody, and I, but she insisted that she learned some self-defense.
"That knife is too sharp." I stop her from picking up a switchblade.
"I know how to use it." she tells me, picking it up anyways.
"When did you use a switchblade?" I ask, trying to think of a situation where she would ever need to use one.
"Well..." she trails off, looking down at her hands. "One time I got l-locked down here, so I had to pick the lock. And then another t-time, I was cleaning and I saw a bug-"
"You killed a bug with a switchblade?" I cut her off with a laugh. Whenever we're together, we just hang out; I have no idea what she does when she's alone.
"Stop laughing." she pouts. "At least I didn't freak out over eyelashes."
Flashback (before Charlotte was pregnant)
"I don't like the way these guys are looking at you." I growl, sending death glares to a group of human boys smiling at my mate. Some of them back off when they realize that she's with me, but the others keep smiling. One of them even has the nerve to wink!
"I actually think that it's funny." Charlotte comments, reaching across the table to hold my hand. She can't see the boys because her back is turned to them, but I know she knows they're there. Standing up and walking to sit next to me, she looks at the group of idiots that I'm currently growling at.
"How is any of this funny?" I ask, discreetly sticking up my middle-finger at the boys. "It's fucking annoying seeing them stare at you like that. I am the only person who's allowed to look at you like that. Everyone else who looks at you like that is breaking the rules."
"Since when are such a goody-goody?" she teases, shaking her head a little.
"I'm not a goody-goody." I deny. I'm the most feared Alpha in the continent, I'm definitely not a goody-goody.
"You're d-discreetly flipping those guys off." she points out. "Just do this." With no hesitation, she stands and sticks up both her middle fingers in the direction of the boys. "Now they're going away."
"Finally." I let out a relieved sigh.
"But now there's a girl coming over here." Charlotte nods in the direction of an approaching girl wearing no pants. The girl might be wearing pants, but it looks like a pair of jean boxer shorts to me. Camel-toe.
"Don't worry, sweetheart. You have nothing to worry about." I assure her.
Shockingly, her reply is, "I know."
"Hey." the girl is now standing at the end of the table. She sends me a weird smile and one of her eyes starts rapidly twitching.
'I think she's trying to wink.' Charlotte mind-links me. 'It's funny how hard she's trying.'
To annoy the girl interrupting my time with my mate, I throw my arm around Charlotte's shoulder and peck her cheek. "Can we help you?" I ask, making it clear that Charlotte and I are together.
"I actually-"
"BUG!" I shout, using my free hand to smack a black object that landed on the table. Noticing that everyone in the food court is now staring at me, I announce, "It was a bug, everyone. Nothing to see here."
"Um... Xander?" I look to my side and see Charlotte smiling, trying to hold in her laughter. "The 'bug' is stuck to her hand."
Raising the hand that I used to smack the bug, I see a curved line with what seems like a million legs attacked to it. A centipede?
Charlotte peels the object from my hand and hands it back to the girl. "Your falsie fell of." she says.
Flashback Over
"You thought her falsie was a bug!" Charlotte giggles.
"I didn't know it was a fake eyelash!" I defend myself. "The thing looked like a centipede until I saw that her eyes were uneven."
Deciding to change the subject, I say, "I would teach you how to use this knife, but I know that Brody already taught you how. Keep it on you at all times."
"I know. I know." she sighs. "Brody already gave me that lecture."
"I wasn't going to lecture you."
"You've done it before. You and Brody both d-did it before."
Shaking off what she just said, I redirect the conversation back to the switchblade. "What two things should you have on you at all times?" I ask her.
'Me.' my wolf snickers at the same time Charlotte answers, "Food and shelter."
"Wait, no..." she closes her eyes and thinks for a second. "Clothes and sandwich?"
I love Charlotte, I really do; but she has a tendency to veer off-topic very often. Sometimes she makes me forget important information and I don't think that she knows what she does to me. She's made me take so many cold showers that I might as well be the werewolf version of Jack Frost!
"I'm being serious." I tell her.
"I am too!" she exclaims, clearly showing that she doesn't know the answer to my question. "It's not my fault that I don't know!"
