MC Bear My Baby (Beartooth Brotherhood MC) (11 page)

T
ate woke up with a start
. Molly's arms and legs were wrapped around him almost protectively. Her warmth alone was insane. That hadn’t been what had woken him up, so he gently shifted out from her comfy grip, trying not to wake her up. Kicking his legs off the side of the bed, he pushed himself to stand and moved to the door. He rubbed his eyes, thankful as fuck that his brain wasn’t even close to processing right. Only a couple of hours had passed since they fell asleep, so he put some effort into shaking off the drowsiness to get the door.

Silas was standing there with a fist raised, about ready to knock again.

“What’s up?” Tate glanced back at the woman in his bed as she groaned and rolled over. Sliding out the door, he half-closed it behind him.

Silas’s gaze flicked up and then down with a grimace. Which was when Tate caught on that he wasn’t wearing anything, not even a sheet.

Tate shrugged. “I didn’t want to disturb her. What’s going on?”

His president’s eyebrows shot into his hairline and he frowned. “I need you on a job. Axe will keep an eye on her while you’re gone.” Tate started to argue when Silas held up a gloved hand. “Nope. Not a word, you bonded son of a bitch. Downstairs. Now. Preferably not naked.”

His half-awake brain caught onto the bonded part of the sentence and clung to it like a bear digging its claws into the edge of a cliff. He watched Silas walk down the long hallway, but didn’t really see the guy. His head did a giant rewind on his sack session with Molly.

“Aw, fuck,” he bit off in a whisper.

He was bonded to her now, practically the same as being hitched…and a total fucking goner.

* * *

T
ate was halfway
through re-programming a safe at the house of a client Silas sent him to work on when he was sure he completely lost it. Exhausted from lack of sleep and running on fumes, all he registered was his beast’s bone-deep need to make it back to the woman still passed out in his bed. He wasn’t sure how he would finish the work on the crazy rich woman’s safe, not the way his mind was singly-focused, counting down the seconds to get back to Molly. This work was supposed to be as simple as going through his routine diagnostics, hooking up his laptop to enter some new codes and switching out a few wires. Apparently not today.

The client was downstairs providing more details to Silas on some additional security features that she wanted them to have a hand in. Silas prattled on that Knightsbridge Protection and Security LLC, the MC’s security firm, was more than capable of meeting her needs. From the sounds of it, the work was extensive and costly. This reprogramming piece he’d just started was just the beginning. He’d definitely need to make a few return trips with an installation team if this panned out. Glad for the grunt work up here instead of negotiating terms, Tate sighed and threw his head back into the game.

“Pssst!”

“Wha…” Tate glanced around him, pretty fucking sure he was alone in the massive house. “Great, you’re hearing things now.”

“Hey, do you want to play hide and seek with me?”

Okay, that wasn’t a hallucination. Tate whipped his head toward the doorway and caught the tip of a small, blonde pigtail before it hid behind the doorway.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

I haven’t had enough sleep for this shit.

Crap.

A kid.

I’m having a goddamn kid.

Like that one.

Except a boy.

He let out a grunt and stepped over to the door, checking to see what he was up against. A tiny little human girl, maybe five, was hiding behind her hands, her curly pigtails bouncing up and down. She had a huge case of the giggles. Yeah, he needed overtime pay for this. Big time. He swallowed, trying to remember the last time he’d seen, let alone interacted with a little squirt, and he came up empty-handed. Just another big fat reminder of how intimidating this fatherhood thing could end up being.

“Play with me?” The pint-sized human peeked out between her itty bitty fingers with a big old gap-toothed grin.

Suddenly he couldn’t breathe. The world constricted around him and his heart was beating way too damn fast. His thoughts tumbled over and over like a fucking dryer that wouldn’t turn off while he mentally scrambled for an off switch, or lever, or pulley, or something to stop it. All he could do was stare at her as his whole world came crashing down in seconds. The realization hit him like a ton of bricks.

One of these days he was going to have one of these.

A real life half-shifter, half-human kid.

A little boy. One who could turn out to be just as messed up as his old man, and run the risk of screwing his way through women.

Nope, he couldn’t be a father. He’d already fucked up his life.

Too bad he didn’t get a say in the matter.

“I got to…uh, I…bye, kid,” Tate sputtered, stumbling down the hallway toward the nearest bathroom.

He tossed his cookies until he felt like his eyes were going to pop out of his head. After that, he gripped the sides of the toilet, praying for a miracle, that somehow this wasn’t his life. Maybe Molly was wrong, it was a false positive, and he could go back to screwing up his life the only way he knew how to in the first place. Back to living as if he only had himself. Wishing seemed like a better idea than the impending terror of a small human who pooped, spat up, whined, squeaked and grunted for hours at a time, and needed
him
.

Something about that thought made him pretty positive he couldn’t get away with being downstairs in the clubhouse soothing himself with whiskey and pussy at the bar while Molly was upstairs tending to poop. He should know. Maybe this was just a
‘sins of the father’
kind of deal, seeing that he was abandoned by his parents as a kid. That more or less created damn good odds that he’d turn out truly fucked up as an adult. Which he did. What was sad was the idea sounded better and better as it filtered through his head. He flushed the toilet one more time and stood up. This line of thinking was not helping at the moment. What he needed to do was shut down the fucked up thoughts, get this job done, and get some sleep. That would help him avoid that niggling seed of a temptation to remove one major complication out of his life.

