“Now you’re sure you’re okay and you feel comfortable being alone?” Sadie looked at her anxiously, wanting to be sure, no doubt, that she wasn’t abandoning her sister.

“Perfectly comfortable,” Samantha lied. “And I’m really okay with being alone—honestly.”

That last part wasn’t a lie, anyway. Although she adored her sister and liked her new brother-in-law Mathis just fine, it had been three weeks since they got back to Tampa, and she was ready to have her house to herself again. Plus, it was just plain awkward having houseguests when she hadn’t prepared for them—especially Fiona, Cougarville’s resident wise woman—who had also insisted on staying to keep an eye on Sadie’s pregnancy.

If Samantha was honest with herself, her sister’s pregnancy was the main reason she was ready for some alone time. As much as she loved Sadie, watching her belly swell and hearing her and Mathis discuss possible baby names while Fiona dispensed Shifter birthing lore was almost more than Samantha could take—especially since she wasn’t yet sure if she herself was pregnant or not.

I should take a test, she told herself for the hundredth time. I should find out for sure so I can deal with the results.

But she couldn’t bear to do it. Even though it had been over three weeks since Keller had bred her—and that was how she thought of it, because it most certainly hadn’t been making love or even just plain sex—Samantha still couldn’t stand to know for sure.

Her period was a little late, but that was normal for her—she had always had an irregular cycle. If this was a regular human possible pregnancy, it would be difficult to say for certain if she “had a bun in the oven” yet without taking a test. But as Fiona and Sadie kept assuring her, Shifter pregnancies were different. They went faster and the baby developed with alarming rapidity, as evinced by the fact that Sadie could already feel her own little bundle of joy kicking.

Samantha had watched as her sister held Mathis’ big hand over her belly and saw his eyes light up when he felt his child moving for the first time. Her heart ached, and for a moment she’d allowed herself to picture Keller and herself in the same position—with him touching her belly and being delighted to feel his son or daughter swimming around in there.

But just as quickly, she pushed away the thought and the feelings she’d foolishly allowed herself to feel for the big Shifter. Of course Keller would be excited to have a baby—the baby was all he wanted. And he was willing to go to any lengths to get one.

Although if that was the case, it was kind of strange that he hadn’t called or tried to contact her in any way. She could feel him in the back of her mind—could feel the bond that had been created when he bred her. But if she was honest with herself, his presence seemed to be fading a little bit. Or at least, it wasn’t as prominent as it had been at first.

Was it possible for a bond to fade? Or was it just the distance between them making his presence seem faint and far away? Or maybe it was Keller himself—maybe he was distancing himself from her mentally the way she had distanced herself from him physically. . . .

“And you’re sure this guy who attacked you and kidnapped you is really dead?” Sadie asked, pulling her away from her morbid thoughts. “I mean, what if he comes after you again?”

“Sadie, he shot his own dick and balls off, and that was after I broke his nose and slammed him in the temple with a really heavy centrifuge,” Samantha said flatly.

Mathis winced visibly at her words.

“Damn, sister-in-law—can I just say that you’re kind of a badass?”

“Thanks.” Samantha gave him a twisted little smile. “But the point is, from the amount of blood I saw, I’m pretty sure the bullet nicked his femoral artery. I know Shifters are amazingly resilient, but I’d be very surprised if he could come back from that kind of blood loss without emergency intervention. And it wasn’t like there was an ER close by—we were in the middle of the freaking Everglades.”

“Well, Shifters are a pretty tough bunch, but that kind of injury would put any male I know down for the count,” Mathis rumbled. “I mean, he might have come back from it if he was a Cat—a Cougar—but any other kind . . . it’s pretty doubtful.”

“Exactly.” Samantha nodded. “So you don’t have to worry about me—honestly, I’ll be fine.”

“Have you thought about trying to find out if you’re . . . you know . . .” Sadie lowered her voice and looked at Samantha earnestly. She’d avoided speaking about the possibility of Samantha being pregnant for most of the time they’d spent together, but now, apparently, she couldn’t help herself. “I’m sorry, Sammie,” she said, seeing Samantha’s expression. “But you might need to get some prenatal care, you know.”

