Willa handed Gia a can of squeeze cheese she’d pulled out of somewhere. She wasn’t even going to ask why her best friend was carrying the snack around in her pocket. Gia squirted a dollop in her mouth, then handed it to Jason, who was waving his fingers impatiently. And here with the Gray Backs, listening to them banter and laugh in a make-shift house in the woods, Gia felt whole.
Cradling her belly in her hands, she grinned up at the ceiling as Clinton told them about all the fights they’d missed when they were away. Her crew was made up of blood-lusty little monsters, but she didn’t care about that. Right now, right here, everything was perfect, and flawless moments like these were hard to come by.
Creed rolled his head against the wood floor and kissed her temple, then slid his big, powerful hand over hers. Her skin went warm with his touch. She could see her happy smile reflected in Creed’s dark eyes.
Her protective, patient mate.
He’d given her more than he would ever know.
She wasn’t Gia Cromwell of Minden, Louisiana anymore.
She was Gia of the Gray Backs.
Chapter Fourteen
A girl.
Creed grinned and dragged his legs through the shallow waves. Once upon a time, he’d banned women in his territory. He’d thought they would wreck his crew and ruin everything. He thought they wouldn’t be safe with the broken bears he was trying to manage.
He’d been wrong.
A girl.
He imagined a tiny baby with soft hair the color of dark whiskey, like Gia’s. With brown eyes that held bottomless understanding, like Gia’s. It would be months still until he met his daughter, but he couldn’t wait for the day he could see his mate holding the baby they’d made together, staring down at her with the same look she got at night when she looked at her rolling stomach with wonder.
A girl.
Creed held his breath and dove into the cold waves. Gia had come back to Saratoga bearing great gifts. Herself and a child, and though that was more than enough for a simple man like him, she’d devoted herself to giving him even more.
Creed sliced through the dark water with the graceful, powerful strokes Gia had been so determined to teach him over the past couple of weeks. He kicked up and broke the surface for a quick gasp of breath, then sank down and paddled his hands above him so he could take this moment in.
The falls pounded against the surf with such power, his skin vibrated with it. The water around him was infused with bubbles racing toward the surface again. Streams of sunlight cut through the water, creating an entirely different world down here. One where sound was dulled and the cold water stung his skin. One that was different from the terrible world his mother had created in the bathtub at 303 Janey Brook Road.
For a moment, he looked up and thought he saw his mother’s silhouette in the streaming sunlight above. A second of panic was settled by one thought.
A girl.
Gia was giving him a little girl.
Creed steeled himself and swam hard under the waterfall, then came up on the other side. The gentle side with the wet boulders to relax on and the slippery rock cliff that jutted straight up. The side he’d dreamed of swimming to since the day he’d first seen Bear Trap Falls.
She was waiting for him—his Gia.
Sitting on the edge of the rocks, her feet in the water, long, damp hair trailing down her shoulders, bare belly beautiful in her bathing suit, she smiled at him the moment he broke the surface.
He’d forbidden women in his territory, then broke his own rules, and something strange and unexpected had happened.
A woman had made him into a stronger man.
He swam to Gia and pushed up on the rock until he could look into those beautiful, tear-rimmed eyes of hers.
His past had been dark and fraught with uncertainty, but here, in this moment, none of that mattered. Gia had claimed his future.
She’d given him the other side of the waterfall.