“You’re having a boy. Just admit it.” I’d been dying to know the sex of Milena and Alex’s baby for months now, but they’d been tight-lipped about it. “I can totally tell from the way you’re carrying and how much your skin is glowing.”

The smile that broke out on my best friend’s face put every single chandelier and candelabrum in the ostentatious receiving room we were in to shame. “Yes,” Milena admitted at last. “I am.”

I started bouncing up and down on the balls of my feet, clapping my hands and squealing with irrepressible glee. It felt like we were teenagers back in high school again when Milena’s cheeks grew pink and she started cracking up and rolling her eyes at me.

Growing up, Milena had always been super-shy, easily embarrassed, and often overwhelmed by her emotions—which ran deep and flowed close to the surface. She blushed at least ninety-seven times a day, and her tear ducts operated on a hair trigger. No joke—I’d seen her blush from the look a cat had given her once, and cry at the sight of Fiji bottled water.

“I am shopping for adorable, preppy little boy outfits immediately, and there’s absolutely no supernatural force in the universe that can stop me,” I announced, taking her by the hand and leading her over to a perfectly hideous-looking diamond-encrusted red settee.

“How do you know he’ll be the preppy type?” she asked as we sat down next to one another on the gaudy monstrosity.

“Duh! He’s Alex’s son. And you are going to need so much help with him, because he’s destined to be off-the-charts adorable.”

“I know,” she agreed—grinning, blushing, and getting teary-eyed all at once in the next blink. But then her expression sobered and her smile slipped. “Are you sure you’re okay with everything?” When I nodded, she added, “Being with Raul—you’re sure that’s what you really want?”

“Positive. Don’t worry about me. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Her emotive blue eyes said she didn’t believe it. “Bethy, this place”—she glanced around the room—“gives me the willies.”

“Oh, trust me, I’m planning to redecorate the whole estate.”

“Well, that’d be a good start.” The smile she gave me looked more like a wince. “But I was referring more to the energy of the place.”

I nodded. “I know, Milena. I feel it, too. But it’s not all coming from the Salvatella pack. There’s a Loch Ness Monster living in the lake and the hills are alive with Nazis, so”—I shrugged—“I’ll probably have to burn a lot of sage around here for a while.”

In truth, I was pretty sure the Salvatella estate had been built over a Hellmouth like the one in Sunnydale on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

“Bethy, it’s just … the whole Salvatella pack. They’re kind of a motley crew with a really disturbing history of violence. I don’t trust them.”

That made two of us. “You don’t trust Raul either. Do you?”

She barely hesitated before shaking her head. “Don’t misunderstand me, I think my brother’s heart is in the right place where you’re concerned. I think his intentions are in the right place where Sloane is concerned, too. I just worry he’s in over his head. I guess what I’m saying is I don’t always trust Raul to make the right decisions for himself. And now I worry that his decisions might put you in danger, too.”

“I’ll be okay, here. Really. They’re not all bad guys.” In my head, I counted Wyatt and Tiago.

She lowered her voice a fraction as she asked, “And you’ve met Michael Salvatella?”

“You mean Mike?” I’d never actually caught my step-cuz’s full name before, but it made sense that it could be Salvatella. Mike had told me on the plane that his mom and Gabe Salvatella had been first cousins. And Raul had said something in passing about how he and Mike had initially bonded over their shared experience of having single moms who they had lost early in their childhoods. Growing up, Raul had always gone by his mom’s surname, too, rather than his estranged father.

She nodded slightly, her eyes reflecting concern. “Be cautious of him, okay? He’s more powerful than he seems.”

Her anxiety was starting to make me nervous. “Milena, really.” I gave her arm a playful punch. “I got this. I mean I may not be a badass Alpha and Goddess of Thunder like you are, but you know that in a pinch I can still throw down and cut a bitch.” Sorta-maybe—even though I had never.

“I don’t doubt that,” she professed with a smile. “But promise me one thing?”

“Uh-uh,” I denied her with an exaggerated groan, trying to keep things light. “If it involves poopy baby diapers, the answer is no. That’s Alex’s job.”

“Bethany, I’m serious.” She giggled. “Please promise me that if things change—if it ever gets weird for you here—that you’ll consider talking to Raul about the two of you joining the Reinoso pack. I want you to know that you and Raul are always welcome with us.”

“I appreciate it,” I told her. “Believe me, I would love it if we could all be part of the same pack one day.” But that wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon, given what Raul had told me about Milena’s rigid position where Sloane was concerned. The fact that Alcaeus had left his own family’s pack over their ardent position against Sloane was as strong an indication as any as to how divisive the Rogue issue really was.

And as Rafe had said, this was only the beginning.

I decided to steer the conversation away from the conflict between Milena and Raul and their respective packs. As Raul’s mate and Milena’s best friend, I knew I was destined to feel caught in the middle between them forevermore, of course, but I was going to do my damnedest to keep the triangulation dysfunction to a minimum.

“Milena, I owe you an apology for the way that I abandoned you ten years ago when you needed me most. You know—choosing to have my memories erased after the crazy fallout in the Reinoso dining hall. I was just so shell-shocked and confused about everything.” Including my feelings for Raul at the time and what to do with them. “But looking back, I feel like the worst friend ever for leaving you to deal with everything all on your own.”

