Stripe for Love: Paranormal Surprise Pregnancy Tiger Shifter Romance (Shifter Grove Brides Book 6) Read Online Free

with a mate he chose for himself—to know that he was understanding far too much about the situation already.
    “I found her,” he said, his voice breaking a little.
    “The girl who tracked you down now?”
    “Yup,” Atlas said, picking up the beer and drinking long and hard before putting it down again. “And I let her get away.”
    “Well, she’s coming here now, right? There it is, your shot at happiness.”
    “My only shot at happiness,” Atlas commented glumly.
    He’d wanted a family, always. It was what kept him with his previous streak for so long—his inability to choose a possibly loveless future with children over none at all. There was so much he could teach and share with his young, to show them that tradition didn’t have to rule their lives as much as their heritage might tell them. But ultimately, he had chosen the option to run instead of giving in to a lifetime of misery.
    It was blind, dumb fate that had brought him Layla together at the right time. But wasn’t that how fate always worked?
    “It doesn’t have to be so dire. But if that’s what makes you move, sure, why not? It’s your only shot. What are you going to do about it?” Slate asked, cocking a brow at him.
    “Probably gonna finish this beer,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders, earning him a grin from his friend.
    “And then?”
    “Probably gonna go call my girl. You straight about doing the trips for me, if I ask?” Atlas queried, lifting his eyes from the glass rather painfully and slowly.
    Lately it had felt like everything in his life was a damn struggle. Even coming to Shifter Grove and finding people like him, droves of them, refugees from the lives they had led before, from what their packs, clans, and streaks had forced on them, hadn’t made it much better. He now understood that all the while, he had had a burning twitch in his heart, something gnawing away at him. He’d let Layla go. And if he had to do it again, it just might kill him.
    “Of course,” Slate said, clapping Atlas on the shoulder. “Anyone will tell you that I’m a sucker for a good love story around here. And Shifter Grove thankfully has plenty enough of those.”
    Slate gave him a beaming smile, one that Atlas was sure was supposed to incite confidence in him. It didn’t quite do the trick, though Atlas appreciated the effort. He thrust out his hand to Slate and they shook on it, a deal made between men of equal standing, no matter how much money one or the other of them made, or how big of a streak they’d come from before Shifter Grove. Here, they were men like any other and past achievements meant very little. Only what a man could do with his future would be the measuring stick he could live and die by.
    Atlas hoped that he could one day look back at his and feel that everything he’d done had been worth it. Including living without Layla for a year and a half.

Four

Layla
    I t was a chilly day in Idaho when Layla boarded a plane in Idaho Falls, after having gotten another from Seattle before that. Adrian had been sleeping for most of the way—a perfect angel when he was usually a supreme little demon—and that meant that Layla was left alone with her thudding heart and the endless questions within her.
    Would he like her? Would she like him? Had he changed much? What would he think of the baby? Would she leave Shifter Grove soon after she got there, seeing the disappointment and regret in the eyes of a man she’d built a pedestal for in her mind?
    Her throat was dry when the tall pilot with the playful smile helped her and Adrian into his little plane and closed the hatch behind them. She’d seen the way he’d looked at her, as if measuring her up against some sort of a measuring stick, and then at her son, a wry, but not unfriendly smirk appearing on his lips.
    Layla had frowned the moment she’d seen it, but she hadn’t pried and asked what it was about. And he hadn’t offered any explanation either, but the whole