“I’m sure I’m fine and it’s a nonissue,” Samantha said blandly. “Wouldn’t I be seeing signs of it already if I was? I mean, just look at you—you look more like you’re three months pregnant than just three weeks. And Keller and I only, uh, got together, a few days after you guys did. ”

“Shifter pregnancies can progress at different rates.” Fiona, who had been watching them silently from the doorway, stepped into the kitchen where they were talking. “Your sister was eager for new life to begin in her, and she got pregnant very quickly—the baby has grown apace. But you, my dear . . .” She smiled sadly at Samantha. “You are very conflicted about the idea of carrying life within you. The baby may sense this. It may, in a way, be hiding.”

“What?” Samantha frowned. “Okay, you’re right—I’m conflicted. My career is important to me, and I have no illusions about how incredibly difficult it is to be a single mom. But the idea that the baby could ‘hide’? I’m sorry, but that goes against everything I was taught during my OB/GYN rotation in med school. Not to be mean or dismissive, but frankly, it’s crazy.”

“Not to worry, my dear. I’m not offended.” Fiona smiled serenely. Today she was wearing an emerald-green caftan, which made her dark eyes look as deep as the ocean. “But you must remember that the Western medicine you learned in medical school cannot be applied to a Shifter pregnancy. Lady Moon has a hand in the fertility and fecundity of her children—of which you are now one.”

Samantha didn’t want to insult Fiona, but as a woman of science she wasn’t willing to accept that a strange deity that lived in the moon could have a hand in her pregnancy—if she was even pregnant, that is. Which she was still really hoping she wasn’t.

“Mm-hmm,” she said, nodding politely at the other woman.

“Also, why would you need to worry about being a single mother?” Fiona asked quietly. “When you know that one word from you will bring Liam Keller rushing back to your side?”

“I don’t want him at my side, all right?” Samantha snapped, more sharply than she’d meant to. “I don’t trust him.”

“I think it’s yourself you don’t trust, my dear,” Fiona said gently. “You fear you won’t be a good mother, that you will be forced to neglect either the child you love or the career you have worked so hard to achieve.”

Her words struck much closer to the mark than Samantha wanted to admit—which made her feel defensive and angry.

“I just want my life back, all right?” she said tightly. “I just want to forget all this ever happened.”

“Of course you do,” Sadie said soothingly. “After everything you went through with that awful man, of course you just want to forget it.”

“I wasn’t just talking about Eddie Lounds.” Samantha looked down at her hands. “I meant Keller too. What he did to me, the way he fooled me . . . that hurt, Sadie,” she confessed in a low voice. “You know I don’t usually let guys past my shields like that. I . . . I thought he really cared for me. But all he wanted from me was a baby. Just like it was all he wanted from you when you first moved to Cougarville.”

“Is that what you think?” Sadie’s eyes widened. “Sammie, he stood right here and told us he loved you.”

“If he loved me he wouldn’t have been so quick to try and knock me up when he knew how I felt about it,” Samantha said stubbornly, crossing her arms. “Besides, he never told me he loved me. He spouted a lot of nonsense about how I was supposed to be his mate and then after he . . . he bred me, all he could talk about was the baby he’d supposedly planted in me. Like I’m some kind of a freaking brood mare or something!”

“If Keller hadn’t bred you, you might have become one of the Unformed,” Fiona pointed out quietly. “One of those unhappy females who have no animal shape to take and no male to help them with their monthly cravings. The pain they endure is intense, and they run the very real risk of death and dissolution.”

“Yeah, I know—Keller said the same thing.” Deep down, Samantha knew she was being at least a little unreasonable. But she was scared, damn it! She didn’t know who to trust or who to turn to, and it didn’t matter what Keller had said to Sadie and Mathis and Fiona—he’d never once said the “L word” to her, any more than she’d said it to him.

Yes he did, whispered a little voice in the back of her head. He said it when you were still half out of it, after he bred you—didn’t he? Samantha frowned. She did seem to have a strange muddled memory of that, but she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a dream.

