Page 8 of The Alpha's Pregnant Mate

“I’m just saying, there are worse-looking old men!” Silea shrugged. “And it’s not like he’s that old. He’s got, what, fifteen years on you, Rhi? Twenty?”

“I’m sure he could tell you down to the minute,” Rhietta said with a roll of her eyes.

“He’s in better shape than plenty of twenty-year-olds I’ve known. Nice cheekbones, good hair…tall, too. And he’s not fooling anyone with those boring button-up shirts. Probably thinks that having a good body might distract his pack from following his instructions to the letter—”

“The mental images this conversation is conjuring are going to haunt my nightmares for life,” Rhietta said, wrinkling her nose. But she was more unnerved by how intriguing she was finding the subject. She’d never really thought of Laurent as a man—he made it difficult to see him as anything other than a brick wall in the nominal shape of a person. But Silea wasn’t wrong. If you squinted past his personality—admittedly a difficult task—there was a reasonably good-looking man in there.

The sound of approaching footsteps put an end to the conversation, however, and Rhietta had just enough time to wonder why she felt almost disappointed by that before she saw the looks on the faces of the approaching wolves. They were breathing hard, their faces flushed, and the tang of magic in the air told her that they’d only just shifted back from their wolf forms. That meant they’d been moving fast—too fast, she realized, frowning. It was too early for this patrol to be getting back. Which meant—

“Bad news, Alpha,” the patrol leader said, his eyes dark. As she rose to her feet, the conversation all but forgotten, she realized with a jolt that the other wolf was holding her arm close to her chest…and that it was wrapped in a piece of fabric that was stained with fresh blood. “Ran into a cluster of demons encamped not far north of here. Big group, and growing.”

“How long do we have?” Rhietta asked, feeling her friends rising to their feet behind her, already readying themselves for battle.

“An hour at the outside,” he said, shaking his head. “Much less than that, most likely.”

“Rhi—”

“Cadia, go,” Rhietta said immediately, and her friend flashed her a grateful smile before turning to sprint in the direction of the house where her mate and daughter would be sleeping. “Silea, wake the pack.”

“On it.”

“Both of them,” Rhietta said, and Silea’s eyes widened a little as she took her meaning. Her lieutenant nodded, but she hesitated for a moment.

“What about—”

“Let me deal with Laurent,” she said firmly. And then, to reduce the tension in the air a little: “Knowing him, he’s probably ready for battle already. Probably sleeps with his sword in his hand and his eyes wide open.”

She still looked uneasy, but she nodded in agreement, and that was that. After a moment’s thought, Rhietta sent the patrol along with Silea to wake up Laurent’s sleeping pack. When it came to demon attacks, the more notice that could be given, the better. She knew she might be crossing lines that shouldn’t be crossed by sending the word out to Laurent’s pack as well as her own, the gesture carrying with an implicit though unmistakable order—rally the troops, at my command. But it would be far worse for both packs if she offered no warning at all, and she wasn’t risking anyone getting hurt just to preserve some artificial sense of separation.

Strange, how quickly the routine of battle came back to her. It was as though she’d barely set her weapons down since the last time she’d called on her pack to fight for their lives against the ancient menace. There was an odd comfort in it, a kind of strange peace that always fell on her when the situation reached its most dire—something to do with the adrenaline, she always thought. There was no longer any need for worry or panic, because the worst that could happen was already on its way. All that remained was action, and action was simple enough.

Her pack rose quickly from their sleep, as they always had; they’d had enough practice over the last year to make their motions seamless, more like a well-choreographed dance than anything. It seemed that Laurent’s wolves, too, had been practicing, because when she emerged from her own tent with her sword buckled to her hip, she found that both packs were already gathering. There was a slight friction between the wolves, who even now stood in two discrete groups, and she realized that this must be the usual gathering place for Laurent’s wolves in the event of a demon attack. It made sense—the midpoint of the village, equidistant from any place the demons might be attacking, with plenty of space for the whole pack to assemble.

A little less space now, with the tents arranged messily there in the middle, but there was still plenty of room for them. Rhietta felt an odd lump rise to her throat as she looked at the wolves who’d gathered in front of her. This was the first time since they’d arrived that she’d seen so many of the other pack gathered in one place. She’d expected to feel uneasy in front of them, but right now, all she felt was how resoundingly right it was. What really should have made her feel uneasy was how many battles she’d gone into without the full complement behind her.

She filled the two packs in as quickly as she could, gathering from their nodding that Silea and the patrol had explained a little of what was going on. The tension she could sense between the packs began to ease as she spoke, replaced by a more outwardly-focused energy as she pointed out where the demon army had been spotted and indicated the places they were most likely to attack. With a few words of advice from one of the wolves who lived here, she began to split up the group, designating areas for them to defend. For a moment, she completely forgot that Laurent even existed, she was so utterly immersed in arranging the settlement’s defense.

Then his voice split through the night like a thunderbolt, and she felt her whole body tense up.

“What is the meaning of this?”

She caught a few looks of guilt on the faces of his wolves, a sight that would have been comical if the situation wasn’t so dire. He was striding across the village square, dressed for battle with his own formidable longsword at his hip. But it wasn’t his sword that held her attention—it was the look of absolute fury on his tightly controlled face.

“Alpha Laurent,” she said quickly, hoping against hope that speaking his title would be enough to ease some of his fury. It wasn’t, of course. If anything, he looked even angrier as he approached the gathered wolves. “We’ve just received word of an army of demons approaching the settlement. I was just—”

“Spare me your excuses,” he cut across her, voice somehow even more dangerous as its volume dropped. “I know exactly what you were doing. Giving my wolves orders. Undermining my leadership, subverting command structures—”

“Laurent, please,” she said, feeling the seething frustration she’d been unable to quell for the last few days come roaring back to the surface again. “Scold me all you like once we’ve turned back the attack, I promise I won’t object for a moment, but right now, please, we’ve all got more important things to worry about.”

Laurent stared her down for a long moment. Later, she’d wonder what would have happened if the demons hadn’t chosen that precise moment to launch their attack, if the high, keening cry hadn’t broken over the village at that very second, drawing every wolf’s attention instinctively toward it and breaking the tension between them in an instant. Would Laurent have attacked her, she wondered? Banished her and her pack from the settlement right then and there? With the look on his face, she genuinely wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d drawn his sword right then and there and challenged her to a fight to the death.

Instead, he turned and began running toward the northernmost edge of town, where the cry had come from—and with that, the spell was broken. The gathered wolves split into the groups she’d arranged, and Rhietta took a deep, steadying breath before she followed them.

She’d never have imagined that she’d ever feel relieved at the news that a demon army was attacking. But then again, she’d never seen Laurent look as angry as he had when he’d arrived in the village square to see another Alpha giving his pack orders. She had to admit, it didn’t look great. He’d be well within his rights to tell her off once the demons had been dealt with.

She only hoped that he’d vent at least a little of that anger on their enemy first. The less that was left when he got to her, the better.

Chapter 6 - Laurent

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