Gathering intel on a man who was as careful as Mr. Storm just wasn’t easy. The man hardly ever left his office and when he did, he always kept it locked up tight. An ordinary lock might not have proved so challenging, since there were dozens of simple tricks to bypass them. Mr. Storm clearly thought of that, because the door to his office was also protected by a deadbolt, which couldn’t be so easily tampered with. No employee was allowed inside his office alone, and he never just left paperwork lying around.

More subtle means of espionage were out of the question. Rowan and Derrick had done research on that, enough to be able to write an informational textbook on the subject. Candid photographs were potentially admissible in court but secretly recording audio or video just wouldn’t fly. Both parties had to be aware they were being recorded and give permission for it, otherwise the recordings would just be tossed out by the defense’s lawyers.

The defense, in this case, being Mr. Storm.

Rowan bought a cheap disposable camera and kept it in his pocket at all times. No one questioned him about the unusual lump on his person, if they even noticed it was there. The last time he’d held one of these cheap things was back when he was a lot younger and his parents used to take him with them on hiking trips. Dropping a shitty disposable camera off the side of a mountain or cracking it against some random-ass boulders was a lot less upsetting than doing those same things with a version that cost hundreds of dollars.

Those had been good times. They were good parents, they just didn’t have much use for him after high school when he started to go in his own direction.

As it was, he never found a chance to use the camera. He knew that when he did, it would have to be quick and then he would need to haul ass and escape. The loud clicking sound the shutter made would alert even a human that someone was around doing something they weren’t supposed to.

That quick opportunity didn’t come.

After his recent “fuck-up” when he supposedly came and found the package missing, Rowan had been pushed to the side by his boss. If the man needed something done, he went to his other employees. That went on for endless weeks.

The cops didn’t come by and talk to Rowan, didn’t harass him for information or urge him to make a move. There was only silence on that front, though he was still aware sometimes of being watched and knew they were keeping tabs on him.

It was a curse, to be caught between a rock and a hard place in this situation. Unless he took care of this, he couldn’t really do anything with his life.

It was also a blessing, because the lack of extra work meant he could spend more time with Derrick.

Derrick returned to the school and was keeping his head down and his profile low, while also trying to get his kids back in shape for their upcoming plays and concerts. The substitute had done their best despite never having worked with such young age groups before, so it could have been a lot worse. Could have been a lot better, too.

They had dinner together often, or Rowan would come to the school whenever possible to pick him up for lunch. They took Derrick’s car for a little while, and then moved on to trying to ride Rowan’s bike together. That was still a work in progress.

A few months passed in that manner, living their lives and growing steadily closer together. Sometimes, Rowan could almost forget the dark shadow hanging over his head. Derrick had that power over him, urging him into the light whenever possible. They matched in that way, their mutual desire to draw the other out of melancholy bringing them together rather than apart. If they could only focus on the other, the rest of the world fell away.

They spent the night together upon occasion, with growing frequency as fall deepened, and the weather grew colder. As wolves in the wild would, they sought the other’s warmth and company during those hard times when it seemed as if the sun might never rise. The only logical step to take from there was for Rowan to start bringing some of his things over to Derrick’s apartment. Methodically packing up a change of clothes and toiletries felt impersonal and a little embarrassing, but Derrick wouldn’t share his toothbrush, and so it had to be done.

It was around this time Rowan discovered Derrick’s Dawn Song, the unscripted melody that the other wolf played each morning. He never commented on it, didn’t crowd the office when Derrick was inside, but he listened intently each time he heard that familiar melody. There was a meaning to the song, to its purpose, and he sought to figure it out.

Maybe it was the Dawn Song that lured him in. Maybe it was fate or happenstance. Either way, Rowan started to settle in. It just seemed to happen one day. He left his toothbrush in Derrick’s bathroom, and it stayed. He would forget a shirt or a pair of socks, and Derrick would wash them and them put them in their own drawer in his dresser. Soon enough, Rowan no longer needed to put together a bag for those nightly visits. Everything he needed was already there, just waiting for him. The careful, planned nature of their meetings started to fade away, replaced by something much more familiar and spontaneous.

They never talked about this development, never brought it out into the open. This was something they both wanted and they probably should have discussed it a time or two, should have started making plans. Rowan knew he never did either of those things because it felt as if it would ruin the magic of this whole thing, the spontaneous wonder of it all. He didn’t know Derrick’s reasoning, though he hoped and prayed that it was for the same reason.

