Mates: Werewolf BBW Romance (Running With Alphas Book 8) by Viola Rivard

Chapter 1
    “ T aylor . Hey, Taylor. Taylor. Taylor.”
    Taylor lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling. A black spider had made its home in the corner nearest to her head. It sat perched in its discordant tapestry, waiting for food, but was collecting only dust.
    She had never been a fan of spiders. Snakes, spiders, and pretty much anything that had the potential to deliver a poisonous bite, they creeped her out. During a brief stint in Girl Scouts, she’d gone on a summer camping trip where they’d explained, with a helpful mnemonic, which colors were indicative of poison.
    Red on black is okay, Jack. Red on yellow kills a fellow .
    “But what about black widows?” she mused aloud.
    “What? Taylor? Can you hear me?”
    Taylor’s gaze shifted to her window. Curtains obscured her view to outside, but she could easily make out Lark’s peering silhouette. The raccoon shifter tapped on the window again, and Taylor tried to work up the motivation to respond to her.
    “I’m trying to sleep,” Taylor grunted. She didn’t raise her voice, but she knew that she didn’t have to.
    “We were thinking that maybe you should get some sunshine,” Lark said.
    “I don’t see how that would help me sleep,” was Taylor’s flat response.
    Taylor didn’t have to be able to see past the curtains to know that Lark was squirming. She expected the shifter to give up, but Lark surprised her.
    “You’ve been sleeping a lot lately.” She hesitated, then added, “I know you miss Alder, but—”
    “You don’t know anything,” Taylor snapped. “Now leave me alone and let me sleep.”
    There was a moment of silence, and then Lark mumbled an apology and left the window. Taylor felt a pang of remorse at her absence. It was nothing unusual by now. In the past two months, she’d made a habit of duplicity—pushing her friends away one moment and then missing them the next. Taylor recognized that she was depressed; she just didn’t know what to do about it.
    One of the babies kicked and Taylor cringed. Their movements no longer felt like soft flutters or popping corn, but had evolved into kicks and jabs, typically directed at one another, but occasionally at her already sore ligaments. She rubbed her belly, mostly in an effort to push away whichever limb was assaulting her pelvis.
    Lark had been at least partially right. Taylor was depressed about Alder. It had been two months since he’d been gone, and in that time the mountains had been repeatedly battered by snowstorms. Given the brutal and capricious weather, everyone predicted he wouldn’t be back until the winter ended, which could be yet another two months.
    But Alder was only part of the problem. The wait might have been bearable, had Taylor at least had Hale. She and Hale should have been fine—after all, they’d worked out all of their issues, and Hale had even confessed that he was in love with her. Yet since his brother had been gone, Hale had been more distant than ever. And that was saying a lot, because Hale could do aloof and indifferent like nobody’s business.
    With both of her mates absent in one way or another, Taylor felt horribly alone. For a while, she had coped by crying. Then, she’d gone through a phase where she moped around feeling sorry for herself. Now, she just felt numb.
    The baby kicked again, and Taylor rolled over onto her side in an effort to shift its position. Her only escape from the overbearing depression had been her unborn children. No matter how sad she felt, they could always make her smile, or make her break into an impromptu serenade. But lately, even they had not been enough to lift her glum mood.
    As she transitioned into her third trimester, her children had begun to feel like another burden. Her body felt huge and ungainly, and her back ached constantly. The discomfort was rapidly outpacing the joy, and her symptoms were only exacerbating her depression.
    A quick knock preceded her front door opening. Glenn stepped inside,