Sebastian had put off the questions that Charlotte had for him most of the day, redirecting her as much as possible. But by evening, he knew that he had to tell her. He couldn’t let her continue in the agreement they’d made without giving her the information she would need to know.
“You do know that bathtub is big enough for two people, right?” While Sebastian wanted to come clean with the reason that he had chosen Charlotte, and the importance of her agreeing to carry his child, he wasn’t going to do it without priming her to the best of his abilities to accept it.
“I thought it might be, but I hadn’t really given much thought to the significance,” Charlotte said. “You were thinking of having a bath with someone when you built it, weren’t you?”
“One day, when I’ve found the person I’m going to spend my life with, this is where we’re going to live,” Sebastian explained.
“Do you think whoever you choose is going to be okay with you raising a daughter from another person?” Charlotte raised an eyebrow doubtfully at the idea.
“If she understands the situation with the community, then she’ll be fine with it,” Sebastian said, shrugging off the risk. “And I’d only choose a woman that understood.”
“I don’t see why you can’t just have your kid that way,” Charlotte said.
Get her in the tub and get some wine in her—you need to get her relaxed first.
“Let’s try out that bathtub,” Sebastian suggested. “And I’ve got a great bottle of white, chilled already.”
“You keep changing the subject,” Charlotte told him. Sebastian leaned in and brushed his lips against Charlotte’s throat.
“I promise, no more subject changes once we get into the bathtub.”
“I really suspect that you’re setting me up for something I don’t want to hear, but I might as well go along with it.”
Sebastian steered her toward the bathroom with the bottle of wine in hand, and let his hands wander over her body slowly. In spite of the tension of keeping his last real secret from her, Sebastian had felt the desire for Charlotte simmering in his body all day. He’d peppered her with questions about her life, about what she wanted and didn’t want, about what she liked and didn’t like, and oddly felt more and more like he wanted her every moment. Be careful. You can have fun, you can enjoy things, but she isn’t your mate and isn’t going to become your mate.
Sebastian started the hot water flowing into the tub and turned his attention to Charlotte. He knew he needed to get her into the right state of mind before he revealed his true nature to her, and the reason why he needed her to have his baby. He slowly stripped off Charlotte’s clothes, only too happy for the reminder of what he’d enjoyed the night before and began rubbing her shoulders as the tub filled.
“You know, based on everything you’ve said about your life in the city, it actually might be good for you to take a year off out here in the sticks,” he said, pressing his thumbs into a particularly tight knot along her spine. Charlotte moaned approvingly, and the sound was almost enough all on its own to make him hard.
Instead, he poured them both glasses of wine, and stripped off his own clothes, pouring in some bath oils before inviting Charlotte to climb in first. Oh, god this is going to be torture, he thought; a beautiful, fertile woman, capable of carrying his child, naked in the bathtub with him. Why hadn’t he thought of a better way to get her into a receptive state of mind to hear what he had to say?
“So, when are you going to tell me the long story about why you need me, specifically, to carry your child? What’s this weird genetics business?”
“It’s a very long story,” Sebastian warned her, slipping into the water behind her. He pulled Charlotte’s body against his and almost—for a moment—regretted it. She fit perfectly against him, reminding him only too well of how it had felt to be inside of her.
“We have lots of time,” Charlotte said. “Tell it already.”
“This community has been here for generations,” Sebastian explained. “There was a group of about thirty-five when they first settled, which expanded to fifty over time, but now we’re no more than about twenty total.”
“That is a tiny community,” Charlotte said with a low whistle, shifting against him, and Sebastian felt the tension deep down between his hips increase. “Even if I give you a baby, that’s not really going to put a dent in the problem you say you have.”
“You’re the first,” Sebastian told her. “If you’re able to have my child, then we’ll work out ways to get to other women who can have more children.”
“Why can’t you just recruit?” Charlotte looked over her shoulder at him. “I mean, you could just bring in more people, couldn’t you? You don’t have to go around abducting people.”
“We’re a very... particular kind of community,” Sebastian said. “And while there are other communities like ours, they’re led by people like me, and they can’t afford to lose people either. We’ve tried bringing in other… people like us, but we’re not a high priority.”
“People like you?”
“People who share our specific genotype,” Sebastian replied.
“That’s right—you kidnapped me because of some weird genetic quirk I have. How do you know I have it? I’ve never been gene-tested.”
“You’re descended from someone who has a similar genotype,” Sebastian told her. “You don’t have the characteristics we do, but you’ve got a recessive gene that allows you to carry a child like us to term.”
“So, what is a child like you anyway?”
