Bear My Baby (Shifter Squad Six 1) by Anya Nowlan

gathering her in his arms and pulling her close. For the first time, she resisted him, staying rigid against his warm touch. His ears hummed, his mind working frantically looking for a way to fix this. But how could he fix a relationship that had never really begun? Who was he to her, anyway?
    Some guy who’d used her when she was vulnerable. Some guy who pushed her up against the wall at a seedy bar and finger-fucked her. Some guy who didn’t know a damn thing about her.
    And yet, he wanted to do anything in his power to make her feel good again. To make Monroe have the future he deserved—with a father, not some shapeless memory from the past who had shown up once, never to be seen again. His insides were in knots and his mind was storming a mile a second, trying to keep up with all the threads running through his head.
    “I should have,” he said, rubbing her arm, though she remained just as impassive, her sad eyes keeping track of the baby.
    “It was a fling. A moment of weakness. I needed someone to distract me and you were there. It was one night. One night that didn’t mean anything,” she said, obviously struggling to keep the emotion out of her voice.
    Connor scoffed, shaking his head. He couldn’t buy her claiming that it hadn’t meant a thing to her. No way. Maybe without Monroe it would have been a hot night to remember and only that, but it certainly wasn’t nothing. He wouldn’t believe that.
    “It was one night, I agree. But it meant something to me,” he started, looking at Cassie and catching the way her lower lip trembled when he spoke those words. “You meant something to me, Cassie. I told you I looked for you, and I wasn’t lying. I tried to find you, but we keep survivors under lock and key. No one can know where you are or who you are now, and that included me. But don’t for a second believe that I didn’t care, or that I forgot about you. You weren’t just some hot night.”
    He pressed every word, trying to make her understand, to make her see that he was being truthful. But the sadness remained steadfast in her eyes and she felt distant, like she was a lot farther from him now than when he hadn’t even known where she was.
    “I want to be part of his life, Cassie,” he said after a long pause, while both of them watched Monroe stack some blocks in the middle of the carpet.
    His tongue was sticking out and his brow was furrowed in concentration, like he was in the middle of the greatest architectural feat known to man. He looked up triumphantly as he set the last block, grinning at both Cassie and Connor expectantly.
    “Well done, baby. Can you build something else?” Cassie asked, her voice cracking and falling.
    She was fighting against what her mind told her and what her heart wanted, he was sure of that. For the life of him, he didn’t know how to make her understand that he wasn’t pretending. That all she thought he didn’t want, he really needed. That he needed her . And Monroe. The thought of going a single day without them now that he knew what he’d been missing could have driven him to the brink of madness.
    “Honey, look at me,” he said, gently turning her chin to face him. “I want to be a part of his life. You can’t deny me that.”
    As soon as he’d said it, he knew he’d said the wrong damn thing. Her eyes went wide and that mama bear that lived in the heart of every mother came tearing out, instinctively lashing out at anything and anyone that dared threatened her baby. In this case, it was Connor implying that he had any control over what she did with her baby boy.
    “I can’t deny you that!? Fuck you, Connor. We spent one goddamn night together,” she hissed, keeping her voice low, her cheeks burning with anger. “You killed at least two people that night, maybe more. How am I supposed to know you weren’t the one who fucking stabbed Jonah, huh? You grab me from my home and take me to a fucking cabin in the middle of the fucking woods! And