My Alpha Husband Gave Me to His Brother

Eamon stopped coming.

No one told me. The black dots just disappeared from the kitchen calendar. A week later I heard two guards talking by the gate.

"The Alpha's brother asked for border duty. The north ridge."

"The ridge? Nobody asks for the ridge."

"He did."

I kept walking. I didn't let myself turn around.

For the first few weeks, Blaine glowed.

He brought me ginger tea in the mornings. He read to my belly at night in a silly voice.

Then, slowly, the tea stopped. The reading stopped.

One night I reached for him in bed, and he rolled to the edge of the mattress.

"Blaine?"

"I'm tired."

"You used to hold me."

"You're hot. The pup makes you run hot." He pulled the blanket over his shoulder. "Go to sleep, Odette."

I lay there and stared at his back until the candle burned out.

It happened at breakfast.

I leaned past him to reach the honey. He went still. His nostrils flared.

"What is that?"

"What's what?"

"On you." He grabbed my wrist and pulled it to his face. He sniffed the inside of my arm like a hound on a trail. "Him. You smell like him."

"Eamon hasn't been here in a month."

"Then why is he still on your skin?"

"Because his pup is in my body!" The words flew out before I could catch them. "Blaine, that's how it works. You know that's how it works."

He shoved his chair back. His cup was in his hand, and then it wasn't. It smashed against the wall behind me. Tea ran down the wallpaper in a brown streak.

I flinched so hard I knocked my plate to the floor.

"You're thinking about him." His voice shook. "Even now. Even carrying my heir, you're thinking about my brother."

"I'm not." My throat closed up. Tears spilled before I could stop them. "I never think about him. I never think about anyone but you. I did this for you."

He stared at me. His chest rose and fell.

Then his face crumpled.

He crossed the room in two steps and dragged me into his arms. He buried his face in my hair.

"I'm sorry. Gods, I'm sorry." His hand slid to my stomach and stayed there, warm and heavy. "I don't know what's wrong with me. It's the waiting. It's making me crazy."

"You scared me."

"I know. I know." He kissed my forehead, my temple, my wet cheek. "When the pup comes, everything goes back to normal. I promise. Just us. Just our family."

I nodded against his shirt.

I wanted so badly to believe him that I did.

I went back to the nursery that afternoon.

I hung tiny gray curtains. I folded blankets into a drawer, then unfolded them and folded them again.

That was when I felt it. A flutter, low and soft, like a moth against glass.

I froze with a blanket in my hands.

My first thought should have been joy. It was, mostly. I laughed out loud in the empty room.

But my second thought was a blanket tucked up to my chin. A low voice in the dark.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

I sat down hard in the rocking chair and pressed both hands to my belly.

"You're mine," I whispered to the baby. "Whatever else happens. You're mine."

The flutter came again, like an answer.

Three weeks later, I woke up alone.

Blaine's side of the bed was cold. I lay still, listening.

A thump. A low laugh. Then a woman's voice, soft and breathless.

It came from the dressing room next to our bedroom.

I got up. My bare feet stuck to the cold floor. The door was open an inch, and lamplight leaked through the gap.

I pushed it open.

Blaine was on the narrow daybed. Briony was in his lap, her arms around his neck, her mouth on his jaw.

Briony. Who carried my breakfast tray. Who cried when her mother died, and I held her.

She was wearing my blue dress. The one with the silver buttons. I'd given it to her on her birthday because she said it was the prettiest thing she'd ever seen.

And on the little table by the daybed sat Blaine's wedding ring.

He'd taken it off. He'd set it down neatly, like a man setting down his keys.

"Blaine."

Briony squeaked and twisted around. Her cheeks went red.

Blaine didn't move. His hand stayed on her waist.

"Go back to bed, Odette."

"Go back to—" My voice cracked in half. "Get your hands off her."

"No."

The word was so calm that, for a second, I thought I'd misheard.

He looked at me over Briony's shoulder. His eyes were bright and hard.

"Do you know what it's like? Every month, I watched my wife walk down that hall. I counted the minutes. I sat on our bed and listened for the door." His jaw clenched. "Every month, it broke me a little more. She"—he squeezed Briony's hip—"is the only thing that kept me from tearing this house apart."

"You asked me to go." I gripped the door frame. "You begged me. You cried in my lap, Blaine. You walked me to that room yourself."

"I asked you to give me an heir." His lip curled. "I didn't ask you to enjoy it."

The floor seemed to tilt.

"What?"

"I'm not deaf. I'm not stupid." He leaned forward. "I smelled you every time you came back. You liked it. You liked him."

"That's not—"

"How many times?" His voice rose. "How many times did you go soft for him? Once? Every time?"

"Blaine, my body—I didn't choose—"

"Stop." He held up one hand. "I don't want to hear it. Not another word."

"You will hear it!"

"Odette." Cold. Flat. "Enough."

Briony slid off his lap. She swayed. Her face went gray.

Then she bent over and threw up on the rug.

Blaine half rose. "Briony?"

"I'm fine." She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. My sleeve. My dress. "I'm fine, my Alpha. I just—I wanted to tell you properly. Not like this."

She reached into the pocket of my dress and pulled out a thin white stick. She held it up in the lamplight.

Two lines. Dark and clear.

"I'm pregnant," she said. Her eyes flicked to me, then back to him. "It's yours. It's only ever been yours."

The room went silent.

Blaine stared at the stick. He didn't blink. He didn't breathe.

"That's impossible," I said. "The healers—three healers said—"

He wasn't listening to me.

He took the test from Briony's fingers like it was made of glass. He turned it over. He turned it back.

Then he started to laugh.

The laugh sounded nothing like the broken one from the nursery. It rose huge and wild. It filled the tiny room and bounced off the walls.

"They were wrong." He grabbed Briony's face in both hands. "All of them. They were wrong."

"Blaine—"

"I can sire pups." He kissed her hard on the mouth, right in front of me. Then he dropped to his knees and pressed his ear to her flat stomach. "Do you hear that? Mine. This one is really mine."

I stood in the doorway in my nightgown.

My hand found my belly on its own. The baby fluttered under my palm.

Blaine didn't even look at it.

He looked up at Briony with an adoring expression he hadn't given me in months. Then, slowly, his gaze slid to me. To my stomach.

And his smile changed.

"Well," he said softly. "That changes everything, doesn't it?"