She wasn’t sure how long she had sat there planning what she would say and panicking as the right words wouldn’t come when she heard Trey call out her name. Shit. “I’ll be out in a sec.” Apparently that wasn’t good enough for him as he then rose from the bed and began unsteadily making his way to the bathroom.

“Taryn, what’s wrong?”

Great, so he had sensed her panic. “Nothing I’m fine.” The door swung open and, frowning at her, he stepped inside. Then he halted abruptly as his frown deepened and his nostrils flared. A few seconds later his eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. There was no mistaking the smell of a pregnant wolf. She gave him a cautious, wobbly smile. “Hi.”

Although Trey had never had a way with words, he had never found himself knocked enough to be speechless. Until now. When he had sensed her anxiety, he had thought that maybe she’d had a nightmare or was worrying herself stupid about the challenge taking place tomorrow – what else was going to wake her up in a panic at dumb ‘o’ clock in the morning? The distinctive change to her scent had hit him immediately as he entered the room, but not harder than his understanding of what that meant.

The sight of his little mate huddled on the stool as if bracing herself for a fierce impact made something in his chest tighten. His reaction, she was bracing herself for his reaction. Her emotions were all over the place, but her primary emotion was happiness. She was happy. Scared and shocked, but happy. And she feared he wouldn’t feel the same.

His wolf bucked at the reigns, wanting to be near her, to protect her, to hold her. Wanting the same and knowing he needed to say something, Trey went to her and squatted in front of the stool. “You’re pregnant.” Oh hell, he was getting worse with words if all he could do was state the obvious.

“Yeah. Pregnant. I’ve been taking my pills but…” She let the sentence trail, shrugging.

“I…I have no idea what to say, baby.”

She smiled a little at his apologetic expression. “I don’t need you to say anything. I just need to know if you’re okay with this. I can’t sense anything from you.”

“That’s probably because I’m numb.” Her small smile fell and Trey wanted to kick himself. “No, I don’t mean...” He sighed. “Baby, I don’t know what I mean.” This here and now showed just how much of an unfeeling bastard he was. He was supposed to be over the f**king moon, wasn’t he? Wasn’t this supposed to be one of the top moments of his life? Here was his mate telling him she was pregnant. Pregnant. His mate was pregnant. She was having a baby. His baby. His son or his daughter…And then the surreal quality of the situation cleared and it actually sank in that, shit, Taryn was pregnant with his baby.

Slowly he raised his hand and placed it on her stomach. A fierce sense of protectiveness surged through him, stealing his breath. Her half smile returned, but it was forced and shaky. Even as she had a fragile look about her, there was pure steel there. She was ready to kick his ass if he said anything negative. He leaned forward and closed his mouth over hers, kissing her greedily, and suddenly became aware that, hey, he was happy about this. No, more than happy. He was…kind of excited. He rested his forehead against hers as he spoke. “If someone had told me a few months back that I’d soon be mated with a baby on the way, I’d have laughed my f**king head off. You changed everything, Taryn.”

She knew he didn’t mean it in a bad way. Still, she couldn’t resist teasing him. “Me? This is all me, is it?”

“All you. You’ve made me want things I never would have expected to want. Things I didn’t think were on the cards for me.” He massaged her stomach gently. “Like him.”

She arched a brow. “Him? It could be a ‘her’.”

“I’m not going to be very good at the dad thing. You know that, right?”

Taryn pinned him with a look as she cradled his face in her hands. “You will be. I know you will be.”

“Baby, I don’t know anything about being a dad – mine was an a**hole.”

“Exactly. Just do everything your dad didn’t do.”

There was actually logic in that, he thought. He could work with logic. His gaze was drawn again to her flat stomach. So slender. She was so slender and so damn small. He didn’t see how she could carry a baby inside that body and not snap in half with the strain.

Sensing his fear that she might be hurt, Taryn kissed him softly. “I’ll be fine.”

“Nothing can happen to you, Taryn,” he insisted.

