Leader of the Pack Ch. 25

"Jenna," Aislinn said uncertainly and honestly. "Last night was desperation and a wild guess. I suppose I can try to do it again. But I'm not positive I can."

Jenna assumed that Aislinn was messing with her. She wasn't inclined to trust Aislinn in anything. "So what do I have to do? I mean I stopped the attack. There's no way the Council will let me keep the alpha position in the Tairneach." Her voice lowered. "I suppose my father didn't want that anyway." Jenna's voice cracked and there were tears again. "I have something I need to ask him. Can't you just pity me and take me to talk to him? Or maybe one of the other druids can do it if you won't."

Aislinn stared at her. Jenna's tone was making it hard for Aislinn to feel bad for her. The woman's actions had nearly taken her mate away. "I told you that I'll try," she said in a calm voice that a person would use with a whining child. "I don't know what the others are capable of. If I can't manage we can look into whether or not the others can. But Jenna I'm curious why you think you can ask for anything in your position. How many people did you intend to kill in your little quest for godhood?"

Jenna flinched. You for one, she thought angrily. "Look. I know that I'm in trouble here. I also know that I could have made things much worse for you last night and didn't. What's the chance that you as the supposed good guy will meet me half way?"

Aislinn shook her head. "Not real inclined to be overtly helpful to you. I happen to think that the fact you're in this room instead of strung up somewhere is half way." Somewhere in the hall, back to his usual self, Keith chuckled.

"Fine. You know what? I'm tired and don't really want to play mental chess right now," Jenna sneered. "How about you take me to talk to my father again and I'll tell you where the books are?"

Aislinn smiled. She was glad to be done playing games with Jenna anyway. "No. How about you tell me where the books and the notes and anything else that might hint at the fact that a druid ever existed in or near the manor is, we go get them to make sure you're not lying, and then I'll take you to talk to your father?"

"Damn," Keith said a little too loud. "She'd tough." Cullen glared at him to be quiet. But he was pleased that she was doing so well. He hadn't been entirely sure this was a good idea.

Jenna looked toward the door and smiled at the men standing there through tears. "Fine whatever," she said. "You're the good guys right? I'm supposed to trust you."

Jenna handed over the information that they wanted. In the end it seemed that if they had just raided the manor most of the things would have been pretty easy to find. She still had some of the stuff locked away in her father's desk. But most of that had been extraneous information that didn't apply directly to the creation of the weres.

It was decided that Cadifor would personally deal with the missing books and notes. That was partially because Cullen had business to attend to with the pack and then back at the Madadh-Allaidh Saobhaidh and partially because now that Cadifor had a taste of doing something active other than having sex with Makeda and wanted to participate. Besides he had decided to stick around until Cullen did the official mating thing with Aislinn. Since he had announced that it wouldn't be for another month that meant he'd have to do something to keep busy.

***

The month went by quickly. Cullen couldn't believe how much he had missed the standard, nobody's life's at stake, everyday paperwork that he dealt with before all the bullshit started. He sat at his desk in his office on the13th floor and opened another bill. He smiled. Sure he could have had an accountant or someone take care if this stuff, but then what would he do all day?

Cadifor had gotten stuck dealing with the fact that when he showed up to grabbed the books from the Tairneach manor the feds had been there first. The last couple weeks he had been dealing with phone calls and private meetings. He had tried to talk to Cullen about it at one point but Cullen had stopped him. He didn't want to know about it unless he had to be involved in it. Cadifor had laughed at him and moved on. He figured that Cullen had earned a reprieve for a while.

Sarah was even in a good mood. With Aislinn around to take some of the load off she'd been spending more time with Drake and that was always good for her mood. Cullen had even backed off of Keith. He still had Keith dealing with the internal morale issues thanks to Terrick, but for the most part he left Keith to help Jaylyn with the new babies. Thinking about that had him chuckling. Jay had called that morning and asked Cullen to please find Keith something to get him out of their room and away from her for a little while. Apparently he was trying to be helpful with the babies and he was driving her nuts.