'We offended mate.' my wolf whines, hating that we upset Charlotte again. 'She's going to hate us now. We have to sleep on the couch tonight.'
For some strange reason, my wolf has been extremely sensitive since we found out that Charlotte's pregnant. She should be the one with hormones and emotions skyrocketing through the roof, not us. 'Hormones are good.' my wolf comments. 'Real good.'
Checking the time on my phone, I nearly drop the switchblade on the ground when I realize that we're late. "We're late." I quickly put the weapons back in their respective spots and check the time on my phone again.
Two minutes have passed. "We're fucking late." I curse.
"For what?" Charlotte asks, not understanding why I'm rushing to get out of the basement.
"The ultrasound."
***
Charlotte's Pov
"Do you think Dr. Kale is annoyed b-by us?" I ask Xander with a frown on my face.
"It's her job to be the doctor to the Beta and Alpha families in the Lunar Shadow pack." he says, only partially answering my question.
"I mean is she annoyed at us." I explain. "Because we always make appointments and then postpone them last minute."
"Don't worry about it, sweetheart." Xander takes a hand off of the steering wheel and places it on my thigh. "Dr. Kale knows that we have busy schedules. I'm sure she knows that we have to take care of the pack before ourselves."
Xander frowns when he says hat last part, but I don't say anything. I've noticed how annoyed he's been with the amount of pack work we both have to do. I always try to do my part and do half of the work, but it only seems to annoy him even more. Apparently it's "unhealthy" for the baby and I to stay up that late at night.
It's not like I can get any sleep if I try to. Either my nightmares wake me up or I stay awake so that I can be aware of anything happening in the house. I have Xander by my side, but I always fear that something will happen to him too.
"Ahem." Xander clears his throat, snapping me back into reality. He stands outside the car, holding the door open for me.
"I need to ask Dr. Kale about a bruise I got on my head." he informs me. "I have no idea what could've caused it."
"Um..." I trail off, looking down at my feet, I try to hide the light blush creeping onto my cheeks. "L-Last night, I woke up and tried to get both of us out of the office and i-into our room. You were really heavy, so I quit. That's why we woke up on the floor this morning."
"Why didn't you just wake me up?"
"Because you're a frickin' brick!" I exclaim, kind of offended by his question. I try my best to not let it show, though.
Flashback
"Xander," I whimper, putting my hands on my mate's chest. "Your hurting m-me."
Almost immediately, he flips us over so that I'm laying on top on him instead of him laying on me. I can breathe in this position, but all I smell is Xander. He doesn't smell bad, it's just that I feel like I'm smelling too much of him. He's laying on his back with all four of his limbs wrapped around me as if I were one of those gigantic teddy bears.
I've been wanting one those for a while now.
"Mine." Xander growls when I try to kick his legs off of me. "All mine." he adds, tightening his hold on me when I try prying his arms off of myself.
"MINE-"
"Shut up." I groan in annoyance, using all the strength I have to roll the both of us off of the couch. Even in his sleep, he still manages to make sure that I'm the one who lands safely on top of him.
Unfortunately, he isn't Superman and ends up knocking the side of his thick skull against the hard floor. "Mommy." I hear him call out as he reaches up to cradle his head. "I need you."
Flashback Over
"You called for your mommy." I tease. The word 'mommy' sounds foreign on my tongue, though. I don't have anyone to call that in my life right now and I definitely don't have any memories of my own 'mommy'.
"If I were a human, that would've gave me a concussion." Xander takes my hand as we walk into the hospital building.
"Bricks don't get concussions, but okay." I shrug as we finish checking in. Xander mutters something under his breath, but I don't catch what it was.
Twenty minutes into the ultrasound, Dr. Kale tells me to shift into my wolf-form. "In human-form, the pup is perfectly fine. I need to make sure that the pup is growing correctly as a wolf too." she explains. "Whenever you shift, so does the pup."
I get up and walk into the conjoined bathroom so that I can strip in privacy. 'Rawr.' I mind-link Xander once I emerge from the bathroom on all four paws. Because of the dangers that lay in the thickly wooded forests in the territory, I don't get much time to let my wolf free anymore.
