Page 38 of Pack Baby for the Silver Foxes

“You’re twenty-three,” he said. “From where we’re standing, that’s young. But age wasn’t why you were here. Your heat was.”

Everything in me locked up before I could stop it. The lie was sitting between us now, and less funny in the daylight.

Lincoln’s arm loosened, not letting me go, just giving me space to choose it.

“Mary?” Lincoln said.

I swallowed.

I could have made another joke. I was excellent at that. Give me a collapsing life and three seconds’ notice, and I could produce a line sharp enough to distract from the damage.

But Hudson’s hand was on my stomach, Lincoln’s chest was warm beneath my cheek, and my body had stopped screaming long enough for my conscience to become audible.

“I’m not twenty-three.” There was no point in lying anymore.

Lincoln didn’t move.

Hudson’s face changed, but only by degrees. His eyes sharpened first. Then his mouth softened, which was worse.

“How old are you?” he asked.

I stared at the sheet. White cotton. With a ridiculous thread count.

“Twenty-one,” I said. “Barely.”

The room went quiet before Lincoln exhaled slowly through his nose. “You told the bartender you were twenty-three.”

“Yes.”

“You showed him your ID?”

My face burned. “It says twenty-three.”

Hudson sat up fully.

I hated that his warmth disappeared, and with it went the fragile little illusion that I could confess things while still being tucked safely between them.

“It’s fake?” he asked.

“It’s convincing. I’ve been using it since I was twenty.”

“Mary.” Lincoln’s hand stayed on my hip. “Are you twenty-one? Are you even legally old enough to drink?”

“Yes.”

“Really?” Hudson looked at me.

“I am,” I said. “I really am twenty-one. I said barely because I only turned twenty-one a few months ago, not because I’m currently smuggling myself into adulthood under cover of darkness.”

Some of the tension left Lincoln’s shoulders.

Not enough.

Lincoln shifted so he could see my face properly. “Mary. Look at me for a minute.”

I looked.

“The number isn’t the thing,” he said. “You knocked on two alphas door in pre-heat and we gave you what you needed. But I need to know if you’d have knocked with a clear head.”