Page 35 of Pack Baby for the Silver Foxes

“Good.”

She turned her head to him. “Don’t look so pleased. It could come back.”

“It will, and we’ll deal with it.”

She turned from him, and looked at me. The vulnerability in her face came and went fast, but it was there. She smiled. “You keep saying things like that.”

I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to feed her. I wanted to put every blanket in the hotel around her and stand guard at the door until the world learned better. Instead, I lifted my hand and rubbed my thumb over her swollen lip.

“Stay,” I said.

Her mouth curved faintly. “I can’t go anywhere until this knot deflates, genius.”

“After that.” We told her she was ours but she had to be the one who made the decision to stay. She was only twenty-three, and hardly mentioned scents or the future, which wasn’t unusual for us. We never expected to ever find our scented mate. But I would choose her.

Her smile faded. The fear, waiting under all that sass.

Hudson didn’t rush to fill the silence. Neither did I.

Mary looked around at the nest she had insisted she didn’t need. Her fingers found the edge of my sweater and curled into it.

“Just for the heat,” she said.

It wasn’t enough, but it was everything she could give. And we gave our word.

I bent and kissed her shoulder. “Just for the heat,” I agreed.

Hudson’s gaze met mine over her head. We both knew the lie for what it was. Because Mary had walked into our room dragging a blanket and pretending she only needed the pain gone.

But her scent had found ours. Nobody had spoken about it, but her body knew. And so did ours.

Chapter 7

Mary

Two days later, I woke up with my face pressed into a man’s wet chest and the disturbing thought that the wetness was my drool.

This wasn’t how I liked to begin mornings. I preferred my regret to begin with a discussion over a coffee.

The room was dim, with curtains drawn against the rain that ticked softly at the window, or maybe it was sleet. The light of the hotel lamp by the bed was low, and a tray sat on the desk with a covered plate, next to it was a jug of water, a bowl of fruit, and a tiny vase holding three white roses.

I blinked slowly and tried to identify my surroundings without moving.

The chest beneath my cheek belonged to Lincoln. I knew that before I opened my eyes properly. He smelled warmer than Hudson. Whiskey first, then blackberry, with rain turned soft under his skin. The silver in his beard scratched lightly against the top of my head where he had tucked his chin over me, one heavy arm curved around my waist like a safety rail.

Behind me, Hudson’s hand rested low on my stomach.

Not possessive. Not pushing. Just there, broad and warm over the place where the cramps of my heat had spent two days trying to turn me inside out. Not that I remember much in my haze.

Hudson’s breath moved evenly against the back of my neck. His clean rain scent wrapped around me, and then the blackberry in his scent slipped through whenever I shifted.

My own scent had changed again. The frantic edge had faded, and the violet no longer crashed through the room like it had something to prove. It lingered now, softer under the blackberry and rain, threaded with their scents. Did that mean something? I remember the smell of violet, and the way it got stronger as my heat progressed.

My heat was subsiding, and so was the violet. Is that what happens to true scent matched alphas and omegas? I sniffed Lincoln lightly, checking for the smell. It was there but much lighter.

They are not scent matches, Mary. Your common sense has yet to reappear.

I lay very still and took inventory.