Sighing, Taryn hopped up onto the counter behind her. Immediately Trey spun to face her. “Be careful jumping around like that.”
Taryn double-blinked. “Oh my God, you’ve got to be kidding me. Chill, Flinstone. Grace, I need one of your magical coffees.”
“No, no coffee,” said Grace. “Caffeine’s not good for you during pregnancy.” As Grace then rambled on about all the other things Taryn wouldn’t be able to drink or eat, she felt her mood plummet.
“You look tired, baby. Want me to take you back to bed?”
She looked at him in sheer disbelief. “No, I don’t. None of you get to treat me like an invalid – let’s just clear that up right now.”
“It’s great to have some good news for a change,” said Brock with a smile. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been around any pups.” He turned to Kirk. “Well, son, aren’t you going to congratulate our Alphas?”
Kirk said nothing. Just sat next to an equally mute Hope looking kind of…defeated.
“She’s pregnant?” hissed Selma. “Oh. Great. Not only are we stuck with her, but we’ve got Warner blood polluting our pack!”
“Selma,” growled Trey, more protective of Taryn than ever before.
“Twelve weeks you said she’d be here! Twelve weeks! Then you try telling us she’s your true mate! I’ve waited for you to see the truth, waited for you to see that you’re wrong and she’s just fooling you so she can be Alpha fe -”
“You know, Selma,” began Taryn, interrupting her mid-rant, “you’re behaving like a drug-crazed Terrier trying to catch and chew off its own tail. Seriously, pursuing you’re mated Alpha is insane and suicidal. It really is time to get off the ‘Selma Gets Whatever She Wants’ plane and accept the facts. I am Trey’s mate, I am Alpha female here, and you don’t have a prayer of changing that. We’ve got enough things to worry about so stop with your tantrum or I’ll have to do what I like to call making my point in a way that no one can misinterpret. Others might refer to it as breaking your fucking nose.”
“That wouldn’t be so bad,” said Grace, sounding hopeful.
Selma refused to drop the matter. “Trey, how can you not see her for what she really is? Everything was fine here until she came along.”
Reminding himself that hitting females wasn’t a good thing, Trey released his frustration with a long exhale. “Well if you’re so unhappy, feel free to leave. In fact, you’re more than welcome to leave with Darryl tomorrow after the challenge. If there’s anything left of him. I can’t guarantee there will be.”
“M-maybe I will l-leave,” she replied, seeming to be truly shocked that Trey would choose Taryn over her. Why? “Maybe Hope and I w-will start our own p-pack.”
“I never said anything about Hope. If she wants to leave, she can…but it won’t be because you bullied her into it.”
Predictably, Selma stormed out of the room wearing the scowl from hell. For once, Hope didn’t follow her, making her loyalties clear. Kirk, too, remained where he was.
Taryn spent the next few hours being fussed over by almost the entire pack. At first, she was feeling pretty damn claustrophobic and had fought the urge to bash everybody’s skulls in with the cast iron frying pan. But when she was nicely placed on the reclining end of the humungous sofa with a mug of hot milk and a pack of cookies while Marcus massaged her shoulders and Dominic massaged her feet, she was thinking it was good to be a pregnant Alpha.
Then Trey had to go and mess it up. “I want you to stay here while I go to meet Lance about the challenge.” They had notified her father yesterday via the pack web about the challenge and arranged a meeting for this morning at Mo’s Diner.
She sat up straight in the recliner. “Oh hell no!”
“Baby, don’t fight me on this. You know it’s a good idea for you to remain home where you’ll be protected.”
“Alpha pairs deal with issues together, they go to meetings together.”
“It’s different now. You need to be careful, you’re having our baby.” God, it was weird saying that, but not in a bad way, which made it even weirder.
“Oh puhlease, you’d have said the same damn thing if I hadn’t been pregnant. You don’t get to use our baby as an excuse to keep me cooped up here. We both know that’s exactly what you’re doing.”
He tilted his head, conceding that. “Okay. So I would have said the same thing no matter what. It’s only because I want you safe. I don’t like you being near your father, even if he does seem to have a newfound respect for you.” She just stared at him, completely unmoved. “Taryn, you’ve got no idea just how protective and possessive my wolf is feeling right now. He’s not going to cope well with you being around strangers, and he’s really not going to like you being around a wolf who has repeatedly hurt you.”
“So now your wolf is getting the blame?”
“Taryn,” he groaned. “Your father isn’t going to be the only Alpha male there. He’s also bringing along ten very powerful Alphas from his collection of alliances. Ten wolves I don’t know or trust. Then there’ll also be whatever enforcers or bodyguards they each decide to bring along. That’s a lot of strange wolves. Is it really so unreasonable to ask you to stay here where you’ll be away from them? Is it really so unreasonable to want you to stay away from any possible danger?” She didn’t answer, just continued to stare at him blankly. “Taryn, are you even listening to me?”
“I pretended to, so let that be enough.”
“He has a point though, Taryn,” said Tao.
She raised an eyebrow at the traitor. “If I want your opinion, I’ll kick it out of you, okay?”
When Tao went to speak again, Dante put a hand on his shoulder and shook his head. “You should know by now that when she’s smiling like that it’s not a good sign and best to leave her alone.”
Suddenly Grace appeared and placed a glass in her hand. “Here, drink this. You need plenty of nutrients and lots of folic acid in your diet so -”
Taryn grimaced. “What the hell is that?”