“Nothing will. I’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.”

He scrutinised her face as he asked in a low voice, “How does it feel? To know you hold my sanity in your hands?” If he lost her, if she left his life, his sanity would go right along with her.

She smiled, brushing her nose against his. “Trey, whatever makes you think that you’re sane now?”

He chuckled, shaking his head. He nipped her bottom lip then sucked it into his mouth, liking the way her eyes flared with lust. She was so responsive it was enough to drive him crazy. He kissed her softly, denying her his tongue just to tease her. “You better be okay, baby, or I swear I’ll blister your ass with the palm of my hand.”

“Like last night?” Her eyes widened as something occurred to her. “Oh shit.”

“What?”

“I can’t believe our baby was conceived in front of the guys.”

He couldn’t help smiling. “Something tells me they’ll be pleased about that.”

“What about everyone else? How do you think they’ll feel about the pregnancy?”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

When half an hour later they stepped, hand in hand, into the kitchen, they were granted their usual brief nods and smiles. Then everyone’s nostrils flared, the chatter stopped, and all eyes zoomed in on Taryn.

She knew the pregnancy was an extremely significant thing. For some reason no one had yet been able to explain, wolf shifters couldn’t produce their own offspring unless either their Alpha pair or their Beta pair had done so. Nature had really funny ways, in her opinion. Now that Taryn was pregnant, it meant that it was possible for Grace and Rhett or Lydia and Cam to begin their own families, which was probably a lot to do with why all four of those looked absolutely ecstatic.

Dante was the first to react. He jumped to his feet and strolled over to slap Trey on the back. “Congratulations.” He quickly kissed her cheek and artfully dodged Trey’s subsequent clout. “With his gene pool, he’ll be a powerful Alpha.” Suddenly they were surrounded by most of the pack, and Lydia and Grace were squealing excitedly.

Tao raised his hand. “I claim bodyguard duty!”

Ryan grunted. “Damn little shit, I was going to do that.”

“I’m going to be an uncle,” said Dominic excitedly. “If it’s a boy, I’ll teach him all he needs to know about reeling in women.”

Trick snorted. “You mean you’ll teach him those dirty lines you’re always subjecting us to.” He gave Taryn a quick hug and said, “Congratulations, honey.”

“Speaking of dirty chat up lines,” drawled Dominic as he turned to Taryn, wearing that all too familiar wicked grin. When she shook her head, warning him to keep it to himself, he sighed. “I can’t help it. I love your hair, your eyes, and your smile. Hell, I love every bone in your body. Want to add one more?” As usual, Trey hit him.

“Don’t worry about Dom, Taryn.” Marcus patted her stomach gently. “I’ll teach the little guy in there the art of flirting so that he never has to use those lines.”

“I’ll teach him how to throw a ball,” declared Dante. “And how to drive.”

“That’s nice and all,” said Ryan, “but you know I’m going to be his favorite uncle, right?”

“Um, hello,” said Taryn. “The baby could be a ‘her’, you know.” They all gave her sympathetic looks as if they pitied her for even thinking something they perceived to be dumb. She might have scowled at them if, to Taryn’s astonishment, the old crone hadn’t suddenly approached wearing a genuine smile. Just like that, Trey, Dante, and the enforcers formed a wall in front of her. Oh dear God, was she going to have to put up with this overprotectiveness for the entire five months of the pregnancy? It certainly looked like it.

“I’m not going to hurt her.”

Nobody moved to let her pass.

“She and I might not always see eye to eye, but that’s my great-grandchild in there.”

Their expressions said that wasn’t relevant.

Sighing, Taryn hopped up onto the counter behind her. Immediately Trey spun to face her. “Be careful jumping around like that.”

Taryn double-blinked. “Oh my God, you’ve got to be kidding me. Chill, Flinstone. Grace, I need one of your magical coffees.”

“No, no coffee,” said Grace. “Caffeine’s not good for you during pregnancy.” As Grace then rambled on about all the other things Taryn wouldn’t be able to drink or eat, she felt her mood plummet.