Then, something happened. Well, quite a lot of things happened. November came and went. Christmas decorations popped up all across the city almost overnight and everything became holiday-themed. Rowan experienced this first-hand at the liquor store, as he was the only person brave enough to go up on the ladder to hook up the Christmas lights on the roof. Shipments of eggnog-vodka and any number of peppermint, gingerbread, and sugar cookie-flavored alcohol arrived to take over the store. There was so much of the stuff, including dusty remnants—but perfectly drinkable, according to the labels—from last year’s holidays, that there was no way they would be able to sell it all. The employees were allowed to take some of the excess for themselves, where it would be written off as inventory shrinkage due to some sort of mistake or other discrepancy.

Derrick was enthusiastic about testing whatever odds and ends Rowan brought to him. Most of it was absolute bullshit and they couldn’t even finish a glass, or get down a single shot, however, there was one bottle of suspiciously-vague Christmas Flavored Beer that was fantastic, though they both woke up with terrible hangovers.

The first day of December arrived, and Rowan brought home a cinnamon-and-candy-orange wine that he cheerfully assumed would taste like ass.

Derrick gave the offering a look that Rowan couldn’t figure out. There was almost a sort of resignation to it, but also something that looked unnervingly like fear.

“You can have some by yourself. I’ll pass tonight.”

The ice is returning, Rowan thought, alarmed. He set the orange bottle of wine down on the counter where it stuck out like a sore Oompa Loompa’s thumb and held out his arms to Derrick. “Something wrong?”

Derrick went into his arms willingly enough, which was a relief. “I don’t think so,” Derrick murmured. “I’m just not feeling it tonight.”

Rowan kept his hands on Derrick’s shoulders and leaned back slightly to look into his eyes. He was surprised to see that the other wolf’s gaze was still warm, unclouded by the advance of that icy mask. “Well, the whole fun of it is trying this junk with you, so I think I’ll hold off. Maybe it’ll get better as it ages.”

“It might have a lot of time to do that,” Derrick muttered. He didn’t elaborate on what he meant and Rowan didn’t press him. The Christmas play at the school was coming up on Friday, and the concerts were the following Monday. This was crunch time, quite stressful for the person in charge of all of it. He just assumed that Derrick didn’t want to cloud up his head with alcohol during this very important time of year, and he respected that.

As the week continued on, he wondered if his assumption had been correct. Nothing had changed between them, but something certainly seemed different anyway. It was as if Derrick had gone back to his formerly wary ways, leaving a gap between them that they had only just learned to surpass. They didn’t have sex at all, and then on Thursday Derrick wore a shirt to bed in addition to his regular boxers.

They normally slept with as much of their skin touching as possible.

“Are you sure something isn’t wrong?”

Derrick gave him a look that suggested he’d gone off his rocker, although it wasn’t very convincing. “I’m just a little cold tonight.”

“We could sleep as wolves,” Rowan suggested. He himself had done that on more than a few occasions when he just didn’t want to bother with turning the heat on in his trailer. It saved money, and he was usually warmer with his fur than with any amount of air blown intermittently through rattling vents.

Derrick just shook his head. “Not that cold.”

Puzzling, very puzzling. Rowan didn’t press him.

Friday arrived and Rowan was among the hundreds of adults who crammed themselves into the Churchland gymnasium bleachers to watch a Christmas-y version of the Emperor’s New Clothes. He felt a little like a creep and the way that people kept giving him sidelong stares didn’t help matters much. Most of the humans looking his way were in pairs, probably parents and grandparents who had never seen him before. Their mental process was clear: if he belonged here for any proper and innocent reason at all, why hadn’t they seen him at any of the other functions or events where the kids were involved?

Being crammed into such close quarters with humans who seemed to have no understanding of physical boundaries was enough to put him on edge. When one of them stopped by the seat he’d chosen, up in the front row, he held back a groan. Things were only going to get worse from here.

The human was a classic soccer mom, with bottle-blonde hair and an extra 20 pounds. on her hips. “The front row is reserved for parents,” she said, in the tone of someone who is used to telling others where she thinks they belong. “Which one’s yours?”

The implication being I have no right to be here, when this is where Derrick told me to be.

