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“It’s not bad, and you’re not in trouble,” Troy assured, “and it’s still the responsibility of every pack member to inform the alphas of their guests, human or otherwise.”
Both alphas shot me a firm frown.
I shrank into myself. “Yeah, that was totally my bad.”
Troy beamed a lot quicker than Blake. Soon, the disappointment and regret I originally felt dissipated, and I was left with the consolation of their presence.
“You’ll have to do some community service as penance,” Troy warned. “We can’t have the rest of the pack thinking that broken rules go unpunished.”
I groaned as I sat up a little straighter, feeling less slumped and more interested in what else the alphas had to say to Anita.Maybe they’ll tell her that shifter babies need their mothers for the first three months of their life.
Hope and grief battled it out in my chest. Part of me was torn about how I felt—about how much I wanted Anita to say with me after she gave birth—and another part of me was trying desperately to be reasonable. I was a capable adult who had signed a contract about how to conduct myself.
I’d done just about everything under the sun to break that contract short of tearing it in two. By goddess, I wanted very much to do that, to feel the paper shred under my fingers.
But was that whatshewanted?
Anita nudged me out of my thoughts. “Liam?”
“I’m right here, Ani.” I rested my hand over hers. “Is there something else you need to tell us, Alphas?”
The alphas traded a silent and expressionless look, appearing to be communicating in a secret language that no one else could discern. After a moment, they both nodded and turned to us.
Troy motioned to us with both hands. “We’re happy to announce that we’ve heard your spirits call each other by name.”
I blinked once, twice for good measure, and then leaned in real close. “What?”
Blake smiled. “How else did you think we found out about her presence? We heard your names.”
“I thought Fred told you.” I used my free hand to catch my head. “I thought he spilled it under pressure or something.”
Troy laughed. “He did—and only because we were certain that Anita is your mate.”
Anita clasped my hand hard enough to bruise my skeleton. “We’re mates? Are you sure about that? Because I’m just carrying his baby to—”
Blake waved away the explanation. “How you started doesn’t matter. What matters now is that you both embrace this news with the same joy that we’ve delivered it.”
Troy beamed again while reaching for our clasped hands. “Rejoice, Anita and Liam. You’re mates. You’ll be mates for the rest of your lives.”
Chapter 16 - Anita
My tongue shriveled up in my mouth. It felt like all the saliva got boiled right out of my mouth and I was left chewing on a ball of cotton.
Mates?
I struggled to keep hold of reality. Those weird shadows were closing in on me, making it seem like I was peering at the kind alphas through a tunnel. I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came forth. I just kept opening and closing my mouth like a fish out of water.
Eventually, Liam wrapped an arm around my shoulder. He held me firmly enough to keep me from falling over. Had I been teetering or something? Knowing me, I was about to faint again, and that was when I realized I hadn’t eaten in quite a few hours.
Oops.“Excuse me, would you?”
“Ani, you need to—”
I twisted out from under his arm and went upstairs to the bathroom—to my bathroom. Rather, it was the guest bathroom, but it was my bathroom while I was here, so I would call it mine. I grabbed a packet of graham crackers from the counter, the ones I kept in here for whenever I got super nauseous, and munched on a few.
A few minutes of chewing calmed me down. I stared at my reflection, surprised by the smile on my face. Goodness, I’d probably looked funny to all three men downstairs, smiling like this with such big eyes. I might have looked crazy. Maybe I was crazy, or maybe I’d been sleeping this whole time and I just embarrassed myself in front of Liam’s guests.
But when I finally left the bathroom and went to the top of the staircase, I listened to the three men whispering in the kitchen. Their voices barely carried loud enough for me to hearthem even with the whole house as quiet as it was. Memphis didn’t seem to be in my bedroom or Liam’s bedroom. He might have been hiding under the couch.
