4

I held him there, clinging to my first lover as he recovered. And at that moment… I fell completely in love with Grizz.

The next several weeks were filled with lots of sex. Lots of it. I would hang out with Aunt Patty or Kim during the day. But nearly every night, I had Kim give me a ride up to the clubhouse. If I were honest, it was the best time of my life. Over that summer, Kim became the best friend I’d ever had. Aunt Patty and I grew closer than ever. I was also thinking, at the back of my mind, that I didn’t even want to go back to South Carolina. I had everything here, friendship, family, a man I was in love with. I could visit Mom and Dad whenever. Maybe I could get into Boise State and just go to college up here. The thoughts got stronger the further into summer we got.

About ten days before I was supposed to fly back home, Kim and I sat in a little burger joint having lunch when I told her what I wanted to do.

She gave me a weird look. “Zo, I don’t know how to say this but...I wouldn’t get overly attached to Grizz. I mean, I’m sure it’s fun. Every woman in and around Forest Heights would cut off their left tit to get that man in the sack. He’s just not the type to settle down. He kind of has a reputation for bouncing around to different women. I just figured you were playing around too. I didn’t think you were really falling for him.”

I shook my head and said, “You don’t understand. It’s different with him. I know he loves me too.”

Kim almost choked on her milkshake. “You love him? Zo, come on!” she said around her coughing. “This is just some summer fling. It’s a great story you’ll tell your sorority sisters or something. I mean, maybe even pull up some nice dirty memories in a few years.”

“Kim, I…” I stopped. I didn’t feel good all of a sudden. My stomach felt awful.

I took a deep breath, but could tell it wasn’t going away. I needed a bathroom. I stood and ran to the back of the restaurant with Kim close at my heels. I got to the toilet just in time and emptied my stomach, heaving for several more minutes. Kim stood behind me, rubbing my back.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

I nodded and wiped my mouth with toilet paper. “It happened yesterday too. I thought I had a bug or something but then I felt better,” I said.

“Zo, are you pregnant?” Kim gasped.

“What? No, I’ve only been with Grizz. Shifters can’t get humans pregnant. Right?” I asked.

She nodded, “I mean, yeah. It’s pretty common knowledge, but still. This looks like morning sickness. Let’s just get a stick for you to piss on. They cost like three bucks, and it’ll make me feel better.”

I chuckled but agreed. We stopped off at the drugstore and grabbed a cheap and an expensive test, because Kim wanted to be a hundred percent sure. She seemed more nervous than I was. We took our bag and receipt and went straight to the bathroom in the store. I pulled down my pants and peed on both sticks. Kim set them on the sink and we waited.

A few minutes later, I asked Kim, “How long does it take?”

She grabbed both boxes and read for a few seconds, then looked at the tests. I watched her whole body freeze. She looked at the boxes again, then back at the tests. She turned and looked at me, panic and shock on her face.

“You are, like, a thousand percent sure Grizz is the only guy you’ve been with?” she asked.

I jumped up and looked at the tests. Both were positive. This wasn’t possible.

Kim shook her hands, starting to freak out. “I mean, are you sure you didn’t, like, I don’t know, get super drunk and maybe...maybe someone took advantage⁠—”

“No!” I cut her off. “Absolutely not. The most I ever drank was the night I got sick, even then I didn’t black out. Plus, Grizz would have never let anyone touch me.”

I looked back at the tests. Kim was still talking but it sounded like static in my ears. What was I going to do? I started college in less than three weeks. I couldn’t have a baby. I had to tell my aunt, my parents, and Grizz.

I could finally hear Kim again. “...It says right here.” She was reading off her phone, “Human and Shifter DNA is thought to be incompatible. There have been no successful matings between Human and Shifter since the race was first discovered. This shouldn’t be able to happen.”

I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out of the bathroom, “Come on. You have to take me to Grizz. Right now.”

We got to the compound twenty minutes later. The ride seemed to take forever. Shifters were required by law to live secluded from the towns they inhabited. Most lived in communal buildings like the compound. It was to give them room and privacy to shift when they wanted, since it was illegal to do in normal society. I would have given anything for it to be closer to town. I had to have Kim stop once for me to throw up again. That time I thought it was nerves, not pregnancy.

We pulled up and Grizz’s bike was right outside. I sighed with relief. Getting out of the car, I walked up to the door and went in, Kim right behind me. Stepping inside, I scanned the room for my baby’s daddy. Oh, geez. The only person I saw was Hutch, Grizz’s younger brother and best friend. He jumped to his feet.

“Zoey? What the fuck are you doing here? Don’t you usually come up on the weekend?” he asked, walking toward me, cutting me off from the stairs.

I moved around him. “I need to see Grizz. There’s something important I need to tell him.”

He stepped in front of me again. “Now, Zoey, I think it would be best if you went on home. Maybe call Grizz, and let him know when you’re coming. He’s dealing with something right now.”

I shoved past him and made for the stairs. Behind me, he growled in irritation.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you!” he called.

I went down the hall, Kim only a step or two behind me, grabbed the doorknob, turned it and swept into the room. As I moved, I tried to think of what to say, how to tell him that I was going to have his baby. I wondered how he would react. Would he be excited? Scared? Upset?

Kim and I barged through his bedroom door and I flinched immediately. I’d never seen Grizz look so angry. He was yelling at his little brother Reck.

“You shot his fucking windows out with a goddamned sling shot,” Grizz growled.

Reck sneered up at his gigantic older brother. “He called me a dirty shifter. He deserved it.”

Grizz clenched his teeth and looked like he wanted to slap the kid. “And now I get to pay to replace seven fucking windows. Your gonna work your ass off to pay for this.”

Reck’s eyes flashed over to us standing behind them. Grizz saw the look and turned to see what his brother was looking at. He blinked in surprise seeing me standing there. “Zoey? What the hell?”

Kim tugged at my shirt. “Hey, maybe we should come back later.”

I shrugged her off and took a step toward Grizz. “We need to talk.”

I sighed and gestured toward his brother. “Can it not wait? I’m in the middle of something here.”

“No it can’t wait,” I shouted. Why wouldn’t he just let me get it out.

Grizz sighed and waved toward the door. “Reck get the hell out of here. We aren’t done. I’ll talk to you more about this later.”

Reck walked toward the door rolling his eyes. “Whatever.”

Grizz gritted his teeth in anger, and peeled his eyes off his little brother and looked at me. “What is it Zoey?”

“Um…” I didn’t know how else to say it, so I decided to rip the Band-Aid off and lay it out. “I’m pregnant.”

Grizz stared at me for several long seconds before speaking. “What do you mean you’re pregnant?”

I let out a sigh of irritation. “I mean I’m pregnant. What do you think I mean.”

He winced and ran a hand across his face. “So…the really important thing you had to tell me, that you interrupted me for, was to tell me you’ve been fucking someone else?”

I felt like I’d been slapped across the face. I shook my head. “What? No. No, it’s your baby Rhett.”