Omega Moon Rising (Toke Lobo & The Pack) (20 page)

Which meant Luke had lied to her. Maybe he was trying to make her feel better, but it was one more grievance against him.

Delilah was busy packing up the baby, but she stopped and looked at Abby. “Luke is a kind man.”

“Right. He brought you a rabbit to eat. Let me guess. He caught it while he was a werewolf.”

“Does it matter what shape he wore when he did a kindness? The kindness, the loyalty—everything is there. Nothing changes whether he be man or beast.”

“He bought me a wedding gown,” Lucy added. “And sparkling blueberry juice to celebrate my marriage to Stoker, when nobody felt much like celebrating.”

“He’s not as stupid as the pack leaders want to believe—and I don’t think they believe it for a minute.” Delilah hoisted a diaper bag onto her shoulder.

“It’s more like a habit with them than a belief,” Lucy added. “Give him a chance.”

“I’m not his mate,” Abby replied. “Giving him a chance isn’t my option. I’m only the girl he knocked up when he decided to treat his human blood to a little blue pill.”

Luke, still sweaty from his morning run, leaned against the hall wall and closed his eyes. Humans said eavesdroppers never heard anything good about themselves, but Delilah and Lucy both proved that adage wrong. What the lycan members of the band had viewed as naïve enthusiasm and a desire to please had been perceived completely differently by the human females. He hadn’t been trying to be kind or please anyone in either of the instances Delilah and Lucy mentioned. He’d been doing what he thought was the right thing. He didn’t want to please or be kind. He wanted respect. He wanted his family’s name and status restored.

Scratching his bare chest, he straightened his shoulders and sauntered into the kitchen. The text message he’d received the previous evening was going to upset Abby. Of course, everything upset Abby. Including his nudity. He’d pulled on a pair of flannel pajama pants in deference to the human women who found male nakedness nasty, Granny included.

Who, according to his nose, had made his favorite French toast for breakfast. Usually she cooked it only on human holidays, like Christmas or Easter, making it a special treat. Maybe after hearing Abby’s sobs last night, she’d decided his wife needed something special.

“Morning all,” he said as he padded into the kitchen. The cool tile felt great against his bare feet. “Is that French toast I smell? How come no one invited me to the party?”

“Girl talk,” Granny said in as close to a snap a full-human female could get. She’d been living with Gramps a long time, so she’d had plenty of practice perfecting it.

“Let me guess. I was a naughty boy for not telling Abby about the werewolf stuff.”

“Give the man a cigar,” Abby muttered.

“And I’ll be paying for that omission for the rest of my life. And the rest of Rosie Dawn’s life. For seven freaking generations.”

He hadn’t meant to put it quite like that, but somehow it came out. A male lycan would never talk to a female like that. His grandmother and mother both raised their hands as if to cuff him, but Aunt Macy reached him first.

“No hitting,” Abby said. “No more hitting.”

Luke crossed the room to stand behind her chair. He rested his hands on the slat nearest her shoulder, and glared at each of the females in the room.

“Hey, I’m down with that,” Lucy said. “My father communicated with his fists. It’s not fun.”

Delilah nodded. “My father didn’t physically abuse me or my brother, but the mental abuse was horrific.”

Even Luke with his human blood couldn’t conceive of a child not loved and cherished. Not nurtured. His family had adored him. Without that adoration, he might not have survived the bullying as well as he had. Rosie Dawn was going to be worshipped if he had anything at all to say about it.

“I’ll get Libby. I need to get home, too,” his mom said.

“I want Libby to stay here,” Abby said.

Mom looked hurt. “She’s perfectly safe with us. Last night proved that.”

“I wasn’t thinking about last night. I was thinking about the next full moon.”

“All the pregnant females and post-menopausal females—and now the human females—have a full moon gathering in the Lodge,” Granny said. “With the pre-adolescent little ones. Until then, Libby is safe with Colette and Marcus.”

“Abby wants Libby with us,” Luke said.

“Luke, you know—”

“I’m head of this family,” he answered in a calm, matter of fact voice. “Abby wants Libby staying with us. Libby stays with us. Mom, you can bring her stuff over later this afternoon.”

