Page 9 of Truth or Lie

But Beckett only shook his head.

“You’re looking at it backwards, Alex. They want to mate nowbecausethings are about to become even more dangerous,” he said simply. “Fear of lost chances is one of the most powerful motivations a human being can experience.”

“Is it, though?” I asked.

He gave me a small smile in lieu of an answer, only to wince a moment later, his hand going to the bulge in his abdomen.

I frowned. “Are you all right?”

“Contraction,” he said, his expression smoothing out to a blank facade. “Hence the reason for me being stuck in this bed for the next two months. Anyway, my point is this. You already have a pack. You’d die for them. They’d die for you. If that ever happened, heaven forbid, it would rip part of your heart out. As much as you might like to, you don’t live in a bubble, Alex.”

It was eerily close to the conversation I’d just had with Leona and Kam. I opened my mouth to say something defensive and probably ill-advised, but the sound of the door opening interrupted me.

Nikolayev stalked in, his heavy brows knit together as his piercing gray gaze fell on his pregnant mate. “I felt that. You’re in pain. I’ll call the doctor back.”

Beckett sighed. “Oh my god.Thisis the reason we never lived together, Kostya—not the damned underground.Just stop.”

It should have been amusing, watching the head of the Euro-Soviet Committee fussing over an omega who’d doubtless seen far more deadly battles than he ever had. In any other mood, maybe I could have appreciated it.

I rose from my chair. “I’ll give you two some privacy.”

Nikolayev barely acknowledged me.

Beckett gave me a final, wan smile. “Think about what I said, Alex.”

“Sure thing, Boss.” The words slid off my tongue as though I actually believed I’d be able to focus on anything else over the coming week until Leona’s heat.

Maybe if I asked nicely, Nikolayev could find me a promising suicide mission somewhere, because the idea of being within a hundred miles of Leona and Kam’s nest—while knowing that my idiot packmates would have their teeth buried in the pair’s flesh—made me feel like I was about to crawl out of my own skin.

Funny how badly I wanted the very thing that would destroy me if I ever let it happen.

FIVE

Leona

SECRETARY FOUCHET finallycame through with a proposal for a private meeting with several officials from Luxembourg and Austria. I should have been ecstatic, but I couldn’t be bothered to focus on the details because my heat was coming on. In some ways, it was shocking how little I suddenly cared about world events, simply because of a cocktail of hormones rushing through my veins.

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