Heat Race - Tanya Chris Page 0,99

from the clerk at the grocery store.

Oops.

“I figured Saul told you. You see more of him than you do of me.”

His mother crossed her arms and gave him an even more stern look.

“All right, I should’ve told you. It’s just…” Just that there was so much that could go wrong. They didn’t even have medical confirmation yet, and already three towns knew about the miracle of Jack Henry’s pregnancy. What if the four of them were operating under a shared delusion? Everyone was rooting for them, and he hated letting anyone down.

He’d been living with Galvetta’s expectations of him since puberty, since the first time he’d accidentally transformed into a wolf in the middle of a game of pickup basketball. Someone had charged him a little too aggressively, and the next thing he knew, his clothes were in tatters and he was on four furry paws. Having his first shift be public and uncontrolled had made him cautious about keeping his abilities to himself. It was enough to have people like the mayor drooling over his uber-ness without putting on demonstrations of it.

His mother took his arm and led him out of the dining hall to what they called her office—a windowless room from which she ran the farm. It was probably meant to be a pantry, but it’d never been anything except her office in Jasper’s lifetime. The room only held one chair. It wasn’t big enough for two chairs, and if you’d been summoned to his mother’s office, you were meant to stand. But she put him in it now.

“Before you topple over,” she said. “Take a breath, hon.”

“As if I have a choice,” he joked, but he did take one—a full one that felt like maybe he should’ve done that before. “I’m freaked the fuck out.”

“You must be if you’re talking to your mother like that,” she said, but she smiled as she said it. Alice was all lady until she needed to be something else, and Jasper had heard her say the word fuck a time or two herself. “Everyone goes through this when they have their first kid.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Yeah but nothing. You think you’re special?”

“I’m a little special.”

“What Jack Henry is doing is special. You’re a regular old expectant father. All you can do is support Jack Henry as best you can and wait.”

“What if I have to cut his stomach open?”

“Why on earth would you cut Jack Henry’s stomach open? Heaven bless us, he thinks he’s a doctor now. How about you play the role you were assigned and don’t try to take over the entire play? Let Jack Henry be in the spotlight, let your mates help you support him, and let the doctor do the cutting.”

Jasper scrubbed his hand over his face. She was acting like he’d been aggrandizing himself when he’d been…

Maybe he’d been aggrandizing himself. Not because he wanted to be center stage—he would much rather not be—but out of habitual specialness. He was the uber-alpha, the promise of the future, the center of the universe. But really, his mother was right. He was only one of three, and the least important of the three in some ways. Saul would be the primary caregiver. Elias was the resident expert. Jasper had already contributed what little he had to contribute—a tablespoon or two of sperm.

“You know we’re pleased as punch, right?”

“Yeah, Mom.” He accepted the hug she gave him.

“How’s Jack Henry?”

Horny, but that wasn’t something he intended to share with his mother. The hormones surging through Jack Henry’s body had him thrumming with energy at all hours. Some of that energy had gone into his dancing, but a lot of it was getting channeled into sex.

“He’s good,” he assured his mother. “Eager to hear what the doctor says in a few weeks. Don’t you think we should’ve kept this to ourselves until then?”

She nodded. “Knock on wood you and your mates don’t find out how much a miscarriage breaks your heart. I don’t know how it works with omegas though.”

No one did. That was the problem. If the baby had to be delivered by c-section, where would a miscarriage even go? Jack Henry wasn’t vocalizing any fears, which meant Jasper didn’t want to bring up his own fears, which meant they were all walking a tightrope of acting like nothing could go wrong. Meanwhile, they had seven more months of uncertainty to get through. Being a miracle wasn’t easy.

“You run on home,” his mother said with a patronizing pat to the