In theory, it sounded like great goddamn advice. In practice he needed the world to stop spinning a million degrees at a time. It was hard to concentrate on numbers when his chest felt tight and air wouldn’t fill his lungs and with this damned blurry vision. Was this what people called a panic attack? He coughed over his fist. No matter what he did, nothing loosened the pressure.

Fuck, he had to get back to work.

* * *

T
hree hours
later the safe was done, Silas and the client were satisfied, and Tate could finally go back home. He’d borrowed the MC’s communal truck since pieces of his bike were scattered across the parking lot, wedged into trees and sticking out of the clubhouse outer walls. Thinking he’d get in touch with Axe to make sure everything was okay with Molly, he pulled out his phone to send a text before driving off. He tried to type in the little symbols but his damn fingers kept shaking. Finally, he got his message on the screen, pressed send, and was on his way back home.

While waiting at a red light about ten minutes later, a text came in. He fumbled for the phone in the inner pocket of his cut and checked the screen.

All good. Out at the store for dinner. Your girl’s gonna cook. Kept my cock in my pants. For now.

Tate shook his head and threw his phone on the other side of the truck seat. It was impossible for any of them to be anything but assholes, but for a second he toyed with the idea of ripping Axe’s throat out with his bare hands for even thinking of touching Molly. It was oddly satisfying. Half his mouth quirked up in a smirk as he continued the drive on autopilot, thinking a meal sounded good, although a full four hours sleep would help too.

The phone’s text notification went off again. What did Axe want now? Tate gritted his teeth. It was too far away to reach while driving, and he was in no mood to stop and take that much longer to get home to Molly. A tingle hit the back of his neck. His beast stretched, prowling inside his sternum, large paws thumping against his innards. Small chuffs played in the back of his mind and he couldn’t sit still in the seat.

Something was off.

His gut was churning.

He glared at the phone out of the corner of his eye. For a second he tried to convince himself it was probably just Axe messing with his head again. No, that wasn’t it. His fingers gripped the wheel until his knuckles were white, and he let out a long, slow exhale. He couldn’t wait.

Something was wrong.

He checked his rear view mirrors and as no one was behind him, he jerked the wheel, pulling the truck off the side of the road. He threw on his four-way flashers before his hand blindly groped for the phone and slipped his thumb over the screen.

911. We got fjehiirnvy;w

Tate blinked at the numbers and garbled letters. None of it was making sense. Nothing was making it through the cheesecloth holes of his brain. He slammed his fist into the dash, flinching when a large crack broke off into a million tiny plastic splinters all flying into the windshield and over on the passenger side. With an unmistakable roar, he shoved the car into drive. His foot was heavy on the accelerator. He had to get home fast.

After hitting the only four supermarkets and minimarts between Mesquite, Nevada and Red Ridge, Arizona where they lived, he stumbled on what he was looking for: Axe’s bike in a parking lot. He could tell that thing from yards away. Axe had put a bright red
‘I Break for Dachshunds’
sticker slapped on the back of his chopper’s passenger seat. Tate barely had the truck in park when he bolted out of the cab and into the store.

“Jesus Christ, can I catch a fucking break, Lord? Even if I don’t believe in you?” Tate dropped into a crouch so he didn’t lose his shit and straight out shift in public.

This had to be the place.

The only sales clerk behind the front counter, and from the looks of it, the only person in the shop, had been shot execution style. There was no questioning that double tap, one to the temple and the other through the heart. The problem was that neither Axe nor Molly was anywhere in sight. He squeezed the sides of his head hard enough to hurt. He needed something to stop this all-consuming primal urge to shift to his animal. Heat welled up in his veins, pumping until his muscles ached. One way or another, his beast wanted out—now.

If he could just keep it together long enough to devise a plan.

A plan. He only needed one step in that plan. One thing at a time. Anything to serve as a distraction from the sinking feeling. Jett had done something to Axe and kidnapped Molly—and his unborn child. The thought plunged down his spine in a soul-ripping shudder.

One thing. One step.

He started by getting his phone from the truck. No other messages had come in so he phoned Silas to give him the details and get some MC reinforcements lined up and ready to go wherever they needed to. After that, he found the pay phone on the side of the building and called the ambulance anonymously. No one needed to know he was here. Their response time in this stretch of highway was closer to fifteen minutes, which gave him time to check out the entire store and storage room in the back before he’d get the hell out and turn into a ghost. And he’d take any evidence that might lead him to Molly with him.

Rubbing the back of his head, he jumped into action.

After a few minutes of checking the inside and outdoor perimeter, there was nothing to indicate Axe had even put up a fight. Tate didn’t see a blood trail either, so neither Axe nor Molly was shot or stabbed, thankfully. Still, the lack of disorder was disturbing. There had to be other circumstances. On his second pass through the squat corner store he found their grocery cart shoved behind the counter near the dead guy—with half a dozen sweet peppers and several packages of chicken. That was Molly’s cart without a doubt, the ingredients of her go-to dinner meal. A lump immediately solidified in his throat and radiated outward until he wondered if he’d ever breathe normally again.