Prowled Darkness (Dante's Circle Book 7) Read Online Free Page B

presence known. Just a kick. You don’t have to freak out.”
    Malik’s tongue went dry. He swallowed hard so he could speak. “It’s my first kick,” he whispered. Something else she’d said triggered his mind. “You don’t know the sex of the baby?”
    “I wanted it to be a surprise,” she answered. “I don’t know why now that I’m trying to figure out the nursery and everything. But I just went green and yellow.” She shrugged. “And as for the kick? You could have felt them all if you’d been here, but you weren’t.” With that parting shot, she slowly made her way to the front door.
    Malik let out a breath and closed the car door, locking it behind him. Well, he’d gone a little too fast just then, but it wasn’t as if he’d done this before.
    In fact, he wasn’t aware of anyone who had this particular problem. It wasn’t every day that a lion shifter next in line to the throne, dealing with a possible uproar and war in his Pride, found himself a soon-to-be father with a not-so-human potential mate after he’d left her all alone because he’d been forced to hurt her. There weren’t any manuals for this sort of thing, so Malik was just going to have to wing it and pray to the goddess he didn’t screw everything up.
    Eliana let herself in and waved to the living room where there were two large chairs and a couch that looked lived in rather than ornate like the ones in his current home. He preferred these.
    “Take a seat, I need to pee.” With that, she left the room and walked toward a hallway that must go to the bedrooms. Malik ran a hand over his face.
    Okay, as long as he didn’t growl or roar, he should be okay. But telling a male lion not to be a lion wasn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world.
    He sank down into the cushions of the couch and tried to catch his breath. He was going to be a father . He’d barely had time to contemplate the fact that Eliana could be his because of her circumstances, and now there was a baby—little squirt—added to the mix.
    He snorted at the nickname. That sounded like Eliana’s doing and he liked it. A lot.
    “What are you snorting at?” Eliana asked when she came back into the room.
    Malik immediately got to his feet and walked toward her. She froze but didn’t put her hand up to keep him away. “I was just thinking how much I like the name ‘little squirt.’”
    She blushed again but didn’t say anything. It seemed she was waiting for him to speak or at least explain himself.
    He sighed and reached out to cup her cheek. This time, she pushed him away. “Eliana.”
    “No. You don’t get to do this. You can’t just come back into my life after crushing me. I don’t know why you had to leave, but I’m out, Malik. I’ll let you say your piece, but I already made up my mind.” Tears filled her eyes and she blinked them away. “I had to do that because of the baby and I can’t just change it because you’re back. It’s not fair to me, and it’s damn sure not fair to our child.”
    He shook his head. “I had to go, Eliana.”
    “You told me that it meant nothing to you. That I meant nothing to you.”
    He winced, remembering the words he’d been forced to say when he’d forced her out of his place. “It was the only way I could think of to shut you out of my life. I had to go. I know you don’t understand, and I know I hurt you more than I can bear, but I hurt myself, too.”
    She flipped him off. “Boo hoo. You hurt yourself? Well, screw you.”
    He took her hand and kissed her middle finger. When she let out a growl of her own, he let her hand fall. “My kind, the lions, cannot mate with humans. It’s not only forbidden, but the mating mark doesn’t work. It’s not prejudice, it’s actually impossible. So when I started to fall in love with you—” She opened her mouth to speak, and he put his fingers over her lips. “Let me finish. When I started to fall in love with you, I knew I had to leave because it would