“But—”

Luke raised an eyebrow. Colette might be his mother, but he was an adult male now, and an adult male had a responsibility to his own family. Besides, having Libby with them was going to make certain tasks easier.

His mother and the humans left. Granny went to make up Macy’s former bedroom for Libby, who remained in front of the television.

Abby started clearing the table. Luke sat and pulled her unfinished French toast closer and dug in.

“What was that about?” she asked.

“What was what about?” Luke didn’t know what she meant.

“The argument between you and your mother.”

“No argument,” Luke explained. “You want Libby to be with you. That makes you happy. It’s my responsibility to make sure you’re happy, and I haven’t been doing so great a job of that outside of sex. I’m head of our family. I make the decisions about what’s best for us.”

What was there to understand?

“And your mom backed down?”

Granny’s cooking was as delicious as ever. “What would your mother have done?”

“Mama was too sick to involve herself with the minutia of our lives,” Abby said after a long pause. “She did what she thought was right by marrying Gary, to have someone to provide for us.”

Rage flamed in Luke’s head. “If your mother had been paying attention, she might have figured out Gary married her to get access to you and your sister.”

Abby looked as if he’d slugged her in the stomach. “My mother was sick,” she said in a broken voice. “Dying. She was trying to take care of Libby and me.”

“Well thank the Ancient Ones you now have me. And the rest of the pack. And the FBI. Because now you’re going to find out what being taken care of really means. And that includes Libby moving out of my parents’ house since someone knows she was there.”

He hated that Abby wanted to excuse her mother, hated because she never should have had to take off her clothes and pose for pictures to be safe or to keep her sister safe.

And he had more bad news for her. He’d waited until the last minute so she’d have less time to be furious with him, but there were some things he couldn’t delay, no matter how hard he fought them.

“I had an ulterior motive. We need to go to Fort Collins today,” he said. “Me and Libby. I’d like you to come with us.”

Abby stiffened. “Why?”

Luke hesitated. Stalling was only going to upset Abby more, so he blurted out the reason. “It’s out of your hands. The FBI wants a physical examination of Libby. It’s a child exploitation case, and there’s nothing the family can do except cooperate.”

Abby snatched the half-eaten plate of French toast and Luke clasped her wrist. “I’m not done with that.”

“Fine.” She pulled free, turned her back on him, and started running water in the sink. The scent of green dish soap displaced the cooking odors.

“And we can lay in some supplies while we’re there. Things we can’t find in Oak Moon,” he continued. He was tired of seeing his wife in ragged jeans and butt ugly sweaters. And they were going to need baby furniture. He’d never paid much attention to that kind of stuff before, but the last time he’d been at Tokarz’s house, he’d noticed a special chair in the kitchen, brightly colored bouncy things in the sitting room—all stuff Rosie Dawn was going to need. And clothes. Diapers. Babies weren’t born housebroken.

“What are they going to do to Libby?” Abby finally asked.

“I don’t know. It’s a special kind of doctor. A lady doctor. She specializes in child abuse pediatrics. She’s the only one around in a several county area, but she supposedly has a good reputation.”

Abby’s face lost all color. “But why? Gary never—”

“I can’t talk to you about an on-going investigation, but—”

Abby’s chin dropped to her chest. Her shoulders shook.

Luke couldn’t take it any longer. He pushed away from the table and put his arms around her. Held her while the silent sobs wracked her body. He hated this, hated making her cry.

“Hush. We don’t want to upset Libby,” he crooned. “We’ll make it a fun day. Go shopping. Eat dinner in a fancy restaurant.” Weren’t those activities human females were supposed to adore?

And while Abby and Libby were at the doctor’s he needed to meet up with the FBI to pick up a laptop computer to use on task force business. He also needed to replace his personal unit. The one he’d smashed when Abby told him the truth behind Gail’s Bedroom.

Abby needed time away from Luke. Away from his grandmother. Away from all the people and werewolves whose advice not only didn’t help her, but confused everything she thought she’d figured out.