And anyway, it didn’t change anything. From the beginning of their relationship, Keller had come on hard and fast with only one goal that she could see in mind—getting someone pregnant with his baby. The thought that he might have succeeded with her made her feel crazy and anxious and so frightened, she could scarcely breathe if she let herself think about it too much.

Which was probably why she’d been trying so hard to ignore it, rather than facing the problem head on, which was her normal way of dealing with conflicts.

“I just wish none of this had ever happened,” she said in a low voice.

“Oh, Sammie. . . .” There were tears in Sadie’s big brown eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “This . . . this is all my fault. If only you hadn’t come to Cougarville because you were worried about me, you never would have met Keller in the first place.”

“No, no, Sadie—please don’t feel like that. This isn’t on you,” Samantha protested.

“Yes it is—it’s all my fault! I feel like I ruined your whole c-career and you w-worked so hard to get where y-you are.”

Sadie was sobbing openly now, and Samantha felt a lump in her own throat too. This was exactly the kind of scene she’d been hoping to avoid before her sister left, and here they were in the middle of it.

Her eyes stung as she struggled to hold back her own tears. What the hell was wrong with her? She wasn’t usually this emotional!

“C’mon, now sweetheart—everything is gonna be okay,” Mathis rumbled, stepping forward to take his mate in his arms.

“I’m sorry.” Sadie swiped at her eyes. “I’ve been doing this off and on ever since I found out I was pregnant. I don’t know how Mathis is going to put up with four or five more months of it.”

“I’ll be more than happy to put up with anything you can dish out, sweetheart.” Mathis rubbed her back and kissed her forehead. “Bring it on—I’m ready.”

“Oh, Mathis. . . .” Her mate’s understanding seemed to make Sadie cry even harder, but he simply gathered her in his arms and held her, rocking her gently back and forth and rubbing her shoulders until her sobs quieted.

Watching them together, Samantha was forced to grab a paper towel off the roll mounted over her kitchen sink. Blotting her eyes, she tried to get hold of herself.

Stop crying! What are you even crying about? You’re fine!

But she wasn’t fine. She kept thinking of Keller—imagining what it would be like if she had the same relationship with him that her sister had with Mathis. She’d never had that with any man. For a little while in college she’d thought she had found Mr. Right, but, as she liked to joke, he’d turned out to just be Mr. Right Now. Plus he’d wanted her to quit school to settle down with him. Samantha had refused—she had always known what she wanted and settling down to be someone’s little wifey wasn’t it.

Still, watching Mathis comforting her sister made her weep for what might have been . . . what would never be now, she was sure. She could feel the bond with Keller fading from her mind more every day.

That’s a good thing, she told herself firmly. You want the bond to fade—right? But if that was true, why did it make her feel so sad and alone?

At last Sadie wiped her eyes and looked at Samantha.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered in a choked voice. “Maybe . . . maybe we should get going.”

“We should if we don’t want to miss our plane.” Mathis kissed her again and looked at Samantha. “You sure you’re okay with us leaving? If you feel uncomfortable, we’ll stay.”

Samantha understood that he was offering to stay and protect her, purely because of his love of Sadie, and felt touched.

“Thank you, Mathis, but the two of you have uprooted your lives long enough for me.” She forced a smile for Fiona too. “And I’m sure all the, uh, Shifters in Cougarville are missing their pharmacist.”

“Undoubtedly,” Fiona remarked calmly. “But I go where I’m needed.”

“Well, let me load the bags in the car. And you come get the AC set where you want it,” Mathis said to Sadie. “You know I can never get it just right to suit you.”

“All right.” Sadie gave Samantha one more kiss and whispered in her ear, “Tell me when you know.” Then with a single backward glance, she followed Mathis out to get their bags.

Samantha was about to breathe a sigh of relief about having her house to herself again when she noticed that Fiona was still just standing there, staring at her.

“Um . . .” She shifted uncomfortably. “Can I . . . get you anything before you leave, Fiona? I mean, can I help you?”