“You look tired, baby. Want me to take you back to bed?”

She looked at him in sheer disbelief. “No, I don’t. None of you get to treat me like an invalid – let’s just clear that up right now.”

“It’s great to have some good news for a change,” said Brock with a smile. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been around any pups.” He turned to Kirk. “Well, son, aren’t you going to congratulate our Alphas?”

Kirk said nothing. Just sat next to an equally mute Hope looking kind of…defeated.

“She’s pregnant?” hissed Selma. “Oh. Great. Not only are we stuck with her, but we’ve got Warner blood polluting our pack!”

“Selma,” growled Trey, more protective of Taryn than ever before.

“Twelve weeks you said she’d be here! Twelve weeks! Then you try telling us she’s your true mate! I’ve waited for you to see the truth, waited for you to see that you’re wrong and she’s just fooling you so she can be Alpha fe -”

“You know, Selma,” began Taryn, interrupting her mid-rant, “you’re behaving like a drug-crazed Terrier trying to catch and chew off its own tail. Seriously, pursuing you’re mated Alpha is insane and suicidal. It really is time to get off the ‘Selma Gets Whatever She Wants’ plane and accept the facts. I am Trey’s mate, I am Alpha female here, and you don’t have a prayer of changing that. We’ve got enough things to worry about so stop with your tantrum or I’ll have to do what I like to call making my point in a way that no one can misinterpret. Others might refer to it as breaking your f**king nose.”

“That wouldn’t be so bad,” said Grace, sounding hopeful.

Selma refused to drop the matter. “Trey, how can you not see her for what she really is? Everything was fine here until she came along.”

Reminding himself that hitting females wasn’t a good thing, Trey released his frustration with a long exhale. “Well if you’re so unhappy, feel free to leave. In fact, you’re more than welcome to leave with Darryl tomorrow after the challenge. If there’s anything left of him. I can’t guarantee there will be.”

“M-maybe I will l-leave,” she replied, seeming to be truly shocked that Trey would choose Taryn over her. Why? “Maybe Hope and I w-will start our own p-pack.”

“I never said anything about Hope. If she wants to leave, she can…but it won’t be because you bullied her into it.”

Predictably, Selma stormed out of the room wearing the scowl from hell. For once, Hope didn’t follow her, making her loyalties clear. Kirk, too, remained where he was.

Taryn spent the next few hours being fussed over by almost the entire pack. At first, she was feeling pretty damn claustrophobic and had fought the urge to bash everybody’s skulls in with the cast iron frying pan. But when she was nicely placed on the reclining end of the humungous sofa with a mug of hot milk and a pack of cookies while Marcus massaged her shoulders and Dominic massaged her feet, she was thinking it was good to be a pregnant Alpha.

Then Trey had to go and mess it up. “I want you to stay here while I go to meet Lance about the challenge.” They had notified her father yesterday via the pack web about the challenge and arranged a meeting for this morning at Mo’s Diner.

She sat up straight in the recliner. “Oh hell no!”

“Baby, don’t fight me on this. You know it’s a good idea for you to remain home where you’ll be protected.”

“Alpha pairs deal with issues together, they go to meetings together.”

“It’s different now. You need to be careful, you’re having our baby.” God, it was weird saying that, but not in a bad way, which made it even weirder.

“Oh puhlease, you’d have said the same damn thing if I hadn’t been pregnant. You don’t get to use our baby as an excuse to keep me cooped up here. We both know that’s exactly what you’re doing.”

He tilted his head, conceding that. “Okay. So I would have said the same thing no matter what. It’s only because I want you safe. I don’t like you being near your father, even if he does seem to have a newfound respect for you.” She just stared at him, completely unmoved. “Taryn, you’ve got no idea just how protective and possessive my wolf is feeling right now. He’s not going to cope well with you being around strangers, and he’s really not going to like you being around a wolf who has repeatedly hurt you.”