Something flashed in her eyes, surprise maybe, or rage, and for a second I thought she might actually lunge at me and my whole body went cold. But she controlled it, the way she controlled everything, pulling the mask back into place.
“Get out,” I said. My voice didn’t shake. I was proud of that.
She held my gaze, five seconds, ten, and I didn’t blink. Buddy’s growl was audible now, low and continuous, and Margaret looked down at the dog with undisguised irritation.
She turned and left through a door behind the supply shelving, a narrow passage I didn’t know existed. I heard her footsteps fade, then nothing.
I stood in the reading nook with my heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat. My hands were shaking. My legs were shaking. The adrenaline was crashing through me in waves and I had to sit back down on the window seat before my knees gave out.
Buddy whined, pushed his whole body against my legs, his head in my lap. I wrapped my arms around his neck and held on. My eyes burned but I didn’t cry. I refused to cry because of that woman. She didn’t get my tears.
“Good boy,” I whispered into his fur. “Such a good boy.”
The baby kicked, hard, like he had something to say about what just happened. I put my hand on my belly.
“I know,” I told him. “Your grandmother is a piece of work.”
Finneas got back from the council meeting around five. I heard the front door, his footsteps in the hall, then he appeared in the living room doorway looking for me the way he always did when he came home, eyes scanning until they found me.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey. Sit down.”
His face changed. He knew my tones by now, could read the difference between casual and careful, and this was careful. He sat beside me on the couch.
“Your mother was here.”
His jaw locked. “What?”
“She came to the animal wing this afternoon. While you were at the council.”
“How the hell did she get in?”
“Through a passage behind the supply shelving. Leads to the garden. She said she knows every door in this estate, including the ones you don’t.” I kept my hand on my belly, kept my voice even. “She had a lot to say about bloodlines and tradition and how I’m weakening you. Standard villain monologue stuff.”
His eyes went bright, amber bleeding into the brown, and I could see the wolf pushing forward behind his face. He was already pulling his phone out.
“Did she touch you?”
“No. Buddy growled at her. She mostly just talked.”
“Did she threaten you?”
“She said ‘this isn’t over’ and then left through the same passage she came in through. Very dramatic exit.”
He was on the phone with Luca before I finished the sentence. I listened to him give orders: seal the passage, sweep the entire estate for other access points, overhaul the security rotation, double the perimeter patrol. His voice was flat in the way it got when he was furious and containing it, every word precise, leaving no room for questions.
He hung up and looked at me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Andrea.”
“I’m not going to pretend she didn’t scare me a little, because she did. She’s a damn Alpha shifter who broke into our house while I was reading with my feet up.” I leaned into him. “But I handled it.”
His mouth twitched despite the fury still on his face. He sat beside me, put his hand on my belly.
“She won’t get in again,” he said.
