Pregnant by My Enemy Mate

I smelled her before I saw her.

That jasmine-and-vanilla perfume cut through the warm air of the Nighthollow pack house like a needle through skin, and every muscle in my body went tight. I'd spent the drive over telling myself I was fine. That I could do this. One night, strangers, food — Kaylani's exact prescription.

Serena Wheeler was standing twenty feet away, laughing at something an unmated Alpha had just said, her hand resting lightly on his forearm.

Not even twenty-four hours.

Kaylani touched my elbow. "Avery."

"I see her."

"We can leave."

"No." I picked up a glass of sparkling water from a passing tray and took a slow sip. The hollow ache in my chest was still there — it hadn't gone anywhere, it wasn't going to go anywhere tonight — but something underneath it had shifted. Hardened. "We're not leaving."

Kaylani looked at me for a moment. Whatever she saw in my face made her step back and give me room.

I watched Serena work. That was the only word for it — work. She moved through the room with the practiced ease of someone running a very specific kind of calculation, positioning herself beside each unmated Alpha in turn, tilting her head at the right angle, laughing at the right moment. She was good at it. I'd watched her do it at a dozen pack events and never once recognized it for what it was.

I recognized it now.

The first Alpha she'd cornered was a broad-shouldered man from what looked like the Ironwood delegation, deep in conversation with her about something that had him leaning in. I crossed the room, stepped smoothly into the gap between them, and said, "Sorry to interrupt — Ironwood, right? My Alpha was asking about your eastern border situation earlier. He'd love five minutes if you have them."

The Alpha straightened, immediately interested. "Of course. Where is he?"

"Near the east entrance, I think. I can walk you over."

I did not walk him over. I pointed him in a direction and let him go, and when I turned back, Serena was watching me with an expression that had gone very flat and very still.

I smiled at her. Just barely.

Then I went and found the next one.

By the third interception I'd settled into a rhythm. It wasn't difficult, exactly — it just required paying attention, which I'd apparently been very bad at for the past seven years and was now making up for in a single evening. Step in, redirect, extract. Serena couldn't make a scene without drawing attention to herself, and drawing attention to herself here, at another pack's ceremony, would cost her more than losing one conversation.

She knew it. I could see it in the way her jaw tightened each time.

Good.

I was midway through dismantling her fourth attempt of the night — she'd positioned herself beside a dark-haired Alpha near the drink table, and I'd just materialized at his other elbow with a comment about the ceremony's hosting arrangements that pulled his attention cleanly sideways — when I felt it.

Not a sound. Not a touch. Just a scent.

Cedar. Black amber. Something deep and warm underneath, like woodsmoke and dark earth, and it hit me so hard and so suddenly that I actually stopped mid-sentence.

The Alpha I'd been talking to said something. I didn't hear it.

My wolf went absolutely electric.

I turned.

He was standing about ten feet away, and he'd clearly been there for a moment already — long enough to have been watching, though his expression gave almost nothing away. Tall. Dark hair, slightly disheveled. A jaw that looked like it had been designed specifically to be irritating. He was dressed simply, no pack insignia I could immediately place, and he was looking at me with the contained, careful attention of someone who had just seen something they hadn't expected and were deciding what to do about it.

Then his nostrils flared, almost imperceptibly.

And I watched something shift behind his eyes.

My chest did something complicated. The phantom ache from Lucian's rejection was still there — it didn't disappear, it didn't get replaced — but underneath it, something else was pulling. Something warm and insistent and entirely unwelcome given the current state of my life.

I went very still.

He crossed the room.

Not fast. Not hesitant. Just steady, like a man who had made a decision and was following through on it, and I stood there and watched him come and did not move, because my wolf had apparently decided that moving was not an option right now.

He stopped in front of me. Up close, the scent was worse — better — I couldn't decide which. My fingers tightened around my glass.

"That was the third one," he said. His voice was low, unhurried. "I counted."

I looked at him. "Excuse me?"

"The redirections." A pause. Something that wasn't quite a smile moved at the corner of his mouth. "You're very efficient."

Across the room, I was dimly aware of Serena watching us. I didn't look at her.

"She's working the room," I said. "Someone had to stop her."

"Most people would have just left."

"Most people didn't spend seven years being lied to by her." The words came out before I'd decided to say them. I felt my jaw tighten. "Sorry. That was more than you asked for."

"No," he said quietly. "It wasn't."

There was a beat of silence. The kind that has weight to it.

"I'm Avery," I said.

"Knox." He said it simply, like it was just a name, and held my gaze in a way that made it clear he knew it wasn't.

From somewhere across the room, I felt eyes on us. I glanced sideways and caught Nadia Flores — the host Luna, sharp-faced and observant — watching our exchange with an expression that was too knowing to be casual. She looked away the moment our eyes met, but not before I registered it.

I looked back at Knox.

His scent was still doing something completely unreasonable to my nervous system, and the ache in my chest had not gone away, and I had been awake for approximately thirty-six hours and had cried exactly once, briefly, into Buster's fur at four in the morning, and the last thing I needed right now was this.

I knew what this was. My wolf knew what this was.

I just wasn't ready to say it out loud yet.

Neither, it seemed, was he.