Page 155 of Savage Surrender

Weller’s chest moves beneath my cheek.

“Ignore Megan,” I tell him, pulling back and leaving the top button of his shirt undone. “Everything is perfectly fine. Take a few minutes. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

His hand closes around my hip before I can step away. “Are you worried?”

The pharmacy bag seems to appear between us even though it’s still downstairs.

“No.” I shrug. “Nothing about my body suggests I’m pregnant.”

“You can tell me if you are.”

“A little,” I admit. “Not because I think it’s positive. Because everyone keeps acting like a plastic stick is about to issue a binding decision on the rest of our lives.”

His thumb moves once against my hip. “It isn’t.”

“Tell that to the hostage negotiation happening in our kitchen.”

“Ezra is managing it.”

“That’s not comforting. She’s his weakness.”

I kiss him before he can make the reassurance worse, then leave him with his open collar and the fortune he refuses to keep.

Megan is waiting outside the downstairs bathroom with the pharmacy bag clenched in one fist. She pinches the soft part of my arm. “Get in the bathroom, bitch.”

There is no reason to expect anything except one line.

My hand still shakes when I put the test on the counter.

Megan sets the timer on her phone and turns it facedown. “Do you want a distraction?”

“Tell me why you were trying to ruin Freddie’s cobbler.”

“It needed depth, but sadly Ezra interfered. You know he’s the fun police.”

She sits on the edge of the tub, stretching one foot into the narrow space between us. I stay by the sink because sitting feels like it would make this more serious, and I am being extremely normal about the whole thing. Normal people stare at bathroom tile hard enough to memorize the faint gray veins. Normal people listen to everyone in the next room attempt not to listen.

No one is talking now.

“They’re terrible at this,” I whisper.

“Ezra told them to leave us alone. Owen asked him to define alone.”

I cover my mouth, but the laugh escapes anyway. “What did he say?”

“That if he could hear you breathing, he was too close. Owen called that, and I quote, ‘fucking stupid.’”

The timer hasn’t gone off. I reach for Megan’s phone, and she slides it behind her hip.

“It has been at least four minutes.”

“Ninety seconds.” Megan gives me a flat look. “Your concept of time is broken.”

We wait. The house shifts around us: a cabinet closes, someone crosses the kitchen, and the ocean pushes against the shore beyond the dunes. I can smell all four alphas through the door, each scent too sharp beneath the coffee and warm fruit. Ezra’s herb-garden calm cuts through them. It would be funny if my stomach weren’t pulling tighter by the second.

The phone vibrates.

Megan stands but doesn’t reach for the test. “Your call.”