She studied me over her tea. “You’re in love with her.”
“Yes.”
“That’s not always enough.”
“No. But the fated bond is. And so is she.”
She told me she’d think about it, which meant she was leaning yes but wanted me to sweat.
Aldric was the easiest. I barely got through my opening before he held up his hand.
“I’ve met her. I spent twenty minutes talking to her after the last council session and she asked more questions about packgovernance than most Alphas bother with.” He paused. “She has my support.”
Two yes-es and one maybe. I’d take those odds.
I thought about Andrea. The way she looked this morning in the nursery doorway, wearing my shirt, belly round, laughing at me for briefing our son on pack politics. She knew about Lorraine at the perimeter because I’d shown her Luca’s text. She knew Margaret broke in. She’d handled both with more spine than half my council. But Conrad rallying twelve families behind closed doors, George recruiting Alphas like he was building an army, a formal challenge taking shape while she painted a nursery? She didn’t know that. And I wasn’t putting it on her. She was thirty weeks pregnant, happy for the first time in months, and I’d be damned if I shattered that again.
I’d handle this. I’d handled my father’s death at twenty-four with half the council questioning my authority. I could handle three Ashtors with a grudge.
I went back to my mansion and immediately went to find her.
Andrea was in the nursery with a paint roller, a color chart taped to the wall, and a smudge of yellow across her nose. She looked ridiculous and beautiful and the sight of her in that room, our son’s room, hit me the way it always did, right in the center of my chest.
“You’re late,” she said. “I started without you.”
“I can see that. You have paint on your face.”
“It’s a look. Don’t change the subject. Grab a roller.”
I took the roller from her because she shouldn’t be reaching above her head at thirty weeks and she protested immediately.
“I can paint a wall, Finneas.”
“I know you can. You’re also growing a human being. Let me do the high parts.”
“I’m pregnant, not incapacitated.”
“Sit in the chair. Direct me. You’re better at telling me what to do anyway.”
She narrowed her eyes but sat. And then she directed with the intensity of a field general.
“More on the left. No, my left. You’re leaving streaks. Slower. Slower than that.”
“If I go any slower I’m going backward.”
“Then go backward. I want even coverage.”
I painted. Got paint on my forearm, my shirt, my jaw somehow. She photographed each one with her phone, grinning behind the screen, and I gave her a look that was supposed to be stern but probably wasn’t because she was sitting in a chair in my oversized t-shirt with her belly round under the fabric and yellow paint on her nose and she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The messy hair, the bare feet tucked under her, the way she held the phone with both hands like documenting my paint disaster was the highlight of her week. My wolf was so content it was practically purring. I wanted to cross the room and kiss the paint off her nose and then keep going, but shewas directing me with the authority of a woman who would not tolerate interruptions to her nursery vision.
She caught me staring. “You’re dripping.”
I looked down. Paint on the floor. “Your fault.”
“How is that my fault?”
“You’re distracting.”
“I’m sitting in a chair.”
