Page 172 of Pack Baby for the Silver Foxes

I had said that. Last night, after Maeve sat on the end of my bed and asked if I wanted the gates kept closed forever, I had told her no. Not forever. I had said it because forever was too big a word to hand to fear.

Apparently, forever had arrived early and brought alphas.

“Are they...” My voice went odd, so I tried again. “Are they angry?”

Mac looked offended. “No.”

“No?” I repeated.

“They look sad.”

That was worse.

Mila babbled from the chair. She sounded like my grandmother when she’d been on the Jamaican Rum.

Mac nodded at her. “She says one looks like Daddy G when Fergus was sick.”

I closed my eyes. “Excellent. Thank you both for the devastating field report.”

Mac came closer. “Are you hiding?”

“No… Well a little,” I admitted.

“Mama says hiding is okay if bad people are coming. And then you should run to the safe room.”

“Your mama is wise.”

He nodded. “Are Hudson and Lincoln bad people? Do you want to go to the safe room?”

“No.” The answer came before fear could interfere.

Mac took a bite of biscuit. “Then why are you hiding?”

I looked at the paintings around the room. “Because sometimes good people can still hurt you.”

“Did they say sorry?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then why are you still up here?”

“Because I didn’t let them in.”

Mac considered that while Mila held out one hand toward him. He gave her the rest of the biscuit automatically, which she accepted as her due. Then he looked at me the way his mother does. “Mama says that’s when you tell them,” he said.

“Does she?”

“She tells Daddy G. He gets sad if she doesn’t.”

A great deal of adult wisdom sat inside the fact that Gregor, who looked as though he could uproot trees for sport, got sad when Maeve didn’t tell him things.

I sat on the edge of the bed. The babies shifted in my stomach. It wasn’t a proper movement. Too early for dramatic kicks, according to every pregnancy article I had read at three in the morning. But a flutter moved low inside me, or my body wanted me to think so because it was tired of my nonsense.

“What do you think?” I whispered to them.

Mila babbled.

“I was asking the babies, but thank you.”