The Silvered Read Free Page A

face her, “we are invited out to dinner before the opera and a reception after. You’ll be expected to be in clothing.”
    “My greatcoat…”
    “That’s a field uniform and you know it.” She allowed him to pull her close, her hands sliding up and around his neck. “Tonight requires trousers…” She kissed him before he could protest, then continued kissing him after each piece of required clothing. “…and shoes and a shirt and a jacket and a cravat.”
    Dark brows drew in. “If I have to change…”
    “There should be no reason for you to change at either dinner or the opera, but if there is, I know for a fact you can get out of your clothing in…Ryder!”
    “As I’m already out of my clothing, it seems a pity to waste this opportunity.” His grin, twisted by the scar he’d gained in the fight that made him Pack Leader, was distinctly wolfish as he carried her over to the settee.
    Danika thought about protesting the time or the place but, as Ryder’s callused fingers began unbuttoning her bodice, she chose not to. She needed to begin dressing for their evening’s engagements and the unlocked sitting room door meant any of the Pack members in Bercarit with them could walk in, but in a very few months she’d be in no condition for semi-public lovemaking on an extremely uncomfortable piece of furniture, so she might as well enjoy it while she could.
    As though he were reading her mind about the furniture, Ryder flipped them so she straddled his lap.
    “Better?” he asked nuzzling her throat.
    She buried her fingers in the thick, dark mass of his hair and tugged. “Much. Now get on with…Oh!”
    After, lying on the wool carpet, not entirely certain how they got there, Danika turned her face into Ryder’s shoulder and murmured, “Why now?”
    She felt as much as heard him laugh, a rumble deep in his chest. “I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific, love.”
    “The empire. There’s been peace for four years, why did the emperor suddenly toss out the Treaty of Frace and decide to attack Traiton?”
    “Why does that shit Leopald decide to do anything? Ego. He hates there’s still free people not kissing his ass.”
    “It’s just…” She laid her hand on his where it cupped her belly, warm against her cooling skin.
    “I know.”
    They’d been married for almost seven years. Danika had begun to fear that she would never be able to bear a child of the Pack when Jesine—the Pack’s strongest Healer-mage and married to Ryder’s cousin Sirlin—had told her she’d finally caught. And now, with their first child on the way, the Imperial army was as close as it had ever come.
    “Tell me they’ll be stopped in Pyrahn, that they won’t cross into Aydori.”
    “They’ll be stopped in Pyrahn.” She felt his mouth against her hair, his lips warm, his breath warmer. “Would you be this close to the border if I thought differently?”
    No. She wouldn’t be. As Pack Leader, Ryder’s duty was to Aydori; he could send the Hunt Pack into battle, but he couldn’t cross the border himself. Bercarit was his compromise. It would, after all, be the first city attacked should the unthinkable happen. He’d asked her to accompany him as much for politics as a dislike of being apart. Clearly, in spite of the Pack Leader’s presence, there could be no
real
danger or the Pack Leader’s wife and unborn child would be safe behind stone walls, high in the mountains in Trouge, the ancient Aydori capital. And she’d much, much rather be here, even considering the drift of dark hair she could see under the settee. If Ryder had shed that much since the housemaid had last swept the room, he wasn’t as sure as he sounded.

    They’d left the bulk of the Imperial army before it had entered Pyrahn, had traveled quickly across country, and slipped across the border into Aydori about forty miles north of Bercarit. Their first day in enemy territory had been spent angling carefully toward the east road out of