We walked through the east wing of the giant house. I timed my breathing, trying to quiet my racing heart. Gage and Heath looked up sharply as we entered the elegant, wood-paneled library. Knox, who’d been pacing, turned around to look at us so fast he nearly tripped over his own feet.
The scent of the alphas I was fated to mate hit me like a wall, nearly choking me.
“Jez!” Knox said. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t prepared for this possibility. We don’t have a birth control shot on hand yet, but I can tell Bud to get us one; it shouldn’t take long.”
A strange sense of certainty settled over me, in direct opposition to Knox’s barely concealed panic. My right hand crept up to settle over my belly.
“Are you still going to mate me?” I asked, cutting off his torrent of words.
His jaw clicked shut in surprise. “Of course I am,” he said, after a slight pause.
I rubbed slow circles over my womb, which had already started to throb with a dull sort of ache.
“Then I don’t need birth control,” I said... imagining my belly swelling with new life that would actually be loved and protected. Children—pups—who would grow up knowing nothing but adoration from five adults. I knew without having to ask that each of us would give up our own life without a second’s hesitation to stand between our babies and danger.
Four pairs of shocked eyeballs landed on me. That same shock echoed through the mate bond, blowing past the walls I’d put up after my meltdown this morning. Worry flooded me, chasing away my brief flash of confidence.
“I mean,” I stuttered, “maybe you don’t want pups? I’m sorry, I should have asked first... I didn’t mean to assume—”
“Stop,” Gage said, recovering first. “Jez, just hold up for a minute. We’re surprised is all. Yes, I want pups. Can’t speak for the others.”
“We’re going to have pups?” Tony asked in a young-sounding voice. I could practically see the same thoughts speeding through his brain that had rushed through mine a minute ago.
Family.
Safety.
Nurture.
All the things we never got from our own families.
“We should have pups,” Heath said with certainty, surprising me.
A sense of wonder filtered through my connection with him and Gage, blossoming into giddy happiness.
I looked to Knox, who’d been very quiet during the exchange.
“I am... not against making a family—even though I never expected to have one. At least, not in the sense of having children,” he said carefully. “But I want to make very sure that this isyoutalking, Jez, and not your heat hormones talking.”
I frowned at him, irrationally incensed even though the rest of me understood that it was a reasonable question. We hadn’t talked about children at all before now. I’d pulled this bombshell out of nowhere, and it made sense that Knox would have concerns.
Tony ducked in before I could put words to what I was feeling.
“Knox, she’s not in heatyet. It’s considered patronizing to assume that omegas can’t make decisions for themselves, simply on the basis of being hormonal.”
I blinked at Tony. Had Ieverheard him directly chastise Knox like that before? He’d even stepped slightly in front of me, placing me behind his shoulder as though to shield me from Knox’s words.
I ducked past him—avoiding touch as I did so, because my nerves still itched and buzzed as though ants were marching over my skin.
“It’s okay, Tony,” I said. “He’s right to ask. Knox, I got angry just now, when you said that. But I can tell that the anger was caused by my hormones. I’m on edge because my heat is close; yet I can still think for myself. I can tell the difference between irrational feelings and rational thoughts. If we’re all mated... if we’re a pack... then I want to bring our pups into the world, so they can experience all the love we have to give them.”
Knox’s breath caught. His hand lifted almost convulsively to his chest, and I had the briefest flash of worry that he was having some kind of heart issue that the doctors hadn’t caught when he was in the hospital. But a moment later, he seemed to realize what he was doing and let his hand fall.
“I...” He hesitated and swallowed hard. “You should all know something about me that I’ve kept quiet over the years. My twin sister was taken by omega traffickers when she was twelve.”
Several intakes of breath broke the silence. Puzzle pieces quietly clicked into place in my mind, revealing a clearer picture of the alpha in front of me. My heart ached in sympathy with his.
“Losing Maria when we were both so young has shaped my life in a number of different ways,” he went on quietly.
