Score. Three bottles of breast milk and all of them within the expiration date. I popped the oldest into a cup of hot water to warm and walked over to where Fee stood yelling at Murphy.
She’d crossed the line from shrill to shout in the space of time it had taken me to get the bottle. Murphy listened to her patiently. He had one hand on her shoulder. Touch was important to Pack. Did he derive as much comfort from the touch as she did? Did she even know his hand was there?
Perversely, I was glad to see her mad. For the first time in ages she was angry. A good sign she was beginning to move on in her grief. But I predicted it was going to be loud around our place for a few weeks.
Will’s little rosebud mouth puckered into a bow as he let out a protesting wail when I lifted him from the warmth of his blanketed car seat. Fee had bundled him up in one of Maureen’s knitted jackets and a blue cap with an adorable white yarn puff on top.
“You greedy, hungry baby, you just wait a few more minutes,” I told him as I struggled to hold his small arm still so I could take off the jacket. The heat was too high in the apartment again but Fee was always cold so we kept it up. Neither of us had remembered to turn it down. Murphy had been wrapped up in the stock market and I’d cleaned. Guests with babies left an awful lot of disarray in their wake. I suspected Will had more blankets, binkies and clothes here than he did at the house Fee shared with Colm and Deirdre.
I found one of his cloth rattles—the one in the shape of a lamb—and shook it in his face to distract him from the fact he was hungry and there was no food. He was having none of it. His face scrunched up into a miniature red-cheeked version of Fee’s and he let out another indignant blat.
Born three weeks after Paddy’s death, he was just over two months old. He mostly slept and ate, but when I spoke to him, he swiveled his head in my direction, and I swore, listened to me. Did he recognize my voice? He’d spent much of his young life cradled in my arms as Fee wept in Murphy’s.
His eyes had settled into their permanent color. Left eye blue, right eye brown. Just like his father. His hair was growing in black and curly, also like his dad’s. Otherwise, he was a carbon copy of his mother. He would have her quicksilver good looks. She and Murphy closely resembled each other, so maybe when Will grew up he’d look like his uncle Liam. That thought made me smile, and I pressed a kiss to his wrinkled little old man forehead, which made him squirm. He cooed, his earlier temper tantrum forgotten. If only adults’ bad moods could be as swift and mercurial as babies’.
Occupied as I was with Will, I’d tuned out most of Fee’s impassioned diatribe, but once he was settled in the crook of my arm, greedily sucking on his bottle, I spared some of my attention for her.
“He’s just doing it to be difficult, because he knows damn well I don’t want to fuck him. I don’t want to fuck anyone at this point, Liam.”
“I think he’s doing it for the pack’s sake, Fee,” Murphy told her. “Think about this for a minute. None of us seem to be getting over the shock and pain very well. This could help us.”
“I don’t want to get over the grief. Do you hear me, Liam Murphy?” The tendons in Fiona’s neck stuck out from the force of her shout. Will gave a convulsive jerk in my arms and the nipple slipped from his mouth. He added his scared wails to her angry shout and I hastily plugged the nipple back in and hoped the poor thing wouldn’t choke.
Jesus, could she not take three minutes to calm down and let her poor son drink his milk?
“Getting over the grief doesn’t mean forgetting him, Fiona,” I said.
Both Fee and Murphy turned in my direction as if surprised to find me there. That was nothing new. Half the time I thought I must invisible to them. Just a ghost who took care of the baby. A housekeeping ghost who put food on the table they rarely bothered to eat then cleaned it all up again.
I told myself to be nice because I knew what it was like to lose loved ones.
“I won’t be forced into this. You know that sonofabitch has called the hunt for tomorrow morning? Without my consent, he’s called the hunt and all the pack has known about it for days now. He finally bothered to inform me an hour ago. Bastard.”
“I didn’t know about it,” Murphy said. He took a deep breath.
“It was posted on the pub wall, and he’s been making phone calls. But he didn’t call you, Liam, because the gobshite knew I was here with you.”
“Why did he leave us out? Why is calling a hunt so awful, Fee?” I was confused. A hunt sounded like fun to me. Since Paddy’s funeral, Murphy spent most of his time with Fee and on the computer. Also, many, many members of Mac Tire managed to drop by to see him or ask him to go somewhere so they could talk.
Everyone knew Murphy and Paddy had been best friends. Mac Tire was reeling from the blow of losing their Alpha male and also their Regional Councilor, Glenn Murphy. It was a one, two punch nobody seemed able to deal with.
Murphy knew how to listen. He knew how to say what was needed. He guided, advised and sometimes just lent a shoulder to weep on. I’d watched him do it a dozen times and more these past three months.
Consequently, we didn’t have much time together. We’d made love exactly twice since Paddy’s funeral and neither time shifted because Fee showed up before we could get to the forest.
I’d hoped tonight after a leisurely dinner, I might seduce him and we would shift. That wouldn’t happen now because it would take hours to calm Fee down. But a hunt tomorrow could make up for losing out on the dinner seduction scenario tonight.
I wanted to let my wolf free. She was gloriously normal now and last time she’d run with the pack, it had been at Paddy’s funeral and it had been a sad, solemn, gut-wrenching hunt. I wanted something upbeat and blood-stirring. I missed Paddy like hell, but we had to go on. Things like hunts would be small steps in the right direction.
“Because the high-handed bastard intends to administer the pack bond before we do, that’s why, Stanzie. And he needs my blood for it. Are you that stupid, I have to explain it to you?” Fee’s voice dripped sarcasm, and I gulped.
Pack bond. A terrible chill swept through my body. My fingers slackened enough around Will’s bottle that it slipped out of his mouth again. He wailed as the bottle slid with a wet thump to the hardwood floor at my feet.
“Now you’ve done it.” Fee swept across the room to snatch her son out of my limp arms. She rocked him and crooned something in Irish as she fumbled with one hand to unbutton her jacket and blouse. “And how old is that fucking milk you’ve been poisoning him with?” She gave the bottle a contemptuous kick with her boot so it skittered across the floor somewhere beneath the dining table.
“I…it’s not old. I checked the date first.” My lips were numb. Was I going to pass out? Everything seemed so oddly bright and yet frighteningly dim.
“It’s all right, Stanzie,” said Murphy. He sounded so kind. So understanding. Could he possibly understand the tumult of emotions gripping me right now?
My wolf was normal. Free of the yoke of the unactivated pack bond my father forced upon me when I was a baby. I’d shifted three times since it had been lifted. Once when my wolf was out of control because it was the first time she’d ever been free of the pack bond. That had been a giddy, scary, roller coaster of an experience. Once after Paddy’s murder when she and I had been wracked with grief and then again at his funeral. She’d never run free and unfettered just for the hell of it. I’d waited and waited, patient because if anyone understood the grief of losing a loved one, it was me.
But now a new pack bond would be thrust upon us, While intellectually I understood it wouldn’t hurt her, cold terror settled in my heart.
“A pack bond right now would be the best thing for Mac Tire.” Murphy stepped around Will’s car seat