Keith had managed to track the last leak the Arnauk had back to Terrick. That had been no surprise. The problem ended up being that there wasn't anything solid to get him with. He had been talking with the Tairneach, but he hadn't leaked anything that he had been told not to say. So they were keeping an eye on him and he was removed from the elder council. But he was still around and still causing problems. Oddly enough Cullen found that he didn't care. Dealing with Terrick was better than dealing with the other caoch that had been dominating his life lately. Besides Terrick had never been a loyalist or a good friend. If there was anyone in the pack who Cullen could have expected to stab him in the back it was Terrick.

Makeda had stuck around to spend time with Aislinn while Cadifor had dealt with the Feds and the Pack Council. Cullen growled pleasantly. That first week had been something else. Makeda's influence on Aislinn had been interesting. Aislinn couldn't behave more like an alpha's mate than she was under Makeda's diligent tutelage. And for all of Makeda's effort with helping Aislinn she was repaid in her favorite way. Cullen had never figured Aislinn for being that enthusiastic with a woman. But she was always surprising him with something.

He finished with the bills for the casino and hotel. Liam was possessive of the bills for the Taigh-Oèsda. So he didn't get to do that this morning. But he took a moment to look over the last of the arrangements for the mating ceremony. It was set. All the guests outside of the pack had received actual invitations. Nora was invited. There would be fewer druids present but enough to make a showing for the groups who were just in it to meet the druids. The guest list had actually gotten larger after word spread about the first mating attempt and all the things that had happened.

At first Cullen had tried to talk Cadifor out of doing the diplomatic thing and make it a nice small mating ceremony. Aislinn was the one who said she wanted the druids there and Keith pointed out that Cullen had already told everyone that they would reconvene in a month. So they were kind of stuck with the big party. Sarah had gone to extra lengths this time. There seemed to be more of everything. Liam had been in his office complaining twice about the food she wanted. The kitchen at the reservation apparently wasn't sufficient for his people to make it all out there in the quantities Sarah wanted and Liam refused to bring it all in cold and heat it up there. Cullen had finally conceded to buying some additional kitchen equipment for the cabin. He had told Sarah that she was getting out of hand. But she had smiled at him and told him that after all the trouble there had been the first time they owed it to everyone to make this a night to remember.

Aislinn helped Sarah make most of the arrangements this time and she seemed okay if not pleased with all the fuss. That had been one more area of her alpha duties she had taken to relatively well. She was the one who kept pointing out that the two of them wouldn't get a chance to do anything in a small way. With Makeda around doting on Aislinn and Sarah pretty much using her as the right hand the rest of the pack had stopped questioning Aislinn's rank and motivation. It was as if she had been part of the pack all along. She had decided to put off dealing with her druid half until after the mating was finished. She wanted to make sure she was accepted by the lycans before exploring anything that would make her seem more distinct than she already was. The only druidic thing she did was take a couple trips out to the reservation to speak with Brinah.

Cullen put the last of the papers aside and pushed back from his desk. He had been feeling a bit disappointed that there had been no phone calls today to interrupt his nice normal morning with more normal hassles. It would be a while before any of the standard day stuff would bother him again. He got up and headed out of his office. It was time for lunch and he wanted to eat with Aislinn. That meant tracking her down though.

The phone in his pocket started ringing. Cullen pulled it out of his pocket and read the caller ID. He smiled as he saw Cadifor's name and flipped up the phone. "Yeah?"

"Hey, is Aislinn still willing to take Jenna out to talk to Brennus?"

Cullen stopped in the middle of the hall. That wasn't what he had been expecting. The last thing he wanted to do two days before the mating ceremony was revisit the last time. "I take it that you finally got the books back?"

"For the most part. We got the books back, but the suspicion is that the government has already taken what they wanted out of it. This isn't over. The only reason I asked about the Jenna thing is because when we turned the books over to the Circle they seem to think there's something missing that the Feds insist they don't have. I'm leaning toward believing them. If only because they would have just copied the information and given us the original back. The Tairneach are the only ones who could have it if it's still out there."

Cullen growled unhappily.

"You're too overprotective of her," Cadifor said in annoyance. "Jenna isn't going to tell us anything until Aislinn takes her to Brennus. I guarantee that she'd been sitting on this card since the beginning. Just in case we went back on the arrangement."

