My mind spins. Wolf Den. Baby? What the fuck is going on?
Maria grabs hold of Eli's shirt and pulls him right into her chest. “You have three damn seconds to tell me what the hell is going on with my daughter before I call your mother and tell her all about the things you’ve been getting up to, Elijah. You don’t get to come into this home and throw around words like Wolf Den and baby without an explanation. Now, get talking.”
Maria releases her grip on him but judging by the look in Eli’s eyes, she’s more than capable of making his life a living hell. He glances back at his dipshit friends before looking down at Maria with sympathy in his eyes. “I really don’t want to be the one to have to explain this to you.”
“The clock is ticking,” she warns. “Two seconds left.”
Eli looks up at me, fixing himself with a harsh scowl. “Ocean came to me this morning,” he starts, making my brow raise straight up. She told me that she had to go and see someone but never in a million years did I think it was this guy. “She asked me to go to a doctor’s appointment with her because she was scared.”
“The fuck are you talking about?” I question as a fierce jealousy cuts through me. Why would she trust him with a doctor’s appointment and not me? I would have had the fucking doctor come straight to her if she wasn’t feeling well. “What doctor appointment?”
“If you fucking shut up and let me finish, maybe you will find out.”
“Eli,” Sebastian says. “Just tell them what’s going on so we can sort this shit out.”
Elijah shoots his heavy scowl at his friend but then finally sighs and looks back at Maria with his heart on his sleeve. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, his voice thick with pain. “The appointment was with an obstetrician. Ocean’s pregnant.”
A weight drops down on my chest as Maria sucks in a sharp gasp and turns to me in horror. “My baby,” she cries before her hands start hitting against my chest. “What have you done? She’s only seventeen. She’s just a baby herself.”
I shake my head, feeling as though I'm about to pass out. A fucking baby? Pregnant. Shit. “I … I… fuck. I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
“Get off your fucking high horse,” Elijah spits. “It’s not your baby.”
What?
Maria stops and whips her head around to Elijah just as I do, staring at him in confusion. “What?” she demands. “What are you talking about?”
Eli’s face somehow breaks even more than it already was as the boys behind him grow impossibly still. That weight on my chest sinks to my gut, and an awful feeling comes over me as I wait for what I already fear to come out of Eli’s mouth. “The doctor did a dating ultrasound on her,” he explains, reaching out and taking Maria’s hand. “She’s seven weeks pregnant. That makes the father Jude Carter.”
Maria’s eyes go wide, and I fall against the wall of the hallway, sinking down until I collapse onto the floor. My head falls into my hands as I hear Maria’s soft sobbing in the background. Sebastian pulls her into his arms as we process the news.
He fucking knocked her up. That bastard touched my girl and has now left her with scars that she’s going to have to relive every fucking day. She deserves so much better than that. “How’d she end up at the Wolf Den?” I murmur, my voice strong despite how fucking weak I feel.
“That’s what we don’t know,” Sebastian says. I pull my head out of my hands, looking up to meet his eyes, sensing there’s more to this. “Eli said she looked odd after dropping him off. She said she needed to talk to you about what she was going to do and then took off, so he followed her to make sure she was safe, and instead of turning off for the highway, she turned back and pulled up outside the Wolf Den. She walked in before he could stop her.”
I glance to Eli and he nods. “She was too far away. I couldn’t even call out her name. If the Wolves had seen me on their territory ...”
A distasteful grunt pulls from deep within me. “So, you saved yourself instead of her?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Elijah snaps.
“Then what was it like?” I demand. “Because from where I’m sitting, it sure as hell seems that way.”
Eli clenches his jaw, his hands balling into fists again, but Maria’s soft cry steals the spotlight. “Why?” she whispers, tears gently falling down her face. “She’s so strong. What would push her to do this?”
Kairo shakes his head. “That’s what we don’t know. We figured she must have called this rich pick in the car and he told her to fuck off.”