Sebastian refilled her glass. “We’re different from normal humans,” he said.
“Oh god, this is some weird kind of cult, isn’t it?” Charlotte tried to stand, but Sebastian held her fast. “Look, I made a good faith agreement to have a baby for you but if it’s just going to be some weird cult thing where you all think you’re gods or something I’m not down.”
“We’re not gods,” Sebastian said. He took a quick breath, drank down the last of the wine in his glass, and plowed forward. “We’re werelions.”
Charlotte went utterly still, her body somehow simultaneously tense and utterly lax in his arms. “Werelions,” she said slowly, after what seemed like an eternity. “Like, werewolves, but not wolves?”
“Pretty much exactly that,” Sebastian said.
“No,” Charlotte said, shaking her head. “No. That’s not a thing. Werewolves aren’t even a thing, much less some weird made-up thing about turning into lions at the full moon. That’s—that’s a bunch of bullshit, and either you’re feeding it to me because you think I’m stupid enough to just accept it, or you actually believe it and you’re insane.”
“I’m not insane and I’m not feeding you a line,” Sebastian said calmly. “I don’t only turn into a lion during the full moon.”
“You don’t turn into a lion at all,” Charlotte insisted. She twisted around in the water to face him. “Because that isn’t a thing that exists.”
“It is, and I can prove it,” Sebastian told her. “Though I don’t think that you want me to do it right here.”
“You can’t prove it,” Charlotte said. “And—and even if you could…” she shook her head.
“Let me show you,” Sebastian said. He could feel the change along his bones, humming there as it always did; he directed it to just his hands, breathing slowly to keep the magic contained. He almost forgot about Charlotte entirely as the energy crackled through his veins, and groaned as he felt the bones shifting and changing.
He knew he couldn’t let the change take over past his wrists—he had to keep it contained to where he could prove what he needed to the women in the bathtub with him, but not so much that he would crowd her.
The tell-tale sensation coursed through him and Sebastian watched dispassionately as fur emerged from his skin, as his fingers shortened and claws came out through his fingertips. He groaned as the change hovered, transforming his hands into paws, utterly distinctive with tawny fur and blunt, retractable claws. He looked up to see Charlotte staring at the appendages with shock, completely expressionless and frozen in the other side of the bathtub.
“No, this—you drugged me again or something,” she said.
“No,” Sebastian countered. “This is the truth. I am a werelion, and somewhere in your lineage, one of your ancestors was a werelion too. That’s why you’re able to have a child with me.”
“That can’t be, though,” Charlotte insisted. “If I were some kind of weird lion-person, or something like that, then I’d know it existed.”
“You’re not a werelion,” Sebastian explained. “You’re the descendant of one. You carry a recessive trait that will let you carry a werelion child, but you’ll never transform.” Sebastian exhaled and let the change flow back through him, groaning as his paws transformed back into human hands slowly but steadily.
“You’ve always been like this?”
Sebastian nodded. “Technically I didn’t transform until my teen years,” Sebastian told her. “But I was born here, and everyone who lives here—the whole Pride—is a werelion.”
“Pride, because lions,” Charlotte said, nodding with more calm than Sebastian would have expected from her. “Oh, my god. This is... this is a nightmare.”
“Nightmare?”
“You’re a human who turns into a lion,” Charlotte said matter-of-factly. “You’re something that shouldn’t exist.”
“I do exist, though,” Sebastian said.
“And you want me to have your baby! Your lion-human baby!”
“Yes,” Sebastian said. “I need you to have my baby.”
“You didn’t tell me about this when we came to our agreement, that’s—that has to nullify the contract.”
“It’s not going to have any effect on what you have to do,” Sebastian insisted. “The pregnancy will be exactly the same, and it’s not like I need to be a lion when I’m with you.”
“But you turn into a lion, Sebastian,” Charlotte said. She rose from the water and Sebastian resisted the urge to grab her, to pull her back to him. “That’s not something that I can just ignore.”
“Well, I know you can’t ignore it,” Sebastian conceded. “I get that. But it’s not going to make a difference to what we’re doing.”
“How is that even possible?” Charlotte started to step out of the bath and Sebastian gave into the urge to prevent it. He grabbed her and pulled her down into the water, holding her tightly against his body. “No! Let go of me, Sebastian! You can’t expect me to do this!”
“I expect you to hear me out,” Sebastian said. “I expect you to listen, and to understand that I’m not going to harm you and the only reason I held out about this was because of this very reaction.”
“You should have told me when we were making the arrangements,” Charlotte insisted. “This changes everything.”
