Page 25 of Pregnant Wolf's Mate

Still, Lottie didn’t look entirely convinced, but there was a glimmer of hope in her bright blue eyes that Macie thought would spread if she looked her in the eye for long enough. And so she did, never blinking until her sister finally admitted in a whisper, “It was me.”

Macie raised an eyebrow, looking at her with confusion. “What was you?”

Glancing this way and that, Lottie pulled Macie deeper into the alcove and whispered just as quietly, “I’m the one who helped the demon wolf escape his cell.”

The bile in Macie’s throat turned to a hard lump that threatened to choke her and she stared at her sister in disbelief, her eyes so wide they felt as though they might pop right out of her skull.

“You’re joking. Please, tell me you’re joking!” Macie exclaimed.

“Shh!” Lottie snapped back at her, lunging forward to place her hand over Macie’s mouth. “Nobody can know, Macie, nobody!”

Macie continued to stare at her sister even with her hand pressed over her mouth. She glowered at her, willing her to tell her what the hell had happened. But Lottie was silent now and it was only when she started to shake her head that she finally released Macie’s mouth.

“How did that even happen?” Macie demanded, hissing the words under her breath. This time she glanced this way and that down the hall, half-expecting someone to have overheard them. She even thought that Ray might come charging up to them having overheard their conversation. “How could you betray the pack like that?”

The way that Lottie cringed at her words almost made Macie feel sorry for her, but then she quickly remembered what her sister had just said. She had helped a demon wolf, their mortal enemy, escape.

“It…it wasn’t like that. I didn’t do it to betray anyone,” Lottie insisted, shaking her head over and over, making Macie feel dizzy. “I was doing it to help someone who needed my help.”

“Since when do demon wolves need anyone’s help?” Macie snarled back at her sister, glowering at her with more anger than she’d ever felt towards her sibling. They’d had some horrendous fights when they were younger, but this was next level. And yet, Macie couldn’t scream and yell at her sister for fear that they might be overheard. “They are dangerous, Lottie, you could have gotten the entire pack killed or worse, the entire community! What if he had let all the other demon wolves go?”

“He didn’t though, did he?” Lottie pointed out, glaring back at Macie just as badly. “He didn’t do anything wrong. He asked for my help and I helped him because he isn’t as bad as we’ve been made to believe.”

Macie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Just remembering the burn marks that crisscrossed Ray’s chest, she couldn’t bring herself to believe it.

“You really expect me to believe that Dash and the other heads of the pack would lock away innocent people?” Macie demanded. “How can you possibly believe you know better than the alpha himself?”

“Well, no but…oh, Macie, you don’t understand,” Lottie sighed deeply, her entire body trembling as though it was taking everything in her to stop from shifting. “He is just an innocent in all of this. They aren’t all bad.”

Macie glared back at her sister, unable to believe just how brainwashed she had become. “You can’t be serious. You can’t actually believe that any of the demon wolves who attacked Silverdale were innocent! Do you remember how many they killed? How many they wounded to the point that some of them will never feel whole again?”

“But he has children and they are out there!” Lottie hissed under her breath, inclining her head. “They are out there alone without him and they need him. Just imagine if Mom and Dad were locked away somewhere, unable to get to us when we were kids. They would have done anything to get back to us.”

“Anything like manipulating some poor unsuspecting she-wolf, you mean?” Macie snarled back at her.

“Look, I didn’t tell you all of this just for you to look down your nose at me,” Lottie said under her breath. She gripped hold of Macie’s forearms again then and added, “I’m scared. He’s been caught. What am I going to do if he tells the rest of the pack what I did?”

Though she was feeling angry with her sister, Macie couldn’t help but feel sorry for her as well. Even though they argued like cat and dog, they had also always been as close as twins rather than just sisters, and the thought of Lottie being in trouble made her feel even more sick than the small life growing inside of her.

How can I blame her for helping a demon wolf when I’m carrying a McCormack pup? she thought suddenly. Though the McCormacks were nowhere near as bad as the demon wolves, she was certain that her parents would see it just the same way. The longstanding rivalry between the Silverdales and the McCormacks was perhaps the worst of any of the inner family rivalries.

With a deep sigh of exasperation, Macie took hold of her sister’s hands and squeezed gently, hoping to reassure her even as she asked, “Do you think he will say anything?”

At the question, Lottie immediately tensed. Her hands gripped hold of Macie’s once more as though she was stunned by the question. She shook her head, her gaze growing hard and determined. “He’s too strong for that. He won’t give in to any amount of torture. It’s not him I’m worried about.”

Lottie’s words filled Macie with dread, and she stared at her sister, just waiting for her to continue. She could see from the look in her blue eyes that she had more to say.

“I’m worried about what your newfound friend, Ray, might say,” Lottie snarled under her breath, and the words caused Macie’s skin to crawl.

Abruptly, she snapped, “He isn’t my friend.”

It sounded like such a foolish thing to say, but the term friend couldn’t come anywhere close to what he truly was. Yet there was nothing she could say right now to her sister to make her understand that. She wasn’t even sure she understood their relationship herself yet, not even after all that had happened between them.

But as the shock of her calling him a friend started to wear off and she tried her hardest not to think of the old rivalry between the two families, she suddenly realized that her sister was talking about something much more than that. Cocking her head to one side and raising her eyebrow, she demanded, “What does Ray have to do with any of this?”

“He…he saw me the night of the escape,” Lottie admitted, averting her gaze from Macie. “I…I think he guessed what I did because he questioned me about why I didn’t even try to stop it from happening.”

A shiver of cold ran down the length of Macie’s back and she started to shake her head. “You don’t need to worry about Ray.”

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