“No, but maybe I can help you, child.” Fiona stepped closer, turning the full force of her large, dark eyes on Samantha. There was deep wisdom in them—the knowledge of centuries. It made Samantha wonder how old the wise woman really was. At times Fiona seemed ancient, and at times she seemed ageless. All Samantha knew for sure was that the intense gaze was making her feel incredibly uncomfortable.

“Uh . . .” she began, not knowing what she was going to say, but Fiona held up a hand to stop her.

“No—just listen. I am going to do something I have never done before. I am going to break a confidence and tell you a secret which is not mine to tell.” She took a deep breath. “Some years back, Liam Keller came to me looking for information—he wanted to know if I knew of any way to turn a female who was not a Shifter into one.”

“Why?” Samantha frowned, remembering that Keller had spoken briefly of his research into that area, but that he hadn’t seemed to want to elaborate.

“I asked the same thing. And while he was reluctant to tell me, it soon came out that he had fallen deeply in love with a human. He knew that a long-term relationship with a female who was not a Shifter would be difficult, but that wasn’t the only reason he was so desperately seeking an answer to his problem. You see, they had been careless and the young lady was pregnant. Liam wanted badly to know—”

“If he could turn the mother and baby into Shifters so he could have a proper heir?” Samantha finished for her, frowning.

“No, my dear—he wanted to find a way to make the pregnancy easier. Such matings between a Shifter and a human don’t always go well—especially if the male in question is an Alpha with an extremely strong and active Gene.”

“Oh . . .”Samantha wasn’t sure what to say to that. “I’m sorry. I thought—”

“I know what you thought, and what you still think about Liam. But I need to let you know the truth,” Fiona said softly. “Before he could find an answer to his problem, he—rather unwisely, I think—revealed his true nature to his fiancée.” Fiona sighed. “She, unfortunately, did not take the news well.”

“She didn’t?” Samantha’s mouth felt suddenly dry. “What . . . what happened?”

“She aborted the child and told Liam she never wanted to see him again.” Fiona shook her head sadly. “After that, he withdrew, concentrated on building his business empire and, I believe, swore off matters of the heart forever.”

“That’s so sad.” Samantha felt a lump in her throat which she swallowed with some difficulty.

“It’s doubly sad when you understand that the relationship between a Shifter father and his children is much stronger than it is between humans and their offspring,” Fiona said. “You hear so much in the human world about ‘deadbeat dads’ and the like, but you’ll almost never find that in a Shifter community.”

“Oh? And why is that?” Samantha asked.

“Soon after a Shifter baby quickens in the womb, the Shifter father forms a bond with it, similar to, though not as strong as, the bond he shares with its mother, his mate. It gives him an extra layer of connection to his offspring—he would no sooner cut off his own hand than leave his child.”

Samantha thought of the look of delight on Mathis’s face when he placed his big hand gently over Sadie’s belly and felt the baby move. She’d thought at the time that her sister just had a really strong relationship with her new man. But could it be that all Shifter relationships were that close?

Well, mine with Keller certainly isn’t, she thought, and a little voice in the back of her mind whispered, Because you haven’t let it be, Samantha.

Uneasily, she pushed it away and focused on Fiona.

“That’s . . . a really sad story,” she said. “But he doesn’t actually want me, he just wants the baby that he lost.”

“He does want a child, but not to the exclusion of everything else, my dear.” Fiona patted her hand. “He also wants you to be the mother of that child. It’s my belief that he opened himself to love again when he found you, and that is not an easy thing for a man like Liam Keller to do.”

“I . . .” Samantha shook her head, at a loss for words.

“Give him a chance,” Fiona murmured. “And remember this—no matter how strong a bond is in the beginning, it will fade if you neglect it. My intuition tells me your bond with Liam is fading fast.”

“Oh, um . . .” Samantha thought of the way her connection to the big Shifter felt fainter every day.

“You have been given a gift, Samantha.” Fiona gave her a long, intense look. “I know it’s frightening—any big change is—but it is a gift nonetheless. Don’t throw it away lightly, my dear.”

