“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.”