The Lion’s Forbidden Mate

Chapter 9

It was cold out in the middle of nowhere, but the silence and the loneliness of the wilderness suited her. She didn’t want the world around her and she definitely wasn’t going to go back into Klinesdale. Over the past four months, she had come to accept her isolation out in her family’s cabin as the fate she was going to live with for the rest of her life. There was a sizable amount of hush-money waiting for her when she got home and she decided that she was fine with it and living off of it in her meager existence for the rest of her life.

The cabin had been in her family for ages and the two bedrooms, living room, dining area, and kitchen were all that she needed. She didn’t need a whole lot to live with and when she had come back in such a state, her parents weren’t inclined to ask a whole bunch of questions. She was grateful for that and she held an uneasy truce of not sharing with anyone else.

Heartbroken, she knew her actions had shamed her family and they were disappointed in her, but the woman that came back from Denver was not the daughter they had sent off. There was talk of sending a delegate or getting answers from the Pride, but Lucy had shown up to quell any talk of investigating what had happened to her. She told them she had simply made a mistake and that she had trusted a man she should not have and now she was pregnant. That was the end of the story and she was going to take everything else with her to the grave. She apologized to her parents for not telling them sooner, but she was done with the world. She drove up to the cabin and people in Klinesdale only ever saw her when they spotted her coming into town for supplies.

When the winter snows came and blew through Montana, coating the entire autumn world in a foot of snow, she was happy to finally be isolated from everyone. Her parents would call to make sure that she was fine and her pack’s doctor would make the trip to see her for appointments, but that was it. Out here, she answered only to herself and she spent her time enjoying the simple luxury of reading and painting.

She didn’t think that she had the knack for it, but painting came naturally to her. After a few weeks, she found that she was utterly devastated with the loneliness she had inflicted upon herself. Pregnancy kept her inside and so did the two feet of snow outside, so she was stuck inside. She taught herself to paint from videos on the internet and watched movies curled up on the couch.

The only thing she missed was the man that she could never have. Every time her child kicked, she would think of James and know that he would have loved to have felt the presence of his child inside of her. That was taken away from him, robbed of him by the cruel and wicked woman she’d lost him to. When she made it home, she followed news of the tour, even when she found out that Violet White was going to be taking a break during the month of August, no doubt while she got her nose fixed.

She missed the band and the crew that she had come to think of as a family, but the pregnancy became the dominant factor of her life. She realized there was nothing more stressful in her life than being pregnant and that she couldn’t have lasted much longer on that bus than she did. Getting off when she did was the smartest move she had made. There was no surviving or coping with pregnancy and she wasn’t about to even try to do what she used to do. The riding on the bus was what made her flinch the most.

Lucy looked out the window to the south over the valley. She could see for miles and miles, over the open meadow that her cabin sat right in the middle of to the thick forest at the foot of the sloping hill that she was on. It was a gentle slope, but it was all pristine, untouched snow. The only footprints in it were form the elk that would roam down the hills from the mountains to the north. They usually avoided the cabin, smelling the scent of a wolf lingering around it.

The first question Lucy had asked her doctor was whether or not the child was going to be a lion or a wolf. The doctor was rather surprised to hear that she had grabbed herself a lion to get impregnated by. Lucy didn’t think of it as much of an accomplishment as she looked out the window. She had gotten pregnant, not built a monument. But, the doctor inevitably told her the answer that she already figured out. They wouldn’t know until the child was going through puberty where all Shifters learned that they had the ability. Lucy didn’t think she would be able to wait that long.

As she looked out the window, rubbing her swollen belly, she looked down and couldn’t wait until she had a friend in the cabin with her. She was so excited to be a mother that it was impossible to contain. Yes, it would have been great to have James here with her, but without James, she knew his people were going to be safe and that they were going to have a chance to avert a war. How many people could claim that?

Lucy walked back to the easel that she had set up and looked at the blank canvas she had in front of her. When she closed her eyes, she could visualize a thousand things and she knew there was an infinite number of possibilities that she could paint on the canvas, but all she could think about right now was ice cream. Even if it was ridiculously cold outside, she was always hot and she was craving ice cream like a crazy person. She let out a sigh and stared at the blank canvas.

“You’re going to have to hold on, buddy,” she promised it.

She’d taken to selling her artwork online and had even opened up a little Etsy store that was doing pretty well. She was no Bob Ross, but she thought she was doing pretty well for the landscapes that she had painted. Every day, she tried to paint at least one picture and tried to sell it. Whenever people bought one, she hoped it would give them a little happiness.