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“Okay. I won’t be long.”

In the back bedroom, I find women’s clothing--mostly dresses, some T-shirts, tanks and shorts, nightgowns, and a robe that I slide from its hook. I carry the garment to the bathroom, closing the door behind me. Three large pots of water sit beside the steel laundry basin I used to collect eight more pots worth. Only a scant amount of steam rises up from the water, telling me it’s cooled enough to use for bathing. I pour the first few pots into the tub, followed by a few more. It’s not enough to fill the basin, but it sits halfway. After undressing, I step inside, greeted by luxurious warmth that engulfs me as I lower myself.

Even alone, my own nudity tends to leave me feeling vulnerable, and as the water snuggles just below my breasts, I hide them behind my crossed arms. The slight ache in them is yet another telling symptom of the pregnancy I can’t bring myself to accept.

There’s no way.

But what if my mother was right? What if God’s will is to watch me fumble with a baby out here?

What a horrible thought. A horrible fate for an innocent baby.

The tenderness has me rubbing the fleshy surface, and I sigh at the relief, accidentally letting out a small moan that seems to echo off the walls like a freaking megaphone.

Although the door is closed, I’ve heard enough horror stories of an Alpha’s sexual appetite to know not to trust Titus entirely. When Jack brought the other Alpha, the one who killed my father, back into Szolen, he was sure to warn me not to get too close. He said the mere scent of a woman was enough to set them off.

That hasn’t seemed to be the case with Titus so far, but lifting my arm releases the horrific body odor clinging to me. Perhaps it’s because I don’t smell very womanly, at all.

Swiping up a bar of soap I set out earlier, along with two washcloths, I clean the dirt away, pausing to sniff the sweet lavender scent. It fills the room as it carries on the rising steam, and by the time I’m finished, the aroma is almost overwhelmingly strong. So much so, it stirs my stomach again, but I swallow back the urge to throw up this time, and instead drain the water. As I stand up from the tub, I catch a shadow beneath the door, but it quickly disappears when I reach for the robe to cover myself.

Once dressed, I exit the bathroom and find Titus crouched by the fire, his back to me. Could’ve been Yuma at the door, I suppose.

I run my fingers through my wet hair to untangle the knots there. “All yours.”

Titus pushes to his feet and, when he turns to face me, diverts his gaze. As if he’s seen something he shouldn’t have.

Or maybe thought something he shouldn’t have.

He strides toward me, and as he passes, I take in the size of him, the way his body smells like metal and fire over a slight masculine odor. A hum of virility, of power, radiates off of him, like a magnet that pulls at something inside of me.

Almost primal.

He slips into the bathroom, closing the door behind him, and with a glance over my shoulder after him, I only just notice my stomach is clenched.

Plopping myself onto the chair beside the fire, I crack Pride & Prejudice open to the first page, eyes skating over the words, but not really absorbing them. I lift my gaze to the book on the shelf. The one with the erotic passage. After another quick glance toward the bathroom, I scamper across the room and swap novels, before I return to my seat.

Prior to my first time, I was always curious about the act of sex. How it’d feel. Who’d be my first. With the scarcity of women, our world has become somewhat infatuated with the act, everyone so driven to produce offspring that we’ve failed to recognize the emotions and pleasures that are meant to coincide with it. Pleasures that seemed to be far more celebrated when my mother was a young woman and books like these were prevalent.

The kind of titillation that, although I’ve never felt the things described in this book myself, come alive when I pick up where I left off.

As the image painted in words on the page unfolds inside my mind, I bite my lip, suddenly sensing the rough cotton of the robe against my nipples, the ache between my thighs.

I’ve never read anything like this before, the descriptions so delicious and vivid, I can practically taste them.

It brings to mind my first time with Will, how awkward and uncomfortable the whole experience was. How joyless and painful, only meant to defy those who sought to rob me of choice. I did love my friend dearly, but sex with him held nothing of the passion and ecstasy I’ve read in books.

The guilt of that has me closing the cover, and a horrific thought sweeps through me: that I’ll forever be haunted by that first experience. That every sexual encounter to come will be shadowed by my first, by the untimely death of my best friend. And the child. God, what if there really is a child inside of me? What I’ve always been told is an impossibility, suddenly possible. I hold a hand against my belly, trying to imagine it bloated with life. I try to imagine a life out here, running from Ragers and hiding from Marauders with a wailing baby cradled in my arms. I’d never survive this side of the wall, and therefore, any newborn of mine doesn’t stand a chance, either.

I have to return to Szolen. Back to a safe place, where this baby, if there even is one, isn’t at risk every moment of its life. If nothing else than for my friend, who will never get the opportunity to meet the life he might very well have fathered. I have to survive for the sake of this baby.

I think back to Will’s words, when he told me he didn’t want to live anymore. How those morose thoughts struck me with such grief and disappointment. How could he be so willing to give up?

I wonder if Titus saw relief in his eyes when he took hold of him. I wonder if he saw something I didn’t. Perhaps killing Will was an unspoken favor between them.

At the click of the door, I look up to see Titus emerge from the bathroom in nothing but a towel that’s too small to wrap completely around his lower half, with one whole thigh sticking out from it. Where scruffy unkempt hair once covered his face is now smooth and clean shaven, revealing the sharp angles of his jawline. It’s striking how much younger and unexpectedly handsome he looks. Like a completely different man. The sight of him sends a strange tickle to my chest.

“Can I get your help with something?” He isn’t a man accustomed to asking for assistance, given the way he can’t even look at me right now.

“Sure.”