My Alpha Mate Secretly Got My Sister Pregnant novel · Chapter 3 of 48

Chapter 3: The Green Tin

Lacey arrives at dawn in Brynn's robe to take the Luna house and goes straight for the tea tin, and Brynn walks out with it to hear her sister on the phone: "She took the tea."

"And until then," Garrett said, "you'll be out of the Luna's house by dawn."

He walked out of the hall with Lacey on his arm.

My father followed them.

My mother followed my father.

I sat at the empty end of the high table until the cooks started stacking plates around me.

Then I drove home.

It was still my home for six more hours.

Garrett didn't come back that night.

I didn't expect him to.

I sat on the kitchen floor with my back against the dishwasher and held my stomach with both hands.

"I'm here," I told it, which was stupid.

It was the size of a raspberry.

At four I got up and started packing.

I didn't have much that was mine.

Scrubs. Running shoes. My nursing textbooks. My grandmother's cast iron pan.

The blue bowls were Garrett's mother's. The couch was the pack's.

The paint on the small bedroom walls was mine.

I had painted it pale green in June, because I'd read that green was calming, and I'd told Garrett it was going to be an office.

I stood in the doorway of that room for a long time.

At six the sky went gray over the ridge.

At ten past six, three trucks pulled into the drive.

Garrett's mother got out of the first one in a camel coat and pearls.

Two warriors climbed out of the second and started unloading boxes.

Lacey got out of the third.

She was wearing my robe.

My white waffle robe, from the hook on my bathroom door, with the coffee stain on the cuff.

She had taken it from my house sometime before last night.

"Morning," she said, and walked past me into the kitchen like she lived there.

Garrett's mother stopped in front of me on the porch.

"I hope you've been sensible," she said. "The furniture stays. The dishes stay. My bowls stay."

"I know whose bowls they are."

"Good." She looked me up and down. "I told him you'd never take, you know. Your mother's side runs thin. I told him before the mating."

"You told him a lot of things."

"And I was right."

She went inside.

The warriors carried boxes past me.

One of them was a crib still flat in its packaging.

I went back into the kitchen to get my grandmother's pan.

Lacey was already at the counter.

She had the cupboard over the kettle open, the one where I kept the tea.

Her hand was reaching for the green tin.

She moved fast.

Lacey never moved fast. She drifted. She sighed. She took ten minutes to choose a mug.

She was reaching for that tin.

I got there first.

I took it off the shelf an inch from her fingers.

It was the same tin as always. Green paint, a dent in the lid. Half full.

Every Sunday for two years, Lacey had brought me a fresh bag of her fertility tea from the greenhouse and filled it herself.

"For my big sister," she always said. "One cup every morning. Don't skip."

I had skipped all of July and half of August.

I'd been on extra night shifts and drank the hospital's burnt coffee instead.

"That's mine," Lacey said.

"You gave it to me."

"I made it." She smiled, but her eyes were on the tin. "You won't need it now, will you? Let me take it back to the greenhouse. It shouldn't go to waste."

"I'll take it with me."

"Brynn, don't be silly. It's for a wolf who's trying."

"Then I'll keep trying."

Her smile slipped.

Just for a second.

Then it came back, sweeter.

"Fine," she said. "Keep it. Drink every bit."

Garrett's mother was in the doorway now, watching.

"For goodness' sake, Lacey," she said. "Let her have her tea."

Lacey turned away and started opening my drawers.

I put the tin in the box with my textbooks and picked up my grandmother's pan.

I carried the box out to my truck.

It was a short walk.

I made it last.

At the porch steps I set the box down and stood with my back to the kitchen window.

The window over the sink was open an inch.

I had opened it myself, last night, because the room had smelled like the feast on my dress.

Lacey's voice came through it.

Low and fast.

"No. She was standing right there."

A pause.

"Because your mother told me to let her have it, that's why."

Another pause.

"I don't know if she suspects anything. She just looked at me."

I picked up the box very slowly, so it wouldn't rattle.

"Garrett," my sister said, "she took the tea."

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