“Stop.” Milena made a dismissive hand gesture and dabbed at her teary eyes. “Give yourself a break. You witnessed a machete skewer my heart and saw a guy catch fire from the inside and melt like a candle. And that was all before Alcaeus’s mad killing spree. You were traumatized—rightfully so.”

My eyes misted, and I went in for a hug as she said, “You made the right choice in opting to forget that whole awful episode.” Her slender arms squeezed around my shoulders. “Besides, it was always safer for you not to know about our world.”

She pulled back to face me. “If I’m honest, Bethy, there’ve been times when I’ve been jealous that you were able to forget all of this. That you were able to go back to your blissfully werewolf-ignorant life, attend college, and do normal late-teen and early-twenties stuff that I knew I’d never get to do.” Her smile was sad. Apologetic. “I guess it was hard at times not to resent you a little for that. But I always understood it. And I’m sure that had our roles been reversed, and I’d been the one in your shoes, I’d have chosen to forget about werewolves and werelocks, too.”

I sniffled and bit back a smile as I looked at her, seeing for the first time how much she’d changed. Also, how much my best friend was still the same.

“You’re still the worst liar ever,” I told her. “Never in a million years will I be convinced that you would have chickened out and done the same—that you’d have asked to have your memories erased. But it’s sweet of you to say that to make me feel better.”

“No, I mean it, Bethy. I do understand. And I want to apologize for distancing myself from you these past ten years. I didn’t do it out of retaliation or to hurt you. It’s just that there were so many things I couldn’t talk to you about. So many secrets I had to keep from you. It just became impossibly complicated to remain close to you when there were so many lies and I—” She stopped short, her forehead crumpling.

“What’s wrong? Oh, is there someone talking in your head right now?”

“What?” She looked troubled as her suddenly glassy eyes refocused on me. “In my head? Oh. No,” she said with a chuckle as tears spilled down her cheeks. She wiped them away and mumbled something about pregnancy hormones making her cry more than usual. “You know I’m not much of a crier.”

I stifled a laugh and nodded good-naturedly. People who cried the most never thought they were criers.

“I was just saying, I’m sorry, Bethany. I guess I never realized how the lies between us could divide us—how they would complicate our friendship.” Her smile was uneasy.

“Milena, it’s okay.” I reached out and squeezed her hand. “C’mon, you know I’ve never been one to hold a grudge. And I understand where you were coming from. So … can we move on now to talking about baby clothes, nursery décor, and how werelocks give birth?”

“Yes,” she agreed, her expression brightening. Then her nose wrinkled. “But we should probably go check on Alex and Raul first.”

When Milena and I joined Raul and Alex in the study, we were pleasantly surprised to find they hadn’t torn one another apart—at least not physically. The conversation of the room quickly turned to my impending transformation, and Milena suggested to Raul that she should be the one to guide my initial shift tomorrow. She had proposed as much to me in passing when we’d chatted separately.

Within seconds, she and Raul were arguing. Alex and I shared a knowing look.

While Raul and Milena had been talking earlier, Alex had educated me about the initial transformation process. He’d also explained to me that even though I’d been bitten by a werelock, Raul’s bite would only turn me into a common werewolf.

Werelocks were born from other werelocks—or rather, at least one birth parent had to possess werelock DNA in order to pass it to their offspring. However, there were a few known exceptions, such as Raul and Milena inheriting werelock power through a revenge blood curse that a former Salvatella Alpha named Joaquin had created a century and a half ago, and Avery gaining her werelock status through Sloane sucking the werelock power—and life—from Gabe and transferring it to Avery.

The latter was highly irregular, and had caused Sloane to be greatly feared throughout the werelock world, according to Alex. Sloane was also her own anomaly in that neither of her birth parents had been werelocks at the time of her conception. In her case, as the prophesied Rogue, she’d apparently carried her massive power into this world with her at birth.

But aside from those rare deviations, if a werelock mated with a common werewolf—or with a human who was subsequently turned—the werelock in the pair could share power with his or her mate in order to provide the mate additional protection. However, the mate on the receiving end would never become an actual werelock.

This explained Mike’s cryptic comment on the plane about me changing things, and Avery’s expressed concern that I might jeopardize Raul’s newly gained status as Alpha—and in doing so disrupt the fragile stability the Salvatella pack had only recently attained. It explained why I’d sensed the guys on the plane regarding me as a threat.

I was a threat in that I was bound to weaken Raul as a werelock as a result of him sharing his powers with me. But Alex maintained that there was no alternative, because neither was it an option for Raul not to share his powers with me. Doing so would only put us both at greater risk.

“I’ve given this a lot of thought,” I said, interrupting the bickering between Raul and Milena. “And I’ve decided that I don’t want either one of you controlling my shift tomorrow.”

Raul and Milena both frowned as if they couldn’t have heard me right.

“Bethany, don’t be silly; one of us has to control your shift,” Milena said. “Trust me, it’s for the best.”

