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

then you won’t even tell me what’s going to happen next, but you have no qualms about screwing my brains out, huh?”
    She ripped herself away from him, standing up. Monroe paid them no attention, babbling a little song to himself and rearranging his blocks. Small mercies.
    “I sat in a tiny little cell for a month . For a month, a new person came in every day and tried to get me to confess to something I knew nothing about. They asked me how I knew Jonah a million times. And a million and one times I told them the same thing.
    “That I was his assistant. That he was a sweet guy. That he called me in the dead of night, begging me to help him. And that I didn’t know a single thing other than the fact that this caring, nice man died in my arms, gagging on his own blood and telling me that I had to be safe.”
    She looked like she wanted to pace back and forth, but she didn’t. Instead, she shook with rage, almost vibrating on the spot. Any other time, her bout of anger could have been cute for Connor, especially while she was dressed in a big, fluffy robe, but right now he was in no joking mood. He clamped his hands together in front of him and resigned himself to listen. To concentrate on his breathing and not say another thing before she was done.
    She needed to let it out and he needed to know.
    I fucking hope I can fix this, he thought bitterly.
    He wasn’t sure he could. But one look at the blue-eyed boy playing on the carpet told him that he would do anything, anything to make things right.
     

CHAPTER TWELVE
    Cassie
     
    Cassie couldn’t believe she had the capacity to be this angry. She felt like her body was creating so much energy by being pissed that she could run electricity in San Francisco for a few days. It was pure, unfiltered rage bubbling up, everything she’d kept boxed up somewhere in the back of her mind and not allowed herself to vent before.
    And now she was doing it at Connor. And she couldn’t stop.
    Shit .
    That particular thought had been very prevalent lately.
    “And finally, when they apparently decided that they couldn’t get anything useful out of me, they dumped me off in California, gave me a new name and ten thousand dollars and told me to go ‘make it.’ That I was free to go and no one would follow me, or so they thought. And that was it. My whole life taken from me, my identity wiped, and my family and friends left to think I’d gone crazy and joined some cult somewhere, or worse!”
    She threw her hands up in exasperation, running them through her hair. Cassie knew perfectly well that none of this was really on Connor. He’d been doing his job and had let the moment take him away like she had, but right now, it was too much. Him thinking he had any right over her baby while he hadn’t even been in the picture was just… maddening. Like he usually was.
    To her own ears, she sounded like she was whining. Like she was some victim, hapless and helpless. In a way, she knew she was, but it wasn’t only that. Cassie had been strong. All through the pregnancy, the haphazard birth that she hadn’t expected quite so soon, the demanding nature of having a baby who was ready to do everything far earlier than he was supposed to.
    She’d been alone for all of that, cut off from her safety net and constantly looking over her shoulder, expecting someone to come running to her and stab her in the chest or shoot her in the back, much like they’d done with Jonah.
    It was a terrifying way to live. It was even worse to raise a child in a situation like that. So now, faced with the opportunity to let it all out, and not just that but the carnal need to do that, she couldn’t stop.
    “Do you know how long a pregnancy lasts when you’re pregnant with a shifter baby?” she asked, imagining that it wouldn’t be long until steam started rising from her nostrils.
    “About five months,” he said, sitting back and resting against the backrest of the sofa.
    He looked beaten, like she’d