“Apparently, I’m cancer free,” Milly told him as soon the waitress walked away with their drink orders. Herbal mint tea for her, a twelve-year Macallan for him. And that was only after he’d attempted to order a ten-year-old, cask-strength Laphroaig and a sixteen-year-old Royal Brackla and been told the Macallan was the best they had.

Milly expected Iain to look surprised. Maybe stare at her in shock as she’d done with Dr. Keller. But instead, he only nodded and said, “Is that so?” As if there’s nothing remotely unusual about a person going from an end stage cancer diagnoses to completely cancer free in a matter of days.

“My doctor is beyond baffled. He double checked my labs from two weeks ago, but everything aligned with the original diagnosis. He said it couldn’t be the drug cocktail he gave me since none of those medicines have anything to do with fighting cancer. They only deal with its symptoms. But according to all my tests, my white blood cell count is completely normal, and all my other tests came back normal, too.”

Milly waited for Iain to react. But again, his response was underwhelming to say the last. “Good. That’s good news then.”

“Yeah, it’s great news,” she agreed, wondering why he was acting so odd. “Though it’s also a huge mystery. Dr. Keller has asked me to participate in a study so he can try to figure out why I—”

“No. No studies. You canna agree to that,” Iain growled, his gray eyes flashing.

“Yeah, I know I can’t,” she answered, shaking her head. “I told him I’d be traveling in New Zealand, so…”

“Wait, you’re still planning to go? To leave Scotland? And your job?”

Milly’s eyes softened. “Iain, listen. Yes, I’m apparently in remission, but who knows how long this will last? I’ve got to start living now. I’ve already wasted three years of my life doing a job I hate. And for what? So I can keep paying off all the medical bills I’ve accrued since I was nineteen? So I can keep my private medical benefits to fight a disease that will most likely come back any day and kill me anyway?”

“It won’t,” he said.

She chuffed, shaking her head. “Iain, you don’t know that. No one does.”

He made an irritated sound, then said, “So you hate working for me that much then?”

She paused, realizing how insulting that must have sounded to him, and she almost backtracked. But why should she lie to him like she’d been lying to herself all these years? “You’re a brilliant, visionary leader. But you’re also really demanding. And being stuck inside that office all day, making sure everything is up to your standards, is not how I want to spend the rest of my life. But, no worries, I’ve already received over a hundred resumes from people who really want to work with you. Good people who are excited and motivated to do this job.”

“I don’t want to work with ‘good’ people,” Iain sneered the word ‘good’ like it was something terrible. “You’re the only one up to my standards.”

Milly crooked her head at him. “C’mon Iain. I know you don’t like change, and you’re used to working with me. But you have to believe me when I say you’ll get used to working with someone else.”

“So what you said to me in the doctor’s office…about love, about gratitude. You didn’t mean any of it? I’m just the arsehole you want to fob off on someone else before you go buggering off to New Zealand?”

“What? Of course, I meant it! But Iain, our time together lasted four days. This is my entire life we’re talking about here, not just some long weekend sex fest. I can’t just stay here indefinitely because you don’t want to train a new assistant.”

“But you can’t just go,” he bit out. “I won’t let you—”

Iain broke off and sat back in his seat when the waitress returned with their drinks. But as her tea cup and his whiskey tumbler were set down in front of them, Milly could still feel the anger and frustration radiating off him, as if it were her own. Even worse, his mask was back, more stony and colder than ever.

Milly tried again. “Iain, I will train my replacement to meet your standards, I promise,” she said, fighting to keep her voice calm.

Because what the hell? How could he care more about her leaving Scotland for a month or two until her savings ran out than he did about her having gone into remission? For the first time, she wondered if maybe she’d misread his gruff genius act. Maybe there was something truly wrong with him—

“There is nothing wrong with me. I’m not mad,” he insisted. The mask finally slipped, revealing an expression almost haggard with distress as he said, “But you are not replaceable. Not to me.”

“Iain. I am replaceable. Like, so totally replaceable. You should see these resumes. They blow mine out of the water. And if this is about hooking up again, my savings won’t last that long. I’ll be back in a few months, and if you haven’t already moved on with a new cover model of the week, maybe we can do it again.”

She jumped when he slammed a hand on the table. “Stop it! Just stop it!”

“Stop what?” she asked, spreading her hands in the air. “Being reasonable?”

“Dumping on yourself. When will you see how special you are! How much more braw you are than any other woman I’ve ever met. Any other woman that’s ever crossed my path.”

“I don’t get this,” she said trying to keep her voice low. “It was just four days, and I’ve seen how you date.”

“What did I just say?” he shot back, voice also low. “You must stop comparing yourself to the other women I’ve been with for one night only. You’re more than one night to me. And the fact that you don’t feel the same way? That you’d rather go chasing ghosts in New Zealand than stay here with me?”

He shook his head at her, his gray eye blazing with anger and hurt. “It fecking guts me, Millicent. You might as well break one of those beer bottles and shove it right in my stomach.”

Milly was genuinely struggling to keep up. What was going on here? Opposite day? Was she seriously having a black-and-white French movie level lover’s quarrel in the middle of some random pub? Why was he being so dramatic? Saying these things? Insisting she stay?

