Page 12 of Pack Baby for the Silver Foxes

Lincoln laughed. “Of course not, we’re going to the elevator and then to our room.”

I shouldn’t have laughed. It came out regardless, low and helpless.

Mary reached the elevator and pressed the button, one hand braced flat on the wall beside it, head down. Damp curls clung to the back of her neck. The scent around her had thickened, blackberry ripening, rain warming on skin. A floral note opened another fraction, and then violet caught at the back of my throat.

My lungs forgot their purpose.

Lincoln swore under his breath, and she turned at the sound.

Her eyes were blue. Not pale, not soft. Bright, startled blue, darkened by pupils far too wide for the light in that bar. She looked at Lincoln first, then her gaze came to me.

Her nostrils flared. “If you’re about to tell me I look unwell,” she said, “I already know.”

“Unwell or early heat?” Lincoln asked.

“I know what you’re thinking, but I’m prepared. I have a plan.”

Lincoln’s mouth curved. “You do?”

“Yes, I’ve interviewed several applicants. It was very competitive.”

The elevator chimed, and the doors opened.

“I don’t doubt that.” I held my hand against the open doors. Mary walked in first, slowly. We followed, because if we could do anything for her, we could get her safely to her room.

She pressed for floor four.

Lincoln’s finger hovered over the panel, then withdrew.

Mary looked at the buttons, then at us. “That’s either convenient or ominous.”

“We’re on four as well,” I said.

“A likely story.”

“It’s true.”

“The worst ones usually are.”

The doors closed.

The elevator was too small.

She stood by the panel with her spine straight and one hand wrapped around the rail. Her coat had fallen open at the throat showing a navy sweater. Her lower lip was damp where she’d been biting it. She smelled of rain and blackberry and whiskey and that impossible violet, tearing through every sensible thought I had left.

Lincoln had gone quiet, which was worse than anything he could have said.

I fixed my eyes on the numbers above the doors.

Mary inhaled, small enough that I’d have missed it if everything in me hadn’t already narrowed to her. My scent had reached her, then. The controlled edge of rain I’d been holding down since she walked in.

Her fingers tightened on the rail.

Lincoln’s scent came next, his warm whiskey with a deeper blackberry than mine, and rain gone stormy.

Mary’s breath caught.

It wasn’t possible. She was too young for us.