Silence.
Artem turned his head and looked at me. "Gregor."
"You know I’m right." My voice stayed low. It usually did. "He will use her if he can. The baby too. You most of all."
Artem’s jaw flexed. He looked away toward the cot in the corner, half-built and waiting. "We’ll handle it."
Ivan scrubbed a hand over his face. "That is not a plan."
No one answered because there was no answer worth giving. The Pakhan would learn. Men like him always did. And when he did, he would come with smiles, contracts, threats, or guns. Possibly all four.
The bathroom door opened. Maeve came out with damp hair, a scrubbed face, and a look on her face that told us that she knew she had walked into a problem. She took one look at us and sighed. "I thought you’d have gone to The George by now."
"Against all odds we’re staying," Ivan said.
She rolled her eyes and climbed into bed, dragging the covers to her chin. Fergus leapt up after her at once, circled twice, and planted himself at her feet like a devoted guard.
Artem stood without a word and moved closer, settling on the floor beside the bed instead of the far wall. Ivan followed with a theatrical groan as the sofa rejected him for a second time. I remained at the door. Some habits were older than language.
Maeve looked at all three of us in turn. Long enough to count. Long enough to feel. Then she reached over and switched off thelamp. Streetlight spilled in through the thin curtains, laying pale bars across the floor.
"Goodnight, Gregor," she said softly into the dark.
I was not good at soft things. Or answering soft things. "Night," I said anyway.
There was a small pause. Then, from the bed, "You’re all ridiculous."
Ivan chuckled. "And yet you never screamed for us to leave."
Maeve didn’t answer, but I heard the smile in the silence that followed.
Fergus lifted his head, looked once toward the door to make sure I was still there, and went back to sleep.
For the first time in nine months, I let myself believe we might not be too late. That maybe this cramped little flat above a cafe, with its murderous sofa and impossible omega and suspicious dog, was the first place any of us had been honest in a very long time.
6
Maeve
The flat was toosmall for silence.
I lay in the dark listening to three alphas breathe in a room meant for one pregnant omega and a dog with a superiority complex. Ivan was out cold. Gregor was still by the door because apparently he planned to stand guard until he turned into part of the furniture. And Artem was awake. I knew it without looking. His scent was too bright, too restless. Champagne and storm-clouds that had made it hard to think since the second they walked through my door.
My body had spent nine months pretending it was coping.
Tonight it gave up.
The baby rolled, then kicked hard enough to make me suck in a breath. I pressed my hand to my stomach.
“Easy,” I whispered. “I know. Your fathers are here. You can stop throwing a party about it.”
He did not stop.
If anything, he seemed encouraged.
I closed my eyes and tried to will myself asleep, but my mind had other plans. Artem’s hand shaking when he touched my stomach earlier. Ivan looking at me like I was something he’d lost and somehow got back. Gregor, silent and immovable, as if he’d decided nobody was getting past him to reach me.
Then Prague pushed in, because of course it did. Heat. Panic and running.
