My temper flared. I hadn’t even heard him come downstairs. Why couldn’t our basement steps creak like everyone else’s? Stupid high-quality construction. That’s what comes of being born to an architect.

“Get—” I paused, shoving at the form draped over me as I twisted onto my back “—off. Get the hell off me.”

Marc smiled down at me, propping himself up on his palms as his knees moved to straddle my hips. “Give me one good reason.”

Frowning, I stopped struggling to glare up at him. “What I’ll give you is five seconds to get up before I end what little possibility you have of ever siring children—with me or anyone else.”

Instead of heeding my threat, he laughed again and leaned down to steal a kiss. I hissed and lunged off the floor with an ugly grunt of effort, my palms shoving on the front of his dark T-shirt. I didn’t make it to my feet—in fact, I barely moved Marc at all—but anger must have been obvious in my eyes, because my father cleared his throat, and we both stopped to look up at him. “Marc, get up.”

My mouth opened in surprise and my hands fell to rest on my stomach. The Alpha was backing me up? Instead of Marc? Were the roads of hell slick with ice? Had pigs taken to the skies? I smiled at my father, pleased by his support, even though I didn’t need it. I could throw Marc off on my own. I’d certainly done it before.

But then my father had to go and ruin what might have been an unprecedented father-daughter bonding moment. He met Marc’s eyes, a smile claiming the lightly wrinkled corners of his mouth. “I want grandchildren.”

Of course. I rolled my eyes in frustration. Just because I’d lost sight of the big picture didn’t mean he had. Or that he ever would.

Marc took one look at the exasperation on my face and slid onto the mat on my right side, between me and my father. The gesture, though clearly unconscious, was more than appropriate. Marc was always coming between us, though it was hard to tell which of us he was trying to protect.

“Grandchildren, huh?” I said, sitting up in a single jerky motion. My father’s joke wasn’t funny, because it wasn’t really a joke. It was yet another reminder that no matter how good an enforcer I became, I couldn’t escape my primary duty, and no amount of sugarcoating could make that pill go down easily.

I gained my feet, and Marc took a step back. Ethan’s smile vanished, his hands dropping to hang loose at his sides. On my left, Ryan’s shoes shuffled away from me on the floor of his cell, and I could almost feel the tension in the room spike. They thought I was going to start yelling; I could see it in their faces.

I met my father’s eyes and forced a laugh. “You don’t even know what to do with Ryan. What on earth would you do with a bunch of grandchildren running underfoot?”

Our Alpha smiled, and Marc exhaled in relief. He was a big fan of my new effort to be agreeable, because as my father’s right-hand man and my potential other half, he was usual y caught in the middle of our fights and forced into the role of moderator. And Marc was a rotten moderator, which was just as well. Alphas typically got their own way, and thus had little need for lessons in compromise.

“What would I do with grandchildren?” My father adjusted his glasses again, probably to hide the relief in his eyes. Or maybe that was amusement. “I’d do exactly what I did when you and your brothers were little—let you crawl all over your mother until you were toilet-trained.”

He paused for a beat, his eyes sparkling. “And for Ethan, that was quite some time. Nearly five years, if memory serves.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Ethan snatched a towel from the old bench-press machine and used it to wipe sweat from his face and chest.

Ryan snorted, and Ethan glared at him. In spite of very close family ties, and the fact that all but one of my siblings still lived with me in our childhood home, none of us had much sympathy for Ryan’s extended stint in the cage. Not even me, though until Ryan took up residence in the basement, I’d held the Pride record for consecutive days spent behind bars. I hadn’t seen daylight for two straight weeks once.

Ryan was nearing the end of his ninety-first day, with no end in sight, and he deserved every single second of his punishment. Actually, he deserved worse, but our father consistently refused my request to have him neutered. It must have been a guy thing.

“Watch it, jailbird, before I forget to empty your coffee can,” Ethan snarled.

Ryan opened his mouth to reply, then closed it with a click of teeth against teeth. His gaze traveled to the corner of the cage, where his makeshift toilet sat, empty—for the moment.

“That’s what I thought.” Ethan dropped the towel on the bench press and stepped back onto the mat. Ryan glowered at him but kept his mouth shut. He’d been pathetically wel behaved over the past thirteen weeks, apparently hoping to get time off for good behavior. But our father was no state prison warden. He wouldn’t let Ryan out until he knew what to do with him. Unfortunately, short of skinning him alive, we had yet to come up with a single more appropriate punishment for the part Ryan played in the hell Miguel put us all through. Except for the kitchen shears I kept sterilized and ready to go.

“Okay, let’s try it again.” My father backed slowly away from the mat.

“Marc, would you care to join them?”

“Love to.” Turning his back to the Alpha, Marc favored me with a teasing smile, emboldened by the heat in his eyes. “It would be my pleasure to take her to the mat. Again.”