“I . . .” Samantha swallowed hard. “I’ll think about it,” she said at last. “I can’t promise anything but . . . I’ll think about it.”

“That’s all I ask.” Fiona took her hand and pressed it, then leaned over to brush Samantha’s cheek with a light, feathery kiss. “Good-bye, my dear. I hope to see you in Cougarville sometime soon.”

Then she left, sweeping royally from Samantha’s kitchen in her flowing green caftan, looking for all the world like a queen in exile going back to her court. Samantha shook her head and then followed her slowly out.

As Samantha stood on her front porch and waved while Sadie, Mathis, and Fiona drove away, she couldn’t help thinking about what the older woman had said and what it might mean.

Could it be that Keller wasn’t behind everything that had happened to her? That he really did care for her as a lover and a mate and not just the possible mother of his heir? And should she really give him a chance?

Her cell phone, vibrating in her pocket, broke her train of thought.

Oh no, please don’t be the hospital, she thought. I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to be on call again tonight.

She’d been trying to throw herself into her work these past three weeks to forget all the traumatic things that had happened to her. Her efforts had met mixed results, however.

Due to the Rejuvenation, all her colleagues thought that she’d gotten some kind of exceptionally good plastic surgery or laser resurfacing while she was in Vegas. And with no better explanation, Samantha had to let them believe it, though it galled her to let her fellow doctors think she was that vain

It was a problem Samantha hadn’t had in a number of years—and one of the few perks of looking older, or so she’d thought as she aged. She loved the fact that her eyesight was sharp as a laser again and she didn’t suffer from any back or knee pain when she stood for hours on end at a surgery, but there were drawbacks too. Such as the fact that she was now back to square one, externally at least, with her patients. They were always asking when the “real doctor” was going to show up. It made her professional life awkward.

Her phone vibrated again, and she hit the answer button and put it to her ear.

“Dr. Becker speaking—what have you got?” she asked, automatically falling into surgeon mode.

“Something I think might interest you.”

After so many weeks without any kind of contact, the deep, familiar voice caught her off guard.

“Keller?” She looked at the phone as though she might be able to see him through it. “Is that you? Why did you contact me, uh, this way?”

“You mean as opposed to using our bond?” he asked coolly. “I didn’t contact you mentally because you made it abundantly clear you don’t want me ‘in your head,’ I believe was how you put it. Or something to that effect.”

“All right.” Samantha bit her lip, unsure how to approach this. “So . . . what do you want?”

“To see you one more time before we go our separate ways.” His voice was cold. “I have something for you, but I want to give it to you in person.”

“What—”

“That’s all I’m prepared to say over the phone,” he said, cutting her off. “Will you meet me for dinner tonight, or would you rather I bring it by your home?”

Samantha frowned.

“I’m actually going to be in the hospital later on tonight. It’s a Friday night and the ER will be hopping. I’m on call, so I like to stay near the action.”

“So you won’t see me.” There was a finality in his voice that made her heart clench for some reason.

“I didn’t say that,” she said quickly. “I can meet you in the hospital cafeteria around seven-thirty. It’s not exactly five-star dining but—”

“Fine. I’ll see you then.” He hung up abruptly, not letting her finish.

Samantha looked at her phone, frowning. Why did he want to see her and what was it he thought she might be interested in? Some kind of proposition maybe—asking her to carry the baby to term (if there was a baby)—and promising millions of dollars for it afterward, like she was some kind of surrogate?

“I don’t think so,” she muttered. It wasn’t like she was going to abort the baby (if there was one) like his previous fiancée had. But she wasn’t just going to give it away either. It was her responsibility and her decision.

My body means my baby, she thought, and a surprising wave of possessive protectiveness rolled over her. Then she pushed the thought away. Don’t be silly! There’s no baby—you’ll probably get your period later tonight, and then you’ll know why you’ve been feeling so emotional. As for Keller . . .

“Give him a chance,” Fiona’s words whispered in her memory. Samantha sighed. Whatever Keller had in mind, the least she could do was listen to him. And after she heard what he had to say, she would make up her mind.

She just hoped she’d make the right decision.