Chapter 24 · No Baby Lie

"She's pregnant." Ethan's voice cracked across the clinic waiting room like a fist on glass, and every head turned to me — the intake nurse, two pack betas by the door, Cassian with a pen still hovering over the fund papers on the counter.

The pen stopped moving.

"Say that again," Cassian said. Quiet. Too quiet.

"You heard me." Ethan stepped closer, and I smelled the whiskey on him before I saw the shake in his hands. "Sloane's carrying pack blood. My blood. That makes her pack property, Vale. Not yours to fund, not yours to touch."

"That's a lie." My voice came out flat because if I let it shake, he'd win. "You rejected me on the port floor in front of forty witnesses. You don't get to un-reject me now because you don't like who's holding my pen."

"Doesn't matter what I said that night." He smiled, and it was the same smile he'd worn when he called me a medic and not a mate, like the words cost him nothing then and cost him nothing now.