Page 7 of The Alpha's Pregnant Mate

“And if I reject your rejection?” She held his gaze, her eyes burning with anger. Some part of him couldn’t help but admire the sheer audacity. “If I chose to settle my pack in this place despite your objection?”

“Only a fool diverts his energy to absurd hypotheticals.”

“Humor me.”

“That would be an act of war,” Laurent said coldly, holding her gaze until he could see she knew how serious he was.

There was little to be said after that. Rhietta didn’t exactly accept defeat, which irritated him—she said something about discussing the matter later when he’d had time to give it some thought, but he could tell the wind had been taken out of her sails. Silea gathered her map and stormed out, her face still flushed with anger. Rhietta followed after a last, lingering look at Laurent. He kept his expression guarded, neutral, as though the conversation had bored him, but when she finally left the room, he exhaled heavily, surprised by how much tension his body was holding.

That had been a good meeting, Laurent told himself firmly. He’d proven that he was under no compulsion to give her whatever she asked of him. He should have been pleased with the outcome of the meeting, grateful for the opportunity to make it abundantly clear who called the shots around here.

So why did he still feel like she’d beaten him? Was it because even now, he was acutely aware of how far she’d gotten under his skin?

Chapter 5 - Rhietta

The fire had burned almost all the way down when Rhietta realized just how long she’d been ranting about Laurent. Most of the pack had turned in for the evening, and it was just her and a handful of her closest friends left sitting around what remained of the fire. She hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Laurent since their disastrous interaction a few days earlier, when what she’d hoped would be a pleasant meeting had taken a sudden and utterly infuriating turn. Maybe that was why she was still seething about the way he’d treated her. Even Silea, to whom he’d been markedly ruder, seemed to be less angry than Rhietta was; if anything, her consternation had changed to amusement at just how hard Rhietta was taking it.

“I just can’t believe that someone who’s so obsessed with his own rationality could reject such a logical plan,” she heard herself saying now, wondering how many times she’d revisited this exact point in the last day. “I just—do you think he sees himself? At all? Like, do you think he’s even remotely in touch with reality?”

“Definitely not,” Silea said, amusement in her voice. “I’m starting to wonder about you, too.”

“Me?” she huffed, shifting a little closer to the fire and prodding at its remains. “What about me?”

“You’ve just been talking about him a lot, that’s all.” Cadia stretched her arms above her head, yawning hugely. Her mate had taken their daughter to bed a few hours earlier, but she’d chosen to stay out a little later with the others, enjoying the moonlight. Anik’s cough was still troubling her, but a couple of nights’ sleep with a proper roof over her head had done a lot to bring down the fever, and much of the worry had left Cadia and Rovell’s faces.

“Well, nobody else is aggravating me,” Rhietta said, feeling disgruntled and oddly unnerved by the way her friends were looking at her. As though they were looking right through her, seeing something she’d prefer they not see. “What? The rest of his pack has been—well, cold and standoffish, but civil, at least. And I can tell they’re only being rude because he’s ordered them to be,” she added with a roll of her eyes.

“You’re right there,” Silea agreed, eyes dancing. “I ran into Seff on patrol the other day, and you should’ve seen the smile on his face before he remembered he was supposed to be acting like he hates us.”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Rhietta said, knowing she was returning to a subject she’d well and truly exhausted over the last few days but unable to help herself. “We’re collaborative creatures, that’s—the most basic truth about wolves, ever. Right in our bone marrow, right in the magic that makes us what we are…it’s our nature to work together, to join forces, to take care of each other and keep each other safe. This division between us, it’s completely artificial. If Laurent could just get his head out of his ass for five minutes, he’d see how easy it would be for our packs to just…” She exhaled. “It’s not even like I’m suggesting we reunite the packs. I’m just saying we don’t have to act like we hate each other. An act of war, he called it. The idea of us living an hour away. Ridiculous.” Her friends were exchanging glances with each other, and she found herself bristling at the way they were smiling. “Don’t you think so?” she demanded.

“That it’s ridiculous? Yeah, Rhi. We thought it was ridiculous the first time you said it, and the thirty-five times you’ve said it since.”

Rhietta exhaled again. “Fine,” she said with some difficulty, wrestling with the nearly overwhelming urge to argue with them. “I take your point. It’s something of a sore subject, that’s all.”

“The subject of Laurent?”

“The subject of his—crappy leadership, yeah.” She didn’t like the mischievous way that Silea and Cadia’s eyes were glinting at her in the remains of the firelight. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“No reason,” Silea said loftily. “I just remember the way Cadia used to carry on about how infuriating she found Rovell’s constant monologues about politics…”

Rhietta blanched. “What are you suggesting?” A suppressed giggle was her only response, and she lobbed the nearest projectile at her friend, which turned out to be an abandoned pair of socks someone had been darning. “Silea, you’re ridiculous. He could be my grandfather.”

“He’s younger than your dad!”

“I don’t mean physically, I mean—" She gestured inarticulately in the direction of the distant shape of Laurent’s house, looming over the village in the distance. “Psychologically. Spiritually.” She wrinkled her nose with a mixture of horror and intrigue. “Do you really think—”

“All I know is I know sparks when I see ‘em,” her friend said with a shrug. “And there was some serious friction between you two.”

“Because he’s a damned fool?”

Cadia snorted laughter unexpectedly. “Sorry. I just—I remember saying that exact thing about Rovell about a week before we finally gave in and tore each other’s clothes off—”

“Cadia!” Rhietta drew herself up with all the dignity she could muster, ignoring the suppressed laughter of her friends. “Might I remind you that I’m your Alpha? I will have respect. I will have silence. I will have—"

“He’s not that bad,” Silea said thoughtfully. “I mean, if you put aside his entire personality, obviously, and his actions, and everything he’s ever said out loud…”

“What remains?”

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