Hell, the seat right next to his even had a paper taped to it that said it was reserved for the play director. This woman probably wanted him to move just so she could have his spot and annoy Derrick all night with suggestions about improvements she would have made, or how her kid would have been so much better in the lead role rather than being allocated to a side part.

Rowan looked off to the side, where Derrick had stood on the gymnasium floor with an older, salt-and-pepper-haired man dressed in a suit. The man’s tie was garishly red, a caricature of Santa Claus.

“Mine is the one in the ugly Christmas sweater. The one with the reindeer’s ass on the back?”

The front of the sweater was of a reindeer facing forward, though the neck ended at the collar. It was supposed to be funny, a deer with a person’s head, but Derrick had confided in him that he wore it mostly because the kids in the first-grade class liked butt and fart jokes.

Either way, there was no one else around to match the description he’d just given. The woman looked back and forth from him to Derrick for a few moments. A shadow passed across her face and she moved away to go sit by her husband. Every now and again throughout the rest of the night, he was able to feel her glaring at him.

As the time drew closer to 6 p.m., when the play was to begin, the flood of people entering started to slow down to a trickle. No one sat near Rowan until 5:50, when a rather pretty woman came up to him. “Anyone sitting here?” she asked. Her voice was clear and strong, which wasn’t surprising. A closer look revealed that the woman was up there in age, though she really didn’t show it.

“Sure,” he said. “You are now, since no one else is.”

She sat down beside him and he thought that would be the end of it. It wasn’t. “Are you here with Derrick?”

Rowan glanced at her. “How do you know?”

“I saw you come in together. My name is Elaine. I work in the office.”

Rowan shook her hand as it was offered to him, finding her grip to be firm and pleasant. Inwardly, he was smiling. Leave it to Derrick to make such an odd choice in friends. An old woman, rather than someone his own age. “I’m Rowan. Yes, I’m with Derrick.”

Elaine smiled, seeming as if she’d been waiting to have this confirmed for a very long time. “How is he doing? We haven’t talked much lately.”

“I’ll tell him to fix that.” Rowan knew that he wasn’t going to tell this woman about how stressed Derrick seemed lately. She might know him, but Rowan didn’t know her. “He’s been well.”

“Good! I’m glad to hear that. I’m so glad that all of that fuss from before has settled down so quickly. He really did a good thing. Oh, do you know about that? I assume you must.”

“Yes.”

“The little girl is doing so much better these days.”

They continued to talk and Rowan found himself actually liking this Elaine woman. She was kind and also fierce in her own way. A perfect friend for Derrick.

Eventually, the older man with the graying hair stood up in front of the audience and hushed everyone. He turned out to be the principal, which helped a little with some of the jealousy Rowan had been feeling.

After making some bullshit reminders about the real meaning of the season, with some oddly religious comments for what was supposed to be a public school—though what did he expect, with a name like Churchland—the principal introduced Derrick.

Derrick took the microphone as it was passed to him, his fingers shaking slightly. His voice was strong in contrast, and he made some idealistic statements of his own, though his had more to do with how wonderful the class was and how hard they had worked to make this one of the best plays he’d had the fortune to teach.

Scattered applause came in response to his speech. Rowan clapped as loud as anyone else, probably louder. The lackluster response probably had a lot to do with the whole punching incident; he was just glad there was a response at all.

Derrick took his seat next to Rowan—waving and smiling at Elaine as he went by—and the play commenced.

Rowan placed his hand on Derrick’s thigh, relieved when the other flashed him a smile. They leaned in against each other and watched the play, with Derrick occasionally motioning the kids around or feeding them their lines.

All in all, it was a pretty damn good play. None of the kids would ever be picked up by an agent for their acting skills, they would forget their own damn names if Derrick wasn’t there to remind them, but the combined elements of Christmas with the classic tale of a snobbish Emperor and some thieving tailors worked out in a way that Rowan wouldn’t have expected. The jokes were okay and the songs weren’t half-bad.

No one element of the play stood out. Instead, it was the overall experience of the thing that really captured a person’s attention. The kids were genuinely enjoying themselves, putting their hearts and souls into the performance. Never before had a group of 23 students sang so loudly or acted so vigorously.

Before Rowan knew it, it was time for intermission and the kids were running to their parents to ask if they had seen them, and whatever else that kids asked when they were in need of attention.

Derrick was smiling at him when he turned to look. “Well? What do you think?” he asked.