Very few of her clothes still fit her. They were tight across the bust and snug in the waist. But Luke had asked her to dress up pretty, and since he had his heart set on this outing—turning it into something fun when the underlying reason was anything but—she tried to accommodate him, if only to keep Libby in a pliable frame of mind.

She stared at her face in the mildew-speckled mirror. The tears of the past several hours had left their mark. Even if she were skilled with cosmetics, she wouldn’t be able to hide the sleepless hours visible in her eyes. And her face was thinner than it had been before she’d gotten pregnant, as if her expanding breast and abdomen were sucking everything they could from the rest of her body.

But Luke was trying, so she could, too.

When she emerged from the bedroom in the same dark skirt and sweater she’d worn to her mother and Gary’s funerals, Luke grimaced.

“It’s not Victorian England,” Granny said. “You don’t have to wear mourning.”

Luke’s scowl deepened. “I wish your pink dress still fit. Don’t you have something less . . . formal?” He gestured toward Libby, who wore a long-sleeved orange and brown striped T-shirt and matching brown leggings.

He had on black jeans and a blue and yellow checked flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The golden curls on his forearms glinted in the sun.

Abby shrugged and went back to change. Her black leggings still fit. She helped herself to one of Luke’s flannel shirts—a teal and purple hounds tooth pattern.

Luke’s eyes glinted when she emerged. “You look real nice in my shirt,” he said.

Libby chattered for almost the entire ride to Fort Collins. Their father had been a long-distance trucker, so when he wasn’t working, he wanted to be home. Their mother didn’t drive. Gary didn’t like leaving Oak Moon with a family in tow, so neither girl had been outside of the county much, making a trip to Fort Collins was a big deal.

The first stop was a cute café, with sidewalk tables taking advantage of the last of the nice days before the brutal Rocky Mountains winter swooped down on them.

“Can we have strawberry lemonade again?” Libby asked. “Like we did at the Moonsinger picnic?”

Luke laughed. “If it’s on the menu.”

It was, but Abby stuck to milk. That much she knew about pregnancy. Too bad she couldn’t see a regular doctor, although now she understood why Luke entrusted her to Granny. But even werewolves had bones.

When they piled back into Luke’s truck, Luke broke the bad news to Libby. “I have some business I need to take care of, so I’m going to drop off the two of you at Doctor Holster’s office.”

“Is Doctor Holster going to be Abby’s baby doctor?” Libby asked.

“No,” Abby said. “Doctor Holster needs to see you, not me.”

“Why? I thought all my shots were up to date. That’s what Mama said. She said no more doctors unless I was sick.”

Abby looked to Luke for help, but he was pretending to watch the road as he drove.

“Doctor Holster isn’t that kind of doctor. I’m not sure what kind of doctor she is, but Luke made this appointment for you after you talked to him at Toke Lobo’s house the other night.”

That snagged Luke’s attention. She hadn’t lied.

“Remember Mr. Jasper?” Luke asked. “Doctor Holster is a friend of his.”

“Why do I need a doctor?” Libby wasn’t going to let the subject drop.

“Because Gary . . . was sick,” Abby said.

“Oh. Like Mama was sick?”

“No. Different sick. Mama’s sickness was cancer, so it couldn’t spread to other people. But Gary—”

“He was what they call a carrier,” Luke said. “And since you spent a lot of alone time with him, you need to be checked out.”

Luke’s gaze caught Abby’s. She hadn’t even realized how tightly her stomach was clenched until that moment.

They weren’t lying to Libby. Abby was never sure how much Libby understood. She was slow to grasp concepts. “You’re not coming with us?” Abby asked as Luke pulled to the curb in front of a tall office building.

“I have a meeting with Mitchell Jasper,” Luke said. “I’ll meet up with you back here in an hour or so, and we’ll hit the stores. Think about what you want for dinner. There’s a great sushi place—”

“I can’t eat sushi while I’m pregnant,” Abby said. The Internet research Macy had helped her with was paying off. And no wonder Macy had been so willing to help. She knew the truth. She was a version of the truth.

“Oh. That’s a shame. I love sushi.”

“What’s sushi?” Libby asked.

“Raw fish,” Abby replied.