“Still up a little,” she says, “but definitely better. How are your chills, Ivy?”
“I’m still c-cold.”
I realize I’ve stopped focusing on giving her warmth, so I raise my body temperature again for her and wrap my arms tighter around her. I stare at my mother.
“Let’s let Ivy rest for a bit, everyone. I think it’s safe to be optimistic here that we’ve found the culprit. We’ll wait a few hours. Once she’s about thirty-six hours from her last pill, I’ll do more bloodwork and send the results to my contact. Her hormone levels are totally out of whack here. You should all get some rest.”
“I’m not leaving,” Amelia announces. “Not until then.”
Mason’s jaw tenses and he folds his arms across his chest and tries to get more comfortable on the couch in the waiting room.
“I could use a couple hours,” Kathleen says. “I feel like Ivy’s in great hands.”
“Mom?” Amelia says with a gasp.
“Aunt Nelle went to a lot of trouble to put all this together, apparently, and something tells me it’s all gonna be okay,” Kathleen tells her daughter.
“I have a guest room. Come on up and you can get some rest,” my mother tells Ivy’s mother. “Amelia?”
“Yeah, I’ll go lay down with Mom,” she says and follows.
Mason rolls his eyes. “Crash on your couch, Cat?”
“Absolutely, honey.”
“Nice to meet you, Tyson,” Kathleen says. “And you, Mason.” She leans over and kisses Ivy’s forehead.
“Love you, Mom,” Ivy whispers.
“Love you, Ivy.”
Kathleen moves over to Amelia and kisses her forehead, too.
Amelia doesn’t look settled. Or pleased. She looks like she’s still concerned about her sister. And she’s not happy about this situation.
Mason puts his arm around her. She pushes his arm off.
“Mason, can you show them upstairs? I’ll be right there.”
My mother looks at me.
“What is this pill she’s been taking?” I fucking knew pills were bad. Knew it.
“It’s something a lot of mainstream women take to prevent getting pregnant. It’s hormones that prevent heat, in essence. But you’re an extremely alpha male and you’ve mated her and triggered a hormone surge in her, plus the moon is definitely pushing a super-heat cycle for all the fertile and mated females. And the pill seems to have counteracted with what’s become a massive cocktail of hormones to make her ill. That’s what I think, anyway. We’ll know for sure by this afternoon if everything levels out if this was the culprit. It’s a safe bet that it was. Rest. We’ll see where we’re at in a few hours. If her body gets hot again, call me.” Cat puts a phone beside me. “Hit this button.” She points to one that says “intercom”.
I grunt in reply and she leaves.
“Fucking pills,” I growl.
Ivy looks up at me.
“Why are you taking those stupid things?”
She blinks. “I’ve been taking them since I was eighteen. I…”
“They hurt you!”
“Um, they’ve never hurt me before, whatever affect you had on me hurt me because of them. They’ve never been a problem before.”
A growl comes from me. “You’re mated. You don’t try to stop nature from taking its course.”
She rolls her eyes. “Neither of us knew, obviously, and if I’m now allergic to birth control pills, you’ll just have to use a condom. I have to turn over. My shoulder is falling asleep.” She turns her back to me and then shivers some more.
“I will not fucking use a condom,” I tell her. “I had women thrust them at me when I fucked them before, and there’s no way a condom is being put on my cock with you. Never.”
I’m falling off the small cot onto the floor. I land with a grunt.
She pushed me.
I blink rapidly in shock.
“Did you just push me out of bed?”
“Did you just talk about fucking some other woman?”
I stare a beat and then I bark out a laugh.
She’s not smiling with her mouth or her eyes.
“Looks like I’m not the only one in this marriage with a jealous streak.” I climb back in and wrap my arms around her and bury my nose in her neck. I laugh. She’s still stiff.
“Sorry, baby,” I tell her. “No more talk of fucking anybody. Except you.”
She’s still stiff.
I purr for her.
She shivers and kisses my forearm. “Okay.”
“No more pills,” I tell her.
“Obviously,” she whispers.
“I want babies,” I tell her.
“So do I,” she whispers.
I chuckle. And then I drift off to sleep feeling complete. I have a pack with six brothers, family; I have Ivy. She has my family and her mother and sister are being brought into the fold. And very soon, we’ll have a bigger family, because I intend on getting her pregnant as soon as possible.
55
Ivy
So, birth control pills and heat cycles when you’re mated to a super shifter do not blend. Good to know.
Cat didn’t know this, feels terrible about it because she told me she meant to talk to me about my birth control after the snake bite, not because she thought it’d be dangerous, because she thought Tyson would lose his mind when he found out. Alpha shifters apparently don’t take well to their ‘mates’ attempting to block their heat cycles.