Alexia had found pregnancy relatively manageable, up to a point. That point having been some three weeks ago, at which juncture her natural reserves of control gave way to sentimentality. Only yesterday she had ended breakfast sobbing over the fried eggs because they looked at her funny. The pack had spent a good half hour trying to find a way to pacify her. Her husband was so worried he looked to start crying himself.

He was so very large and so very gruff that he rather terrified her, but he always behaved correctly in public, and there was a lot to be said for a man who sported such well-tailored jackets---even if he did change into a ferocious beast once a month.

Captain Niall, having apparently resigned himself to losing his quarry, was savaging her horsehair petticoat into teeny, tiny shreds. "Really, what did my poor petticoat do to offend?

Tunstell, this is your Alpha speaking. Do as I tell you. You must regurgitate now. Regurgitation is an involuntary action. You cannot simply order me to do it,” replied Tunstell in a small voice. “I most certainly can. Besides which, you are an actor.” Tunstell grimaced. “I’ve never had cause to vomit onstage.

And I find perfect beauty excessively boring, don't you?

As if being a former vampire drone in a werewolf household were not shocking enough, the maid then opened her mouth and proved that she was also, quite reprehensibly, French.

She would have colored gracefully with embarrassment had she not possessed the complexion of one of those “heathen Italians,” as her mother said, who never colored, gracefully or otherwise. (Convincing her mother that Christianity had, to all intents and purposes, originated with the Italians, thus making them the exact opposite of heathen, was a waste of time and breath.)