Rowan couldn’t help but to smile back. He patted his boyfriend’s thigh, playfully condescending. “Better than I expected!”

Derrick swatted him, then cuddled up against him for a hug and a kiss. If anyone was looking at them with disapproval for this openly-gay display of affection, neither of them noticed. Derrick’s lips were soft and sweet, and tasted like marshmallows. Rowan flicked his tongue against them, wanting more.

“To be honest,” Derrick muttered to him, “I’m surprised it’s gone so good. That substitute did a real number on them.”

Rowan laughed. “But you whipped them right back into shape.”

“Right. My whip is my special teaching aid. Couldn’t go without it.”

“Seriously, though. It really is better than I thought it would be. I remember my own school plays as a kid. Awful things. Even we knew they were shit. It’s usually only the parents that care. Your class, though, they really were enjoying themselves.”

“Aren’t they all just so cute?”

I wouldn’t say that. From a distance, yeah. But up close, they’re all a bunch of snot-faced brats. They behave for you because they respect you. Their parents, not so much.

Rowan glanced over at the blonde woman to see how she was faring. Her son, who seemed to be one of the tailors, was enduring a thorough inspection for loose threads and shiny skin. The woman actually had a makeup kit out and was patting powder on his nose. Unbelievable.

Derrick was speaking again and Rowan turned his attention to him once more. “Did you see Mary Berry? She was the little old lady librarian in the last scene.”

Following Derrick’s gesture, Rowan looked over in the direction of a little girl in costume cuddled up in the lap of a tired-looking, mousy woman. Yes, he remembered the girl, the librarian, because he had thought upon seeing her that she certainly fit her part. Quiet and tiny, she seemed almost afraid of the microphone and the quiver in her voice—perfect for the line she was saying and the scene she was in— was almost certainly real.

“She’s gotten so much braver since the…” Derrick made a small gesture. “The thing.”

“The Punching Incident,” Rowan joked very quietly, so no one would overhear.

Derrick swatted at him again, then waved at the little girl as she noticed him looking in her direction. Mary Berry spoke with her mother for a moment, and then sprinted over to talk to Derrick. She jabbered in a high, clear voice that conveyed no timidity at all. Rowan was startled by the tears that stung his eyes. Such a shy little thing, but so confident when speaking to the teacher who had changed her life for the better.

Rowan glanced away to give teacher and pupil some privacy; he was gratified to see Elaine was also tending to some sudden grateful tears.

Eventually, the mousy woman came over to collect her daughter. Rowan turned back to Derrick, but he didn’t get out a single word before realizing that the other wolf was side-tracked by something. As it turned out, the two of them had been gathering quite a crowd around them as the minutes passed. Parents wanted to congratulate him on the job well done, to say that they couldn’t wait for the intermission to end so they could watch the rest, and so on. Children were also crowded into the group, either kids from the play who needed assistance, or others who had once been in his class and wanted to say hi again.

“I should take care of this and then go see how the rest of the kids are getting on,” Derrick muttered. He leaned in close enough for a kiss, letting the motion of his lips and his breath do most of the talking.

At that moment, Rowan’s phone started buzzing in his pocket. He pulled it out and held it up. “I should take care of this, too. Meet you back here?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Derrick said. He frowned and his eyes narrowed. He looked intently at the phone. “Rowan.”

Rowan followed his boyfriend’s cold gaze. The name on the phone screen was Daniel Storm.

“I really need to answer this,” he said, and stood up.

Derrick touched his hand. “Be careful,” he urged, quickly, quietly. Then, he stood up and turned to face the closest parent. “Mrs. Lopez! How have you been?”

Jamming the phone against his ear, Rowan stood up and hurried over to the gym doors. “Hey, boss!” he said. “Just a sec.”

“Where the hell are you, August? Sounds like a goddamn madhouse!”

“It is, in a way. Just give me a few seconds and I’ll be outside.”

Pushing his way through the dozens of other people who were crowded in the cafeteria between the gym and the front lawn of the school, Rowan eventually made it to the doors. The noise level dropped considerably as soon as he stepped through them, and the cool evening air was refreshing compared to the stale, humid warmth of the gym. A human might be able to tolerate it, but to a wolf, the stench of sweat and prepubescent, developing hormones had soaked into the surfaces of the gym so thoroughly that no amount of cleaner would ever be able to get rid of it.

