“Baby? You—!” Jace lunged for Isaac, but I grabbed his arm again as Melody burst into sobs.

“Wait! Let’s talk about this calmly,” I insisted, though I was as stunned as everyone else.

“Well, so much for letting me break the news to him gently,” Patricia Malone said, and I turned to find her standing in Melody’s bedroom doorway, both arms crossed over her long, gray robe, dark brown hair perfectly straight and in place, as if she slept sitting up on a shelf. She glanced around at the gathering of shocked shifters and sighed.

“You knew about this?” Jace pulled free from my grip.

“Of course I knew. She’s my daughter.”

“How could you let this happen?”

“Let it happen?” Patricia bristled—that was new. When I’d joined the Pride, she’d been a quiet, almost cowed woman accustomed to doing what was asked of her and mollifying her husband to keep the peace. “I didn’t let anything happen, and I’m no happier about it than you are, but I do know that killing your nephew’s father”—because the baby would almost certainly be male—“won’t help.”

“He’s not going to kill Isaac,” I insisted, and when Jace didn’t immediately agree, I elbowed him. “Right?”

“No, I’m not going to kill him.”

“You’re not even going to touch him!” Melody shouted. “Get the hell out of my room. This is none of your business.”

“I’m your Alpha, and he’s my employee. And this is my house. This is most certainly my business.”

Melody’s eyes narrowed, and I saw the verbal bullet coming before she fired it. “You’re only my Alpha because you killed my father!”

Jace recoiled, and I could see how much that hurt him, even if she couldn’t. The truth was that Calvin Malone had only been the Alpha because he’d killed Jace’s real father—according to the rumor mill, anyway—but Jace would never say that to her, even in his own defense.

“Melody!” Patricia scolded.

“I don’t want you here! Get out!” she shouted at Jace, in spite of her mother’s censure. “Not just out of my room; I want you to get the hell out of my Pride!”

Shocked gasps echoed behind me.

Jace was the only Alpha I’d ever heard of who’d taken over his father’s territory rather than his wife’s, and we all knew that someday he would lose both his territory and his home. Again.

But for her to throw that in his face, after everything he’d done for her…after he’d rebuilt the Pride, practically from scratch…

“What did you just say to me?” Jace demanded, and my hair stood on end. He loved Melody in spite of the constant pain in the ass she’d been most of her life, but no Alpha could take a challenge like that lying down. Even if it came from his little sister.

“Okay, wait!” Isaac tugged Melody back and stepped in front of her, shielding her from Jace through a protective instinct surely everyone in the room recognized. “She doesn’t mean that.”

“The hell I don’t!” Melody shouted, standing on her toes to glare at Jace over his shoulder. “He wants to keep me a child forever so he never has to give up my territory!”

“No, he’s only trying to protect you,” Isaac told her, without ever taking his wary focus from our Alpha. “Jace, your complaint is with me, not with her. She’s just upset.”

“Of course I’m upset!” Melody screeched, and when Isaac reached back to put a gentle hand on her arm, she actually seemed to calm. Their contact looked familiar and easy, as if they were very accustomed to touching each other, and not just for sex. Melody and Isaac weren’t just fooling around, and their relationship wasn’t new. Not brand-new, anyway.

With one glance at Jace, I realized he saw it too. And that he was kicking himself for not seeing it earlier.

“How long has this been going on?” He sounded at least a little calmer with the understanding that this wasn’t just a hookup gone wrong.

Isaac stood straight and tall, and unless I was imagining it, his chest was puffed out a little. “We’ve been together almost three months. But she’s only about six weeks along, if our math’s right. You’ll be able to smell the hormones soon. I can already, but I think that’s because I know what to look for. Or because the baby’s mine, or…” Isaac shrugged, and with that one simple gesture, the reality hit me.

“I’m going to be an aunt!” I grabbed Jace’s hand and squeezed it. “You’re going to be an uncle. Jace, this is good news!”

He didn’t argue, but neither did he agree. He was still caught up on how young and self-involved Melody was, and he was probably upset because she’d just deprived herself of a world of newly available choices.

“We were going to tell you soon. We really were.” Isaac held Jace’s gaze boldly, and I could hardly contain my surprise. Refusing to drop his eyes meant he was rejecting the subservient role. That was Alpha potential showing itself. Faythe had told me Jace went through the same thing—instinctively refusing to follow Marc’s leadership—the year of the revolution.

Alpha potential is innate; some shifters are born with it, some aren’t. But often, those who do have that potential don’t show it, or even realize it, until some major life event triggers a psychological shift. Jace’s was triggered by a combination of his feelings for Faythe and his grief over her brother Ethan, his best friend.

Melody’s pregnancy had obviously kicked Isaac’s Alpha development into overdrive.

I wondered if our parents had any idea.

The silence from the crowd gathered in Melody’s bedroom told me none of the others had realized it either. And that no one other than Patricia had known about Isaac and Mel’s relationship.

“Okay.” Jace nodded slowly. “What’s done is done, and we all have work to do, so we’ll have to address this later.” He glanced around the room. “Chase, go to the east cabin and wake everyone up. Luke, Warner, Abby, be ready to go in an hour.” With that, Jace leaned down to kiss me—drawing a surprised look from his mother, who’d missed that part of the discussion. Then he marched across the second-floor landing into his own room and slammed the door without another word.