Under the Alpha's Protection by Doris O'Connor Page A

made a wrong choice in not telling you his heritage, but he did that for the right reasons. He was afraid of losing you. He still is. I know my son. Behind all that bluster and for all his dominant ways he is still scared shitless that you'll reject him." She paused and smiled with a faraway look in her eyes. "His father was just the same. Which is how I ended up with Draco. He had no qualms about biting me against my will, of forcing a bond between us that I didn't want and yet I couldn't fight against, until he was turned by that vampire, and Lupe finally stepped up and saved me."
    She straightened her shoulders and smiled at Nikita.
    "So, you see, you're already far stronger than I ever was. You fought Draco and won. The only thing now is will you fight for my son, or will you break his heart?"
    ****
    Raoul paced the living room floor with ever increasing speed, until his father growled at him to sit down.
    "Rein in your wolf, son. Your mother will have your pelt, if you ruin her new oak flooring with your claws, and I'll have your head. I'm too old to lay this shit down again. Nikita won't come down any faster, and you’re making us all dizzy."
    Lupe tempered his command with a smile and a nod of understanding.
    "It will be all right, son, you'll see."
    Raoul balled his hands into fists, and slumped back against the floral settee. If only he could believe that. His brave little Nikita had saved them all, and it had been a long painful recovery for her. By rights she should be either dead or vamp, but Mother Nature had one last trick up its sleeve, it would appear.
    Nikita was carrying his baby, and it seemed that the fetus's stem cells crossing over into Nikita's bloodstream had saved her from the full turn. That and sheer bloody-mindedness on behalf of his girl. Raoul had been too worried about her to give that tiny cluster of cells nestling in her womb too much thought, but when he'd entered her room earlier, he'd scented his son or daughter as clearly as though he'd seen them on an ultrasound. Their child's heartbeat was strong and steady, and the pack's physician had decreed that there should be no reason for Nikita to not carry a healthy baby to term.
    No reason at all, but Raoul's deep-seated fear that she may not want his baby. Not once in the weeks she'd lain up in his old room at his parents’ place had she called for him, and surely if she loved him she would have done so.
    His mother and father simply said it was to be expected. She didn't know where she was, or who she was, and her body was struggling to accept the changes, changes brought onto her by his bite. A bite she hadn't given permission for either, which in Raoul's eyes made him as much as a bastard as Draco had been.
    His whole relationship with Nikita was based on trust, and he had lied to her, albeit by omission, but he knew how much she despised liars. He'd lied again by not telling her about the baby. They had all decreed to keep that bit of information to themselves for now, until she was strong enough to be told.
    That day was supposed to be today, but she still hadn't made it downstairs, and the fucking wait was killing him.
    The creak of the door alerted him to her presence as surely as his wolf jumping to attention. Her scent called him, and he forced himself to open his eyes slowly.
    "There you are, my dear. I must say that emerald top suits you. You've even got some color in your cheeks, which is lovely. I told you the brew would work."
    Nikita pulled a face, and then smiled, and his wolf whined. He knew she'd heard him because she now had a shifter's sensitive hearing. Her body shifted in his direction, before she caught herself, and turned her back on him.
    It was the equivalent of a slap in the face , and his hands itched to just grab her, take her somewhere private, and spank her luscious ass into submission. His wolf smirked his agreement with this plan, and his cock, too, signaled its readiness with the raging hard-on he was