“I’m outside,” Rowan said. He wandered over by the flagpole, vaguely remembering that this was where Derrick said he’d punched that bastard of a father.

“You at some sort of sport or something? That was a hell of a racket.”

Some sort of sport. Spoken like someone who has never had any interest in them. We are two of a kind, boss.

“Or something,” Rowan agreed. “What did you need?”

“Decided to give you a chance after your last fuckup. You ready to take on a job?”

Rowan’s heart sank a little. “You mean, right now?”

“Well I don’t fucking mean next Christmas, Rowan! Yes, right now. Tonight. Before midnight. Window of opportunity is gone after that. You going to do it or do I need to get someone else on it?”

For a moment, Rowan just wanted to give up on all of this. He would say yes, fine, get someone else to do it, I’m done. He would go to the cops the next day and ask to see the Police Chief personally, to tell him all the things he hadn’t learned, all the dead-ends he encountered. He’d say he was done, that he’d gladly go to court and have a trial of his own if he could manage to get a short sentence and a whole lot of community service. Something, anything so this would stop hanging over him, and he could come out of it living a normal life.

Things would be difficult for a time, money-wise, because he would certainly have to quit his job. That would be fine, though. He could move out of his trailer, move in with Derrick, or the other way around. He’d gone job-hunting once, he could do it again.

But he knew he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t give up. He had come this far without anything to show for it, and that just didn’t sit right with him. The police wouldn’t be so lenient with him either, and then who knew what would happen?

“You still there?”

Rowan moved the phone away from his face so that he could sigh without being heard. He felt so tired of all of this but he couldn’t do anything about it. It was just the way things had to be.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m still here. What’s up?”

“I’ve got 5 kilos of product I need you to transport for me. Immediately. Get it from the store. Everything you need will be there. Take it to the police station.”

Rowan choked on his own breath, then sputtered out a gasp. His heart started pounding in his chest, hammering painfully against his ribs. “Are you kidding me? What? Wait, should we even be talking about this over the phone?”

“Five kilos. Police station. What’s so hard for you to understand? Someone will be waiting for you in the back, so don’t ride up on that shitty hog of yours and alert everyone. They know what they’re doing.”

His mind was completely blank. He had absolutely no idea at all what he was supposed to think or feel in light of this new information. This whole scenario smacked of a set-up of some kind, a trap, and he had no idea how to get his boss to admit what was up without sounding as if he knew too much.

“You’re sure about this, boss?”

“I’m sure. Just get your ass out there and do it. Remember. Midnight. Got it? That’s the deadline.”

“Uh, sure. You going to be at the store?”

“No. I’ve got other business to take care of tonight. I left it for you in the usual spot.”

“Okay. Do you want me to come back or…”

“Not until your next shift. Now get your ass out there,” Mr. Storm repeated, “before I give it a kick to get it started. And you won’t like that. Not at all. I ain’t gentle, you understand me?”

“Understood,” Rowan said.

The boss hung up without so much as a goodbye. Rowan groaned and put his head in his hands, feeling the cold plastic of his phone press against his skin. Then, he looked towards the interior of the school. The lights were on, warm and yellow and inviting, but the cafeteria was empty. The doors to the gym were closed, meaning the play must have started while he was just standing out here.

He ached to join all those innocent parents and relatives watching their kids enjoy themselves up on the stage. He wanted to be the Rowan he had been only ten minutes ago, sitting in front of the play and its tiny actors and the crude scenery they had painted themselves by hand. That Rowan didn’t have to worry about what exactly the five kilos of “product” was, or how the hell he was going to transport it to an anonymous person in the back of the fucking police station. That was just utter bullshit. It was fucking idiotic. You didn’t do that. If you were someone who worked in a respectable position, like a police officer or a mayor or a politician, you took every sort of precaution that you could to ensure your illegal hobby never went anywhere near your work.

This was such a trap. But he couldn’t not do it.

He just wished that the boss would have been present in his office tonight. That would have made things so much easier. Grab a cop, even one as half-rated as that Officer Terry, and take him to the liquor store for the bust. Simple as that.

But now he had to do this the hard way.

“Hey!”

Rowan whirled around, his hands up to defend himself and a snarl on his lips. The snarl died away as he saw who it was who had come to confront him.

“Derrick! You should be inside! The play will go to shit without you.”