"Can you please sit on the table, Luna?" Dr. Kale requests, lowering the height of the medical table so that a normal sized would be able to jump of top of; but I'm not a normal sized wolf. Instead of getting onto the table with one swift leap, I end up gripping onto the edge of it and slowly slipping back onto the ground.
'I can do this myself.' I tell Xander when I see him reach over to help me onto this three and a half foot tall table. He decides to be a jerk and ignore what I told him by trying to lift me up. Trying to.
I let out a loud bark towards my mate and continue to get onto the table by myself. Xander's been treating me like I can't do anything on my own; he's slowly getting closer to my tolerance breaking point.
"This is the same substance that I use for your human ultrasounds. I'm going to apply it to your abdomen and the procedure will be exactly the same." Dr. Kale informs Xander and I. Just like with the other two human-form ultrasounds, she makes sure to make no sudden movements and to inform Xander and I about every step. Her attempts to not seem like a threat to our child doesn't work for Xander, though. He still growls every time her hands get too close to my stomach.
'Is that our baby?' I excitedly ask Dr. Kale when the computer screen lights up.
This is only the second ultrasound that Xander and I have been to. The first one was just to confirm my pregnancy, I'm far enough in now to actually see our unborn child.
"The pup is definitely there, but time is needed before the pup actually starts looking like a wolf." Dr. Kale says when she notices Xander frowning at the computer screen. He asked me a couple days ago why my belly isn't big yet and we both had to call his mom for information on how the werewolf pregnancy process goes. Neither of us have a clue about what's going to happen next, but I know that we'll get through it together. "You can shift back into your human-form now, Luna."
It doesn't take me long to shift and put my clothes back on; I know that the faster I do things, the faster Xander and I can get out of this place. It's not that I don't like Dr. Kale, it's just something about the whole "hospital aura" that makes me uneasy. The completely white rooms and the constant smell of cleaning supplies makes it worse.
"The pup is developing at the right pace and everything appears to be normal. Do either of you have any question? Dr. Kale asks.
*** (two days later)
Xander's Pov
"I don't like seeing you like this." I say, caressing Charlotte's cheek. In her sleepy state, she leans into my touch and allows me to carry her. She somehow managed to sneak out of bed this morning and stated cleaning the house. We were previously staying with Brody, but that didn't last very long. Charlotte kept wanting to see why I was keeping her out of the house and we ended up back here.
The foul smell of death isn't as strong, but it still lingers in the air. I wasn't able to remove all the blood stains and I didn't have enough time to dispose of the broken furniture. My mate took it upon herself to wake up extremely early just to clean up. I was planning on having us stay with Brody until I finished cleaning up the house for her. "What time did you wake up?" I ask, looking at the dark circles under her eyes. We went to sleep at a reasonable time last night, she must've gotten up before the sun came up.
"Three or four." she mumbles, looking down at the mess that has yet to be cleaned.
"Don't worry about the house," I tell her, making my way up the stairs carrying her bridal style. "I'll clean everything up, you just need to sit back and relax."
When I start laying her down on our bed, she shakes her head and sits up. "I'm not t-tired." she lies.
"You're right." I agree with her, gently pushing her so that she's laying down instead of sitting. "You're exhausted. Just go to sleep. The house will be clean by the time you wake up and I'll bring you some breakfast in bed-"
Once she hears the word, 'breakfast', her eyes widen and bolts into the bathroom. Ever since her morning sickness started, it seems like her body is against eating breakfast. Any time I mention eggs, bacon, grits, (saugsage), or any other breakfast food, she vomits. "I'm okay." she assures me after she washes her hands.
"No." I snake my arm around her waist when she tries walking out of the bedroom, nearly tripping over her own two feet in the process. "Sleep."
"I need to clean the house." she shakes her head, trying to wriggle free from my grip.
"I got it." I tell her, adjusting my hold on her.
"I don't want t-to sleep."
"Why?"
"Dylan." she answers.