“Because you gave me your claim!” he roared, saying the words slowly as if addressing an obtuse child. “If you were a member of my clan, we would be married on this day. You would ken better than to break our mate bond, and you’d be keen to continue working with me because it would mean we’d be near one another day in and day out.”

“I don’t…I don’t understand.”

Iain rubbed a hand over his face. “I know you don’t. Which is why I will go to Faoltiarn first thing tomorrow. Talk with my brother and Da. Get permission to tell you everything, even though it’s days too soon for you to pass a pregnancy test.”

“Wait, what?” Did he just say pregnancy test?!

However, Iain just kept going like she hadn’t said anything. “But in the meantime, you canna just give me your claim and then go buggering off to New Zealand with my bairn in your belly.”

“Bairn? Like, as in Scottish for baby?” she asked, shaking her head. “I’m not pregnant. I can’t get pregnant after all the chemo and radiation I’ve had—”

“You are a very smart lass, but you ken nothing about these matters,” he shot back viciously. “Dinna just slag off our four days in that hotel room together. They meant something, and I ken better than you what you are and are not these days. You no longer have leukemia. It will never come back. You will live, Millicent.”

A heartfelt statement, but then he dipped his head his head down to say, “And you are at this verra moment carrying my bairn. And that means I canna allow you to go to New Zealand or anywhere else where I am not.”

Milly went utterly still. Not because she was afraid. But because she’d never been so clear in her life about anything as she was about what she said next. “Those four days did mean something to me. They meant really fantastic sex with a man who filled my heart with love and gratitude. But obviously for you it meant going to extraordinary measures to hold on to your assistant, so you would never, ever have to put up with change. You complained about your village never changing, but I don’t think you realize how much of that attitude you brought with you to Edinburgh.”

She scooted back from the table then. “I quit. Effective today.”

“What?” he asked. “You can’t quit. I’ll sue—”

“Then sue,” she invited, interrupting him. “Sue me to hell and back. But I’m not going to let you control me like that cancer’s been controlling me since I was nineteen. I deserve better than that. I deserve to live my life without you dictating what I can and can’t do. And you know what, Iain? I’m done living to your standards. So you can take your lawsuit and your job, and you can shove both them up your ass.” She threw him the deuces. “Because I’m out.”

“Nay! Nay, you’ll not leave—” he said, his voice at such a low register, she knew he was gearing up to make another threat.

But this time she didn’t stick around to hear it.

Just stood, shouldered her purse, and walked right out the pub door.

It was raining. Of course, it was raining. And in her mind’s eye, she could see her umbrella, clear as day, right where she left it in the container at the front of the AlgoFortune office doors. But she stepped onto the busy sidewalk anyway. Anywhere else was better than where Iain Scotswolf was—

A hand grabbed her arm, pulled her back, and turned her to face…Iain. He was also without an umbrella. The pelting rain instantly drenched them both, but he didn’t seem to notice. His only point of focus was her.

“I canna let you quit. I canna let you go.”

“Iain, that’s enough,” she said, tugging on her arm. “Just let me go!”

“Don’t you think I would if I could? I dinna like feeling this way about someone who is so keen to leave me behind. I hate it, as a matter a fact. And I can see now why our Scottish council declared it against our laws to carry on with a human for too long.”

She shook her head. “You’re not making any sense.”

“I ken… I ken…”

Iain scrubbed the rain-soaked hair from his forehead. Then as if reaching a difficult decision, he said, “I’m the wolf. I’m the wolf that bit you. And for that reason I canna let you walk out on me. Bonded wolves cannot be without their mates. You wondered if I was mad before. I’m not. But being apart from you for more than a few hours, while you’re pregnant—that would truly drive me into a state of madness.”

Milly stared at him.

And he shook his head with a bitter laugh. “Ach, I can hear you not believing me. Like it’s a thought in my own head. But every word I’m saying is true, Millicent. I am a werewolf. Or what is it you Americans call them? A shifter. Whatever the name, my kind can’t carry human diseases. That’s why I turned you. That’s why you’re cancer free now and why you’re able to bear children despite all the radiation you underwent. Turning you into a werewolf like me was a kind of fixing, which is why I needed you to stay here in Scotland until the next full moon. Of course, I had no notion you’d go into heat before I’d be allowed to officially tell you the full story of what I’d done. But the point is, I saved you. And the even bigger point is you’re my mate. Carrying my bairn. So I canna let you go. Do you understand? It would be physically impossible, and against everything a werewolf is—especially a Scottish werewolf—to let his pregnant mate go.”

Iain stopped then. Breathing hard in the rain. Obviously waiting for her response.

It didn’t take long for him to get one.

“You need to get help,” she told him quietly. Then she very deliberately disengaged his hand from her arm and threw herself into the rush hour crowd.

“Millicent, wait,” she heard him call out behind her. “Please wait!”

She’d never heard him say please before, and his voice sounded tortured as if it was killing him to watch her go.

But she didn’t turn back. She didn’t engage. And this time, she didn’t give him a chance to catch up with her. Instead, she quickly crossed the street onto a square stuffed with so many tourists he couldn’t possibly find her in the crowd.