Page 57 of Pack Baby for the Silver Foxes

“Probably.”

“He’ll think we’re choosing her.”

Hudson’s eyes came to mine.

That was the shape of it. Find her and hurt our son, or don’t find her and abandon our mate.

I wanted the world to be kinder than that.

“She gets a choice,” Hudson said.

“Yes, we don’t chase her into a corner.” My chest loosened for the first time all day. “But we need to find our mate.”

Hudson didn’t correct the word.

Chapter 11

Mary

Six weeks after getting the results that changed my life, I was sitting in the grass in Surrey with a wooden dinosaur in one hand, a plastic teacup in the other, and the dawning suspicion that motherhood was mostly being given objects by small people with no explanation.

Mac placed a blue block on my knee.

“That’s for the castle,” he said.

“Naturally.”

“Not that castle.” He pointed to the flower bed, where Mila was attempting to bury a wooden knight with the solemn focus of someone involved in serious land management. “The other one.”

“Ah,” I said. “The invisible castle.”

Mac looked at me with the same expression his mother gave when someone had said something foolish and she was deciding whether education was worth the effort.

“It’s not invisible,” he said. “It’s there.”

He pointed at a patch of grass which I looked at.

“Of course,” I said. “How embarrassing for me.”

Mac nodded, satisfied by my growth as a person, and ran toward Mila.

Mila immediately held up both hands. “No.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Mac said.

“No.”

“It’s my knight.”

“No.”

I leaned back on one hand and watched the negotiation collapse before it had properly begun. Children had a beautiful purity to their politics. No manifestos. No committee. Just direct refusal and an alarming willingness to play in damp soil.

The garden behind Maeve’s Surrey house looked like something I’d have resented on principle if I hadn’t been too tired. Wide lawn, old brick walls, climbing roses, beds full of lavender and glossy green shrubs, a stone path leading toward the orchard, and enough security discreetly tucked into the landscape to remind a person that cozy did not mean unguarded.

The late afternoon air smelled of cut grass, warm stone, and whatever expensive candle Maeve had burning inside because my sister had become a woman of choices, a woman who owned seasonal candles and a Russian security team.

I was happy for her, truly and mostly, which was enough to make the small, mean ache under my ribs feel guilty three times an hour instead of constantly.