Page 110 of Pack Baby for the Silver Foxes

I took Mac onto the terrace because he asked me to help him find “evidence.”

Evidence of what, he wouldn’t say.

Sienna, my new bodyguard, arrived today. Sienna had dark hair cut to her jaw, a face that looked unimpressed by men, and the calmest walk I’d ever seen on a person who carried a weapon.

Mac crouched beside a large planter of lavender and pointed at a muddy mark on the pale stone. “That’s a clue.”

“It might be a footprint. A very small footprint.”

“It’s from a villain.”

“Does your villain have very small feet?”

He looked at the mark again. “Maybe he’s an alien.”

I crouched beside him, one hand on the bench to steady myself because bending had become an activity rather than a movement.

“A purple alien,” I said.

Mac nodded. “Mama reads books with aliens on the front. They’re blue and purple.”

“Does she now?”

“Yeah, she hides them under her nest.”

“Ahh! Interesting. You really are good at investigating.”

I stayed crouched for a moment longer than necessary, my hand moving without thought to my belly. There was nothing dramatic to feel yet. No kicks. No proof beneath my palm. Only the knowledge from a screen.

Hudson came out five minutes later with his coat over one arm.

“Would you like to go for a walk?” he asked. “Maeve said Artem and Gregor are on their way to collect her and the children.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Is this a trap?”

“A very gentle one.”

“Those are often the worst kind.”

He helped me up without making a production of it. Then he waited while Mac shouted goodbye to the evidence and ran inside to tell Maeve the alien from her secret book had been near the lavender.

I said my goodbyes.

Sienna fell in behind us as Hudson and I took the elevator down and walked along the river. London opened around us in wet sidewalks, black railings, glass towers, and water moving beside us with a heavy silver gleam.

“Lincoln wanted to come,” Hudson said.

“But you elbowed him into a closet?”

“I asked for twenty minutes alone.”

“Very restrained. He accepted.”

“Yes.”

“Did you put it in writing?”

“No.”