“Absolutely,” Raul chimed in. “We’re not letting you shift unassisted, honey. That’s never been an option.”

“Slow your roll, Alpha,” I told him. “I never said I was choosing the blowing-up-from-the-inside-without-anesthesia option. But it’s not an option for me to be one more thing for the two of you to fight or resent one another over.”

“That’s not going to happen here,” Milena denied.

Raul muttered a variation of the same.

“Damn straight it’s not,” I announced. “Because I’m choosing Alex to control my shift.”

“What?” Raul balked, delivering a whole-body reaction of abject disgust. “Are—are you kidding?”

Milena looked equally affronted and baffled.

Despite my best efforts, it was impossible not to giggle as I turned to a clearly self-satisfied-looking Alex and asked, “As long as that’s okay with you, of course?”

“This is not happening,” Raul grumbled next to me, dropping his head in his hands.

“Me?” Alex’s hand flew to his heart in an exaggerated display of surprise and modesty. We’d already privately discussed it, and he’d agreed to control my shift. “Why, Bethy, of course. I’d be honored to assist you.” His eyes flitted from my dumbfounded mate to his, taking delight in their reactions, before focusing on me again. “You’ve always been like a little sister to me.”

Raul groaned. “I’m gonna fucking puke.”

Once the pouting over Alex guiding my initial transformation settled down, Milena revealed (tattled) that Raul had recently poisoned an innocent college student named Lauren Novak—the purported seer that the guys had been talking about on the plane—in order to coerce the Reinosos into lifting my mind shield. Milena also relayed that fortunately, Mike and Rafe had delivered an antidote as soon as my shield was down, and that Lauren had recovered fine.

Honest to goodness, I almost smacked Raul on the back of his head out of reflex, as I demanded, “Why on earth didn’t you just call your sister?” These two were going to make me crazy.

“Right?” Alex provoked. “I couldn’t believe he was willing to resort to such unnecessary violence like that.”

“Oh, of all the fucking—” Raul’s exasperated outcry was cut short by Milena’s much louder one as she laid into her husband for apparently responding to Raul’s threat by telling him to go ahead and kill the seer.

It would take a long time—if ever—for me to wrap my head around the level of violence with which my new werewolf world operated.

The conversation then turned to the subject of the Reinoso pack’s head doctor, Kai, and his outrage over Raul’s poisoning of Lauren. Now that I had my memories back, I recalled meeting Kai briefly in passing ten years ago. Apparently, he had been involved with Lauren recently in what I gathered was a romantic sense. But the exact nature of their relationship and the manner in which Kai had been engaging with the seer seemed to be an uncomfortable matter for Milena to reconcile, because she immediately shut both Raul and Alex down when they tried to tattle to me about the details.

“He has not been himself lately,” she stubbornly maintained in the doctor’s defense. To me, she said, “We’ve stationed Kai in Nepal for the time being, and I’ve forbidden him from contacting Lauren in any way for now—at least not until I can figure out what’s been going on with him.”

“Yeah,” Alex chimed in. “He’s also dead set on killing Raul right now, by the way. So Milena put an order on Kai forbidding him from retaliating against her brother.” He shook his head at Raul and lamented, “I was rather looking forward to seeing that fight.”

The hour was late by the time Milena and Alex departed. It was agreed that they would be back tomorrow so that Alex could control my shift, and so that Milena might have a word with Alcaeus—if he was willing to speak with her.

“God, I thought they’d never leave,” Raul complained once they had teleported out. “Now then, where were we?”

I flattened my palms against his chest, holding him off when he pressed himself closer. “I believe I was about to lay into you for poisoning an innocent college student.”

“Oh, right.” He had the good sense to look contrite. “About that …”

“Was that really necessary?”

“Apparently not, since you managed to unblock yourself—with the help of Alcaeus’s traumatizing presence triggering you, that is. But at the time, yes, I did think it was necessary to use the seer as a bargaining chip.”

“Her name is Lauren. She’s a person first and foremost, possibly a seer second, and never again a bargaining chip, do you understand? Just like Sloane is a child and a person first, not simply the Rogue.”

“Yes, dear.” He hugged me closer, one hand sliding from my waist to my ass. “You’re absolutely right.”

“It’s not sexy when you patronize me, Raul.”

He sucked my earlobe between his teeth. “What if we’re both naked when I’m doing it?” My clothes vanished. His did too. “Does that help?”

I sighed and held back a giggle. “That’s even worse.”

“Really?” He kissed the mark on my neck. I felt his smile there. “I’ll make it better.” His tongue licked over my love-bite scar. “Promise.”

“All you think about is sex,” I protested. Weakly.

“Yes, but you love how badly I want you.” He squeezed my naked ass, his fingers dipping lower between the cleft to the juncture of my thighs where I was already wet.

He wasn’t wrong. I didn’t hate it.

“I need to be inside you, Bethy,” he stated like it was his right—and a physiological imperative.

“Here? In the study?” I pretended to object as he growled and raised me off the ground. “But what if someone walks in on us?”

My legs locked around his waist as he fitted himself at my entrance. His lips curved into a smile as they brushed mine. “Don’t worry, love. If that happens, I won’t stop.”