Page 79 of Pack Baby for the Silver Foxes

“Gregor can intimidate things into fixing themselves,” Maeve said.

“That’s a useful skill,” I said.

Maeve looked at me with sisterly patience, which was different from ordinary patience because it carried a full Irish threat. “Mary.”

Mila held out a sticky hand toward me. I accepted it because I was brave and also trapped.

“They’ve been calling,” I said.

“The alphas?”

“No, the tax office. They sensed joy and became suspicious that I’d earned some money.”

Maeve’s mouth twitched. “Mary!”

“Yes. The alphas.”

“And?”

“And they’re as old as God.”

Mac’s eyes widened. “God is old.”

“Exactly.”

Maeve covered his ears with one hand, which did nothing because he immediately ducked. “You need to rein in the exaggerations.”

“I’m Irish. That would be cultural erasure.”

She pursed her lips. “They’re not as old as God.”

“Lincoln is forty.”

Maeve stared at me. I stared back. “Gregor is nearly forty.”

“Yes, but Gregor looks like he was carved out of a mountain during wartime. It suits him.”

“And Lincoln?”

I looked down at my phone.

Lincoln: Also, drink water.

“Lincoln looks like he was built to ruin a woman’s ability to make sensible decisions.”

Maeve’s eyebrows rose.

“Unfortunately,” I added.

“I see.”

“You don’t. You’re standing there with your extremely large, emotionally stable husbands and pretending to have perspective.”

“My perspective is that you should have thought about age, logistics, and consequences before going through your heat outside a clinic with two strangers and no protection.”

I flinched enough for Maeve to see it.

Sisters were awful like that. They had access to the old wiring.