Page 101 of Pack Baby for the Silver Foxes

“No heat making the decision for you,” I said.

“No.”

“No pain.”

“No.”

“No thinking you owe us because of the babies.”

Her eyes flashed. “I’m an omega but I don’t owe anyone my body.”

Relief hit so hard I nearly smiled. “Good.”

Lincoln made a rough sound under his breath.

Mary looked at him, and the scent of her slick deepened enough to make his expression go still.

I stepped into the room first, then moved aside so Lincoln could follow. Mary closed the door behind us.

Blankets piled toward the headboard. Our clothes tucked through them. My scarf beneath the pillow. Lincoln’s hoodie curled along one side. The ultrasound photos sat on the bedside table beneath a glass paperweight.

Two grainy little lives.

My throat tightened as Damien came to me, unwelcome and sharp.

If he knew we were here, in this room, with Mary, he would see only betrayal.

Perhaps that was what it was. The thought struck through me cold enough to make my scent pull inward.

Mary noticed. “Hudson?”

I looked at her and saw Mary. Not a crisis, not Callum McCarthy’s daughter, not the mother of our children in some abstract future I could manage from a distance.

Bare feet on the rug. Robe falling off one shoulder. Blue eyes searching my face.

“I’m here,” I said.

“You went somewhere.”

“For a second.”

“Do you want to stop?” That she asked nearly undid me.

Lincoln looked at me, his body still but his attention fierce.

I crossed to Mary and stopped close enough to touch, though not touching yet. “No. I want to be honest that this is complicated.”

Her face tightened.

I caught her chin before she could retreat into the wrong conclusion. “Not because of you.”

“Everyone says that right before it’s absolutely because of me.”

“It’s because I love a young man who hurt you, and I’m angry with him. It’s because he’ll be hurt by this, and that matters. It’s also because I want you so badly I’m having trouble remembering why any of that should be allowed to make me step away.”

Mary’s breath caught.

Lincoln was quiet behind me.