Derrick shook his head. The light spilling from the front of the school turned the blue of his eyes a muddy shade of brown, obscuring the true emotions held within. “They’ll be fine for a few minutes. This is their favorite part, and they could do it in their sleep. I just got worried about you because you were taking so long.”

“I’m fine. I just…well, you know the boss called. He’s got a job for me.”

Derrick shook his head. He placed one hand over his stomach, as if he was dealing with indigestion. “Right now? Really? I was kind of hoping that…” He trailed away and closed his eyes, then turned his face away.

“I know. I was hoping the same. But it looks like it’s just not going to turn out that way. But this might be the chance we’ve been waiting for. I have to take it.” Rowan patted the disposable camera in his pocket. He took it around with him everywhere now, including outside of work. One never knew when the opportunity might come.

And now, it had.

“Rowan…How dangerous is this going to be?”

Rowan looked away without meaning to, and that was apparently all the answer Derrick needed.

“You’re going to get yourself killed doing this!”

“I don’t have much of a fucking choice here, Derrick! I either do this or I’m going to be arrested and put into jail. Do you really want that? Because I sure as hell don’t!”

Now Derrick had both of his hands on his stomach, leaning forward slightly. He avoided Rowan’s eyes, looking in every other direction. A soft, canine whimper of fear and worry pulled from between his lips.

Something’s wrong.

Rowan reached out and placed his hands over Derrick’s, curling the fingers into his grasp. “Derrick…What’s going on? You knew all of this.”

“I know that! But I hoped…Oh, goddammit, just go away. Go do your fucking spy thing. I’ll be here if you come back.”

If.

Derrick tried to pull away, clearly intending this to be the end of their conversation, but Rowan held onto his hands. “Look, I’ve got until midnight on this. I can come back in and finish watching the play with you.”

“Just leave me alone!” Derrick snapped. He growled low under his breath, his fangs flashing in the light.

Rowan didn’t let go. He lowered his head so their noses and forehead touched, making it so that Derrick couldn’t look away from him. Everything seemed to be falling apart around them, and he just couldn’t understand why that was, when they had both known that this was going to happen sooner or later. Something was wrong, something he didn’t understand.

“Derrick, what’s happening? You’ve been acting a little odd lately. It all started because of that stupid wine I brought home.” Something disastrous occurred to Rowan, and he peered deeper into his boyfriend’s eyes. “Was it because of all the stuff I was bringing home? You don’t think I was trying to get you drunk or that I had to be drunk to enjoy my time with you, do you?”

“No, it doesn’t have anything to do with that.” Derrick’s eyes flickered with wariness. “I didn’t even consider that until now. I think you’re a better person than that.”

“Then, what’s going on?”

“I don’t think this is really the right time to talk about it.”

“If we don’t talk about it, will we ever?” Rowan asked.

“Well, it’ll be kind of hard to avoid it, when…” Derrick bit his lip.

Rowan moved one hand and used his thumb to tease Derrick’s lip away from his teeth. “Don’t do that. You’ll hurt yourself.”

Derrick’s eyes glistened, tears brimming. “You’re too fucking nice to me, you know that?”

“You deserve it. Don’t you know that?” Rowan stroked his fingers through Derrick’s hair, thinking he would never get tired of the way it felt under his hand. “I’ve never seen anyone like you before, never met anyone like you. You’re so much more than you think. More than everyone probably ever thought you were. I could stand out here all night and list all the things that I…”

That I love about you.

“That I admire about you.”

From his passion, to the way the light played in his eyes, to the way he could be so comfortable with silence. The way he talked about music, his endless pursuit of it.

The way he talked about the kids, and the way the students looked at him as if he was their hero.

There was no end to the reasons.

As Derrick looked at him, Rowan gazed back, trying to convey all of this with only a look. If the world ended in that moment, he didn’t think that he would have noticed. Their thoughts were connecting, their minds brushing together as they looked at each other in silence.

Finally, Derrick sighed and leaned against him, wrapping his arms around his neck. “Okay,” he whispered. “I’ll tell you.”

“About time,” Rowan teased. He felt Derrick smile against his neck, but it was tremulous and didn’t last long.

“I think I’m pregnant.”

“Oh.”

His heart stopped and then skittered to catch up with his racing thoughts, the peace of a moment ago suddenly shattered in the face of this admission. Derrick was pregnant? As in, with a pup?

