A Baby for the Bear (Wylde Brothers 1)

Casting a glance at Candace, who was looking just as worried and nervous as she felt, Ary had no idea where to go from this point on. She was a single thirty-year-old woman, an ocelot shifter, and was currently knocked-up, because she enjoyed one night of meaningless sex. To make matters worse, the baby she carried was the child of none other than Charlie flippin’ Wylde.

“So, do you think the baby will be an ocelot or bear shifter?” Leave it to Melissa to bring up something she hadn’t even thought about. There were no hybrid shifters. They were either one or the other, which meant her child would have her shifting genes or their father’s.

“You know we are here for you, right?” Candace moved next to her and got down on her haunches. Her strawberry-blonde hair was twisted in a cute braid and hung over one of her shoulders.

Her light-blue eyes were filled with so much compassion they had Ary bursting into tears. There was a hushed murmur from both of her friends, which only caused her to cry harder.

Yes, she was so scared about what all this meant, but she was also crying because she knew she was lucky to have these friends standing beside her. Their arms wrapped around her, and they held her tight.

Ary knew she had to tell Charlie, but she also knew she needed some time to herself to come to grips with all of it. This was huge, and until she was comfortable with it, how in the world did she expect to tell the father?

Melissa and Candace pulled back, and each of them grabbed her hands and helped her to stand. “Come on, this calls for a monster bowl of ice cream over at Freezy Breezy.”

Yes, that sounded like the perfect temporary solution to her permanent, horrifying situation.

11

“Charlie, what the hell is going on with you?” Bram cracked open another beer and planted his ass beside him on his couch. The football game was on, a leopard shifting team from New York playing against panther shifters from Chicago.

The teams were brutal as they tackled each other so hard against the ground that pieces of sod sprayed all around them. There was nothing better than shifter football. Humans playing the sport were entertaining, but they couldn’t take a hit like a shifter could. “Hello? You with us?”

“He’s been acting all kinds of fucked-up since he slept with that cat. What did she do, drag her teeth across your dick?” Ford asked, but his attention was on the game.

Charlie didn’t bother responding, just flipped his brother off and sank farther into the leather couch. He hadn’t talked about February with his brothers, the two people he cared about the most, because he thought if he didn’t talk about her and tried to block her out, he might be able to put her behind him.

Yeah, that hadn’t worked out as well as he would’ve liked, and when Bram and Ford brought her up, it only made things worse.

“It’s nothing. She just got under my skin, but nothing I can’t handle.” That was true… but also a lie. He wasn’t handling it well, because frankly he had never encountered feelings this strong before.

“Under your skin?” Bram was the one to ask, and Ford shouted out a string of curse words when a foul was called in the game.

“What’s going on?” Ford asked and brought his beer to his lips. He turned and looked at them, and one of his brows cocked up in question. Charlie scrubbed a hand over his face and exhaled. Did he really want to get into this with his brothers, tell them about this girl he only spent a few hours with one night in his bed?

They would surely think he was an insane asshole, because how many times had he told them he would never claim a female?

“Dude, why are you clamming up right now?” Bram sounded confused, and Charlie couldn’t blame him. He looked at his youngest brother and noticed the day-old cut above his right eye and the fading bruise that covered his cheek. Looked like Bram was at his bare-knuckle fighting again.

Taking a deep breath and deciding to just say it already, Charlie looked at his brothers. This was the first time he’d kept things from them.

“That ocelot female has been all I’ve been thinking about for weeks.” He looked between Bram and Ford. It seemed Ford now had his full attention on Charlie.

“What do you mean you’ve been thinking about her?” Ford turned the television off, and silence descended on the living room. Bram was already looking at him with interest on his face.

Charlie supposed he should just spit it out. Damn, why in the hell was this so hard? He was a grown-ass male, and this was his family.