Page 142 of Bought for Blood

“That’s what this is.”

“Then I’m not going to stand in front of you.” Her eyes have gone bright. “I spent months keeping you alive from the outside. I’m not going to spend any time making you feel bad about being alive. That’s the speech now. That’s the whole speech.”

I slide my arm around her, and she puts her head on my shoulder, and we sit there while the light moves on the snow.

“There’s something else,” she says, after a while. Her hand settles on her stomach, and this time she knows she’s doing it.

“I know.”

Her head comes off my shoulder. “What do you mean, you know?”

“Since I woke up at Aurora.” I tap under my own ribs. “The wolf found it before I did. It’s so fast. Much faster than yours.”

“You knew,” she says, “and you let me build up to it the whole drive down?”

“I wanted to hear you say it. I figured you’d tell me when you were ready.”

“You’re the worst sister alive.”

“I’m the only sister alive who already loves your baby.”

She cries then, and laughs while she’s doing it, and hits me once on the arm, hard, and I deserve it.

Then she wipes her face and gives me the look I’ve known since we were small. The one that means she’s going to say the thing everyone else has decided not to say.

“Maybe if I’d told you before you went to him, you would have stayed,” she says.

“Would you have preferred me to let him go?”

She shakes her head. “I’d never do that. We’ll always be sisters, wherever we are. And you need to be with your mate.”

Mate. I like how easily she says it.

Her hand is back on her belly when she goes on. “You know what he can’t give you,” she says. “Don’t you, Sery? Children.”

“I know what he can’t give me.”

“And?”

“And I spent a year in a room where I owned nothing, not even my own blood. I know exactly what I have now, down to the last clock.” I hold her eyes so she can see I’m not hiding anything. “I chose him knowing everything, and I don’t regret a thing, Grace. I’ve checked.”

She searches my face.

“All right,” she says. Then she pulls in a breath. “Besides. There’s about to be a baby in this family regardless. It just isn’t coming out of you. You’ll be the aunt with the terrifying house.”

“I’m going to spoil it senseless.”

“Marthe will get there first.”

They leave in the early afternoon, because it’s six hours back and Decker wants as much daylight as he can get. At the door, Grace holds on to me one second longer than a goodbye needs.

“Come up next month,” she says. “Both of you. Viktor won’t love it, but he’ll allow it. That’ll be half the fun.”

That night, Bastien closes the bedroom door and stands with his back against it, watching me light the last candle.

“What is it?” I say.

He crosses the room slowly. He takes my face in both hands and tips it up, and for a moment he just looks—at my eyes, my mouth, the line of my throat.