His pup?

All the little signs suddenly made sense, all the little discrepancies he’d written off as something else. Derrick, not wanting to drink the wine with him. Derrick holding his stomach. Derrick sleeping with his shirt on.

Because he was pregnant; because there was a child growing inside him that could be affected by the alcohol; because he was afraid that Rowan would look at his naked body and figure out the truth.

Releasing Derrick from his grasp, Rowan stepped back and looked at his boyfriend up and down. He couldn’t really see anything different but maybe he was only fooling himself, or that bulky Christmas sweater was getting in the way.

He remembered that kids were cute from far away but that they were all brats close-up, and couldn’t help but to be slightly horrified. This was his brat. This was as close as a person could be to a kid without actually being the one carrying it. He couldn’t escape this reality, even though he hadn’t ever wanted it in the first place.

“How…how far along are you?” he managed to say.

“I don’t know.” Derrick gazed at him and then looked away, his eyes flickering all around as if he couldn’t decide what he wanted to look at. “Not very far. A month, maybe? I don’t know. We’ve had a lot of sex, Rowan. I’d need a doctor to kind of pinpoint the due date and even then…” His teeth found their way into his lip again and this time Rowan didn’t reach out to rescue it. “I don’t know. I didn’t expect this to happen. I’ve always wanted a kid but…”

He waited for Derrick to say it, to put the thing out there that both of them were avoiding.

“…but this just isn’t a good time for it. I mean, God, you’re involved in all of this, and I could lose you! Then I’d be stuck raising it myself!”

That wasn’t it, though. That wasn’t what needed to be said.

“Derrick,” Rowan said.

Derrick looked at him as if what he was about to say could put everything right again, as if he was going to fix all of it. That was what he had done throughout their entire relationship, what both of them had done. When there was a problem, they worked at it. When they needed communication, they spoke. When silence was necessary, they let their actions speak for him.

But there had never been a problem like this before. There had never been anything that happened between them that Rowan had ever definitely not wanted.

He couldn’t imagine himself as a father. Couldn’t imagine changing diapers or being awake all night, or trying to convince a rowdy pup that they needed to change back before someone saw them.

He…didn’t want this.

Derrick must have seen it in his eyes because he took a step back. Ice slashed across his stare, closing off his expression until the chasm between them was one of impassible dark waters. “Oh,” was all he said, which was what Rowan’s sentiment had been when he found out about the pregnancy. “I see.”

“Maybe you were right,” Rowan managed to say. He could hardly make the words come. His mouth felt numb. “This isn’t a good time to talk about this.”

“I guess not. I tried to tell you.”

“I didn’t think…”

“I know what you didn’t think.” Derrick sounded very, very tired. “You didn’t think I’d have something to tell you that you just wouldn’t approve of.” He retreated another step, the chasm widening. If there was a way of crossing that choppy, frigid water, it was so rickety and precarious that no person in their right mind would ever dare make the attempt. It was better to wait, to let things settle. “I need to go back inside.”

“And I need to get this job done. I’ll meet you back at your apartment when it’s all over, okay?”

“Sure.” Derrick turned to leave, and then he glanced back over his shoulder. “Hey. Be safe.”

Then, he walked away.

Rowan watched his boyfriend’s back as he walked across the path and then pushed his way inside the doors to the school cafeteria. As the strong light washed over him, it seemed to Rowan that he could see the very slightest of bumps beneath the fabric of the ugly sweater.

Shifters had faster pregnancies than humans, just another result of being part animal. Their children developed faster, meaning that a pregnancy could really take a toll on the parent. Derrick had already been so slender to begin with that when those other factors were taken into account, there was no reason he shouldn’t already be showing a little.

What were they going to do, when Derrick was too visibly pregnant to explain to humans? Male omegas were certainly rarer than females, which meant that these sort of complications happened less often, but they still happened. How did other shifters handle this? Did the pregnant father just have to go into hiding until they had given birth, and then what happened after that?

So many questions, so few answers.

“I had no idea it was going to be this hard,” Rowan muttered to himself. Shaking his head, he headed over to where he’d parked his bike when he showed up here. As much as he hated this whole spying thing, he had to admit it was easier to take action than to sit around waiting for the other shoe to fall. He was an alpha, better suited to making things happen.

It was time to act like one.