"You heard the phonecall?" I ask referring to when Dylan called me the other night. "No one is ever going to take you-"
My phone goes off and since I save the number that Dylan called me with, I know that it's him. "Pick it up." Charlotte nods, letting me know that she wants to hear what he has to say to us. I press the 'Accept Call' button and putting it on speaker so that we can both hear. It's almost two weeks, whatever Dylan has planned is going to happen soon.
"I'm reminding you of the offer, Xander Reynolds." Charlotte tightly grips my hand when she hears his voice. "You can hand her over and no one gets hurt except for her-"
"I'm not going anywhere with you, Dylan." for the first time, she says his name without fear.
/@;&/)-&:&/)/&;&&/$;@/"(&287:/8&148;9$148721$3@82&3
"Fuck."
-Xander's favorite cuss-word
QOTC- which picture should be the new cover?
Hello, my amazing readers! I just want to state that this chapter was kind of rushed, so it might not be as good as the others.
I also want to say that the chapter goals for a bonus update featuring Brody and his possible mate is NOT in any way ties to the weekly updates. Some of you commented and said how it's wrong of some authors to withhold their written chapters until they reach a certain number of votes; I AM NOT DOING THAT. If the chapter goals are reached, then it's a BONUS update. Meaning EARLY, BONUS, SPECIAL, chapter. If I ever miss a Friday update, it's most likely because I either got my phone taken away or because I was busy.
This chapter is late because I fell asleep before I finished writing it. And since I have yet to write the Brody Bonus update, I won't be able to publish it yet. The chapter goal must be reached BEFORE THE UPDATE DAY (Friday).
Some important news:
1) I'm thinking about having Brody's mate be introduced in this book and having a different conflict for a sequel.
2) I recently uploaded a new werewolf book called, Josephine's Secret. I might change it to Loving Josephine instead. (Comment what you think)
Escapades with Charlotte: (age three)
"Come on, Char." Theo takes my hand and drags me into the kitchen with him. "I'm a good cook now, Xander taught me how to make cereal."
"But it's so high." I stick out my lower lip in a pout when we open the pantry. The cereal boxes are on the top shelf, my head doesn't even reach the first one. When me and Brody started taking all the chips, my parents moved the shelves so that I couldn't reach them no more. But my big brother grew, I didn't.
"Let's grab the chair." Theo points to the spinning-chair near the dining table.
"My Mammina told me not to stand on th-those." I shake my head, feeling smart that I have more experience with that chair than Theo. He's five, I'm only three. He would be in school right now if it weren't for his late birthday. It's not very often that I know something that he doesn't. I got Brody to stand on the spinny-chair to test the safeness of it.
"What does mammina mean?" he asks.
"Mom."
As I get onto his shoulders so that we can get the cereal, he tells me a story. "I called my mom, 'woman' yesterday, and I got in trouble. I told her that I learned it from Xander, so it was okay."
At the mention of Xander, I can't help the warmth on my cheeks.
He's cute.
"You want Cheerios or Apple Jacks?" I ask, looking at the two cereal boxes on the shelf.
"Both." Theo answers. "We need a lot to fit in the slingshot."
Everyday, me and Theo stay at my house while my mom and Evelyn pick up the boys. My dad and Theo's dad are suppose to be watching us while they're gone, but I don't think that they even know we're home. Nothing caught on fire during the past month and there have been incidents, that's probably why the house is so quiet.
"Kids?" I hear my dad's voice down the hall.
With no place to hide the bra that Theo and I are using as a slingshot, we both panic. "Play dead!" Theo whisper-yells to me. We both close our eyes and play dead on the floor, both of us making sure not to move too much as we breathe.
"SHIT!" my dad curses. I can't see him because I'm closing my eyes, but I recognize his voice. "THEY'RE DEAD!!!"
"OUR MATES ARE GOING TO KILL US!" Theo's dad and mine kneel down beside us and pick us up.
"I'm alive." I giggle, sitting up with a plan in mind. "Theo wanted to play dress-up, so I took the bra from mammina."
Chapter Goal: 2k votes (before Friday)
xoxo Priscilla