"Fine," Cullen agreed. "I'll talk to her about it. But you need to arrange to have Jenna at the reservation like tomorrow so we can get this out of the way and overwith before the mating. I'm not going to have any more ceremonies. This is it."

Cadifor laughed. "Alright. I'll see you there tomorrow round noon."

"We'll be there. Make sure you have enough guards to deal with her in case she decides to go dire and try to kill people again."

"No problem. I don't think that will happen. But I'll have the men to deal with her if it does." There was silence for a minute. "Are we sure that Aislinn's going to be able to do this?"

"Yeah, remember Peter?" Cullen sighed.

"No. Who was Peter?"

"Was," Cullen said sadly. "Peter was the only one of my guys that Rafe had gotten to who tried to tell me what was going on. Rafe tortured and killed his mate. When we all got back and things settled down Peter asked Aislinn to take him out and let him talk to Zoe. We thought it would help him. He had been so depressed since Zoe died. So we headed out and Aislinn managed to bring Zoe. Shortly after that Peter killed himself."

"Caoch," Cadifor said softly. "Well, it's not that surprising. Too bad for the loss of a good man."

Cullen let the air out of his lungs in a long slow breath. He had been in such a good mood. "Yeah." He paused. "Anyway, make sure Jenna brings that ring. I suppose it should be expected. But just make sure she has it. Aislinn finds it easier to do if there's something that was important to the soul she'd trying to contact."

"Consider it done. I'll see you tomorrow." Then the two men hung up.

***

Aislinn sat in the infirmary in the sub-basement, down the hall from the gym. She hadn't been feeling well all month. But she was pretty sure she knew why. Rhona came back into the room smiling at her. Aislinn nodded back. She had figured. She sat there trying to decide how she felt about the situation. It wasn't like the entire pack didn't know they were already mated at this point. They were all playing along with the pretense that Cullen and Aislinn still needed the ceremony. But it really had come to the point where it was entirely appearances. Most everyone was grinning and laughing about it when they thought no one was listening.

The one time she had walked into the great room while Terrick had been trying to turn the fact that they had jumped mating protocol into an issue, she had heard several of the others telling him to can it. Aislinn had even talked to Sarah about canceling the whole ceremony thing. But Sarah said it was more a matter of pack unity at this point than whether or not it needed to be done. To some extent it was their penance for having gone about things on their own. Besides they hadn't had much luck with having a good time lately and now that problems were solved they needed a good outlet.

Rhona stood there looking at the wheels turning behind Aislinn's blue eyes. "This is a good thing," she said as if she was trying to convince Aislinn.

Aislinn snapped into the moment. "I know. Cullen's going to be trilled." He put so much effort into to it after all, she thought with some annoyance. Then suddenly another thought occurred to her. "How many," she said already wincing.

Rhona smiled again. She had Aislinn lean back and she pressed on her still relatively flat stomach. Then she pulled out a strange looking box with a speaker on it and a cord that lead to a kinda probey looking thing on the end. Rhona squirted some gooey stuff on Aislinn's stomach and then pressed the probe around. The speaker on the small box started making swishy noises. Then she moved the probe around to the other side of Aislinn's stomach. "As far as I can tell only two."

At first Aislinn was relieved. Everyone kept calling pregnancies around here liters and that implied like six puppies. Two sounded great compared to that. Then the statement sunk in. "What do you mean 'as far as you can tell'?"

"Well it's an imperfect science. In the end there might be more than two. But it looks like there are only the two. I'm only hearing two heartbeats."

Aislinn felt a kind of pleased feeling come over her all of a sudden. "Those were heartbeats?"

Rhona nodded and her eyes sparkled. This was really the best part of her job. She loved delivering babies. "Do you want to hear it again?"

Aislinn nodded and Rhona ran the instrument over the gooey stuff on her stomach again. Aislinn felt her own heart flutter a bit when Rhona found the swishy noises again. "There's one," she said and then moved the probe. "There's the other one."

A small smile played on Aislinn's lips. "I suppose we should really get through the mating ceremony then," she said with a guilty look.

