I laughed. She laughed through the tears, wet, messy, her face a wreck. Alex kicked between us.
“I’m going to be good at this,” she said. Not a question. A decision.
“You already are.”
She tucked back into my chest. I held her on the bedroom floor with her tears on my shirt and my hand on the belly where our son was doing somersaults and I thought: this. This is what I almost lost. This woman, this life, this floor. I will burn the world down before I let anyone take it.
The next morning I was making coffee. Andrea was still upstairs. The hum from yesterday was still in my chest, the gray wolf’s bow, the pack’s cautious acceptance, Andrea’s face when Brennan said Luna.
Luca came through the back door without knocking. His face killed every good feeling I had.
“What?”
“George Ashtor issued a formal challenge. This morning. Witnesses at the pack hall.”
I set the coffee pot down carefully because if I didn’t I was going to shatter it.
“Seventy-two hours,” Luca said. “Accept or forfeit.”
“Forfeit isn’t a goddamn option.”
“I know. Conrad worked the old families for weeks. George has the junior Alphas. Lorraine coordinated the timing.”
“Because I just introduced Andrea.”
“Because you were happy, Finn. She wanted to hit you at your highest.”
The rage was instant. White-hot, my wolf slamming against my ribs, wanting to shift, wanting to find George right now and end this before it started. Lorraine watched me stand in the sun with Andrea yesterday. Watched an elder bow to her. Calculated the exact moment it would hurt the most and sent her brother in.
I breathed through it. Rage was useless in strategy.
“How many behind him?”
“Fifteen junior Alphas. Handful of old families. Not enough to sway the pack but enough to legitimize it.”
“And when I win?”
Luca caught thewhen.“The Ashtors are done. Permanently.”
I gripped the counter. George was young, hungry, trained. Not my equal but unpredictable. Hungry wolves did stupid,dangerous things, and stupid dangerous things could kill you if you weren’t ready.
Upstairs, Andrea’s footsteps. Bedroom to bathroom. Water running. She was awake. She’d come down soon, see my face, read it instantly because she read me better than anyone alive.
I told her no more secrets. I meant it.
“I’ll tell Andrea,” I said. “Then we plan.”
43
— • —
Andrea
I smelled coffee before I hit the bottom step, which was normal. Finneas had been making it every morning since I moved in, a habit he picked up in Whitebrook that stuck. What wasn’t normal was the second voice in the kitchen, low, urgent, cut off the second my foot hit the creaky stair.
I came around the corner. Finneas was at the counter with a mug he wasn’t drinking. Luca was across from him, jacket still on, car keys in his hand like he’d walked in two minutes ago and hadn’t bothered to set anything down.
They both looked at me and the conversation they’d been having died so fast I could almost hear it hit the floor.
