Chapter 2

"We're fine," Rhys called back to her. Then, low, to me, "Put the bag down."

I didn't.

He crossed the room and got between me and the door. "You're not going anywhere. Call the alliance back. Tell them something came up."

"I can, though." I shifted the bag to my other hand. "That's the thing about a call-up. You said it yourself. You don't say no to one."

"That's different."

"How."

He didn't have an answer, so he just planted himself wider in front of the door, like size was an argument.

The back room door opened the rest of the way. Colette came out slow, one hand under her belly, the other trailing the wall.

She'd fixed her face into something soft and wounded on the short walk over.

"Please don't fight over me," she said. "I couldn't stand it. I'll find somewhere else to go."

She said it to Rhys. Not to me. Never once to me.

"I don't want to be a burden." A small breath. "I just have nowhere. Not since Bram."

"You keep saying that." I kept my voice level. "You've got his mother, his aunts, half this pack owes his family. But you came here."

"Because Rhys was kind enough to offer." Her chin trembled right on cue. "Is that so wrong of him?"

"She's due in three months, Maeve." Rhys turned back to me. "Maybe less. She'll need someone in the room with her day and night. Someone who's been through it."

His voice softened into the reasonable one, the one that was worse than the shouting. "You've carried a pup. You've done the whole thing. Who's better for that than you?"

"That's true," I said. "I've got plenty of experience."

"See? So—"

"No thanks to you."

He blinked.

"You want to talk about who's been through it." I took a step toward him. "When I was carrying Nell, where were you? You couldn't help me up off the floor to go pee at night. Said it turned your stomach. You slept with a pillow over your head so you wouldn't hear me being sick in the mornings."

My voice stayed flat. "You wouldn't touch a dirty diaper the whole first year. Not once. You'd hold her out to me across the room like she was on fire and wait for me to take her."

"That was a long time ago."

"Every hard thing, every gross thing, every three in the morning thing, that was mine."

I nodded at Colette. "And now you want to hand me hers too. Her nights, her sick mornings, her cleanup, all of it. You bring her home, swear you'll handle everything, and by tonight you're gone and I'm the one on my knees again."

Colette's soft face slipped for half a second. She caught it.

"You don't have to be cruel about it," she said quietly.

Rhys had gone red. "You know what your problem is? You never learned how to just be a wife. Stay home. Take care of your own. For once could you do that instead of running off to play healer for strangers?"

His lip curled. "What do you even do out there that matters more than family?"

There it was.

I set the bag down. I wanted my hands free for this.

"Funny," I said.

"Don't."

"You didn't want a wife who stayed home a year ago."

His jaw went tight. "Maeve."

"A year ago it was a different speech." I stepped closer so he'd have to look at me. "A year ago it was, think of the pack, Maeve. The whole pack. Get the others out first. Don't hold up the many for the few. Do your job."

"That's not fair."

"So I did my job." My voice didn't shake. I made sure of that. "I did exactly what you told me. I got the many out."

He knew where it was going now. I watched it land in his face, watched him try to get out in front of it.

"Maeve, that's not—we agreed—"

"That's why Nell's in the ground." I let it sit in the air between us. "And Colette's pup gets her room."