Rhona laughed. "Yeah, that might be good." She shook her head. "If you come back tomorrow afternoon I might have the ultrasound fixed. Sorry, it's on the fritz at the moment. I'm getting it looked at sometime this afternoon."

"It's only been a month. What are you going to look at?"

Rhona turned to Aislinn only just realizing that Aislinn might not be familiar with how lycan pregnancies go. "Um, well they'll be born in about half the time of a normal human pregnancy. So if you take nine months and turn that into four and a half, then you're looking at being closer to three months along human-wise right now."

Aislinn was staring a bit wide-eyed. "Is there anything else I need to know about this?"

"Not that I can think of right now. Make sure to start eating more. I know you've been feeling sick, but I don't want you losing any more weight. If you have any more questions I'll be happy to answer them."

Aislinn nodded at the first comment and then shook her head at the second.

"Alright then. You're all done for now. Go get some lunch." Rhona smiled at her. Aislinn wasn't the first woman to leave the infirmary in shock after having been told she was pregnant. Rhona was pretty sure, based on the smile she got when Aislinn heard the heartbeats, that she'd come around relatively quickly. Then she started chuckling to herself as she imagined Cullen a father.

***

Aislinn was stepping out of the elevator on the 13^th floor as Cullen was stepping in. They both gave each other a long suffering look. Neither knew what the other's problem was but they were both relatively unhappy at the moment. Aislinn was annoyed with that because if she hadn't been so concerned about what was happening to her she would have know what was bothering Cullen.

"Lunch," he asked.

Aislinn nodded. So he backed her into the elevator and hit the button for the lobby and the Taigh-Oèsda. Aislinn sighed heavily. She had recently been thinking that she was eating too much rich food since she had access to the town's best steak house on a nightly basis. But she figured that it didn't matter now. At least not for another three months. She suddenly put her hand on her stomach as she thought about that. I'm going to be a mother in three months? She was careful to keep that thought to herself.

Cullen stared at her and wondered opening what was going through her mind to have her looking so distressed. "Aislinn?"

She snapped her head up and dropped her hand from her stomach. "Yeah?"

He stared into her eyes. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," she said unconvincingly.

"Okay. I don't believe you. But okay." He was annoyed. "Well I'm upset because Cadifor wants you to take Jenna out to the circle and let her talk to Brennus. See how easy that was?"

"What," she said as if she didn't know what he was getting at.

"Me telling you what the problem was. But you could have found that out from me without me saying it out loud," he said with the annoyance leaking though his voice.

"Cullen," she said in a kind of pleading way. "I'm okay. I am. I just need to think about this a minute. Then I'll tell you. Just I need to think first."

Cullen looked deep into her eyes. She could feel him probing her head for reassurance. "Alright," he said with genuine concern.

She kissed him. "I love you," she said.

Cullen melted a little. He couldn't be upset with her when she said that. He sighed and kissed her back. They walked out of the lobby and headed for the restaurant, hand in hand. There was a pretty omega at the door and she held it open for Cullen and Aislinn. The Taigh-Oèsda had only just opened for the day. Cullen and Aislinn took their usual booth without waiting for the hostess and were immediately given menus that they didn't look at, placed their orders and then stared at each other for a minute.

Aislinn cleared her throat. She knew he'd be thrilled about it. She didn't know why she was having such a hard time saying it. "So when do I deal with Jenna?"

"We're meeting Cadifor tomorrow noon. I wanted to deal with it before the mating ceremony. You still do want to do the mating ceremony right?" He was guessing at what was upsetting her. "If it's bothering you that much…"

"No, Cullen." She wasn't going to be able to keep it to herself. She wasn't going to be able to think. He could feel her upset and her blocking and he wasn't going to let it go. "The ceremony's fine. I wouldn't do that to you after all the setup and time. Besides I'm getting used to the idea." She took a deep breath. He was staring at her with more and more concern. The waitress came back smiling sweetly at them. Everyone seemed to be smiling sweetly at them. It was driving her nuts. Maybe it's the hormones. Aislinn watched the girl retreat from the table to go check on their order. "Cullen I'm pregnant," she blurted out as soon as the girl disappeared into the kitchen. Then she turned her head to look at him and see how he was reacting.