Faith
her.
    “You can stay for a few days, then we’ll talk about this again.” Not wanting to give her space to protest, he nodded towards Caim. “What about your brother?”
    His nephew sat some distance away, staring out over the lake. He’d yet to shift from his wolf form, and while Caim had never been particularly talkative, it was an indication that something was wrong.
    Snow lowered her voice. “He defected.”
    “What?”
    Her cheeks colored. “It’s been hard for him since he’s gotten older. Sarah raised him like a mother, but…she’s not his mother.”
    Alder inwardly sighed. He knew exactly what his daughter meant. Caim was an alpha, or at least, he would be one day. As he came into adolescence, it would only be natural for him to find himself drawn to human females. Alder had faced similar difficulties when living with Cain’s mate and it was the main reason he’d chosen to leave Cain’s pack.
    Still, while he understood what Caim was going through, his nephew couldn’t be older than fourteen. He was far too young to strike out on his own.
    “Have you talked to him at all?”
    She shook her head sadly. “He’s been in his wolf form since we left.”
    Sensing her distress, Alder put an arm around her. Snow eagerly melded herself to his side.
    “I’ll try to talk to him later,” he assured her.
    He sat with Snow for hours, listening to her talk. While they had forged a good relationship in the past, Snow had always turned to Sarah, her adoptive mother, whenever anything weighed on her mind. It was strange to be sitting next to her while she spoke about her home life and how lonely she had been lately.
    Finally, Snow was treating him like the father he had always wanted to be to her.
    And it couldn’t have come at a worse time.

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
     
     
    “Does this help?”
    Taylor sighed. For all his finesse in bed, Hale didn’t have the slightest idea how to rub a woman’s back. It felt less like he was massaging her and more like he was practicing an awkward fighting technique.
    “You’re just making it worse.” As she reached for a pillow to prop herself up, Hale winced. “What’s wrong?”
    He scratched the back of his neck. “I thought you were going to hit me with it.”
    Taylor glanced down at the pillow and cringed. “Sorry.”
    She felt terrible about the way she’d been treating him. It was just after sunrise and Hale hadn’t left her side all night.
    Earlier in the evening, after she’d stopped crying, Hale had taken her up to the mountains to find blueberries. After discovering that the blueberries had all fallen to the ground and putrefied, he’d held her as she cried again. Then later, when they arrived back at the cabin to find that there was a leak in the ceiling, he’d gone up to patch it while she sat on the floor and cried.
    When she wasn’t crying, Taylor found herself being snappy over the tiniest things. She wished she could just attribute it to hormones, but at any given time, there were any number of things bothering her.
    She was tired, but restless. Her back hurt and her head ached. She would crave weird foods one moment and felt nauseous the next. Worst of all was the bloating. She had done the math. She was hardly six weeks pregnant—how was she already such a mess?
    Taylor fell back on her bed, sighing again. “Are you sure I’m pregnant?” She poked her stomach. “Maybe I just have a tapeworm. Sure feels like it.”
    Hale looked as tired as she had ever seen him. “There is one thing we haven’t tried.”
    “Are you ever not thinking of sex?”
    “I meant we could talk to Alder. He’s been through this before.”
    She looked away. “Clearly.”
    Hale squeezed her shoulder. “Well, whether you want to talk to him or not, he’s here.”
    She sat up, eyes widening. “What?”
    No sooner had the word escaped her lips than there was a knock at the door. Hale got up to answer it.
    He kept his large body positioned so as to block Alder from
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