“It doesn’t have to change anything at all,” Sebastian countered. He caught her gaze and held it. “I wanted you to know, and I wanted to make sure that it was before we started seriously working on making the baby happen.”
“Just when I thought that you might be a decent human being, I find this out,” Charlotte said, shaking her head.
“I am a decent human being,” Sebastian told her firmly. “Being a werelion doesn’t make me less of a human.”
“Waiting to tell me until after I agreed to have your baby, and getting me tipsy on wine to do it, makes you indecent,” Charlotte countered. “It definitely makes you an asshole.”
“I waited because I didn’t know if I could trust you with the secret,” Sebastian said. “Because—obviously—this is a big deal for us. We’re completely secret, even our existence is a myth. We don’t exist to most of the rest of the world. But if you were going to walk around the Pride’s territory freely, you needed to know.”
“So, this is—this is you giving me a hint of what’s going to go on when I’m able to finally leave the house?” Charlotte shook her head and Sebastian nodded.
“You need to know,” he said. “That’s why the people in this community are a danger to you unless you play by the rules. You have to wait until I can introduce you, and then you can’t be out during the full moon.”
“I am in no way interested in being out during the full moon.” Charlotte trembled in his arms and Sebastian loosened his grip slightly.
“It isn’t that bad,” Sebastian murmured. “Once I’ve introduced you to the Pride, you can go about however you want. Whenever you want, except for the nights of the full moon.”
“What happens during the full moon?”
Sebastian hesitated for a moment; he knew that he had to be up-front with Charlotte, to make her understand the situation fully, but he also knew that a one-natured woman was unlikely to be able to handle the truth all at once, right away.
“We hunt, in our animal forms,” Sebastian said gently. “While you wouldn’t be in any danger from me…” He looked away. “Some of the other members of the Pride go a bit wild. They wouldn’t necessarily think of you any differently from any other one-natured human they encountered.”
“Okay, so that explains some of what Melissa said before,” Charlotte said dully. “I still can’t believe that you hid this part from me. I can’t believe you just…” she shook her head. When Charlotte rose out of the water, Sebastian didn’t stop her; he knew that she would need time to get her mind around the idea of what he had just shown her. If you can convince her to continue having sex with you now, you’re better than anyone deserves to be.
When Charlotte left the bathroom, wrapped up in a towel, Sebastian sank into the water and groaned his frustration. He had to hope that Charlotte would come around; he couldn’t continue having sex with her if she was unwilling, and if they didn’t have sex she wouldn’t get pregnant—not unless he’d managed to catch the right moment the night before. But what are the odds of that? You need to call Melissa. She’s the only one who can talk any sense into that woman.
But just as abruptly, Sebastian decided that he wouldn’t call his cousin; not until more than one day had passed without any change in Charlotte’s opinion of him. He would have to see if he would wait her out, and hopefully find her in a better mood the next day. After all, it wasn’t as though he’d lied precisely—he had simply withheld information from her, and as soon as it had been important, he’d given it to her.
She might argue that you should have told her before you had sex with her, Sebastian thought, but he realized it wasn’t important then; there had been no danger of him changing into his other form, and there was no danger to her in her own bed with him. He had been completely human in form, even if his animal instincts had been present as always.
Sebastian climbed out of the bathtub and grabbed a towel of his own. “She’s going to be fine,” he murmured to himself. “She’ll get over this, and we’ll have plenty of opportunities to get her pregnant.” He looked at himself in the mirror; just being close to Charlotte had kept his desire for her at a steady simmer all day—the fact that he probably wouldn’t have any luck convincing her to let him into her bed again that night was almost insupportable. While he wasn’t fully hard, he knew that he’d need to take care of his own arousal before he could ever even think of falling asleep that night.
The knowledge that he was so attracted to her so soon gave Sebastian pause; he had been steadily telling himself that he was merely going to impregnate her. He needed to keep his distance, emotionally if not physically; he couldn’t afford to let the animal instincts that told him that Charlotte should be his take control. You need to take another lion as a mate, not a Recessive. Someone who knows how to live amongst your people, someone who can change with you, hunt with you, raise your child in the traditions.
He dried off and stepped into his room, on the opposite end of the house from Charlotte’s. He would have to deal with her soon—they would have to revisit the agreement. He couldn’t let her leave without providing him the child he desperately needed. He had to find a way to convince her that it would still be all right, and that he was no danger to her, even if he knew that there were members of the Pride who were. “If you can’t get her to open up to you again by tomorrow night, call Melissa then,” he told his reflection in the mirror, before settling into bed to try and take care of his more physical needs and go to sleep.