Chapter 5: HIS HEIR

SAGE

The first thing I felt was a large hand moving slowly across my stomach.

My eyelids snapped open to take in the environment. The chemical smell from whatever they had used to knock me out still clung to my nostrils.

I tried to move and realized that I couldn't.

Crystal?

Crystal wasn't here.

"Crystal?" My voice came out hoarse and dry. "Crystal!"

The hand on my stomach stilled.

I looked down, and there it was. A man's hand, pale against the dark fabric of my shirt, resting just below my ribs. Possessively.

"Get your hands off me." I tried to shuffle the chair backwards.

The hand withdrew.

I forced my vision to clear, it didn't look like I was in a basement or anything. Rather it looked like I was in some kind of a study.

"Where am I? Where is Crystal? What do you want?"

He rose from the ground and his figure came into eyesight. He was standing in front of me like some kind of twisted ghost from two weeks ago.

"You. What the hell is this? Why did you kidnap me?"

His expression didn't change.

He took another step closer, his gaze dropping deliberately to my stomach.

"Because," he tone became dangerously still, "you are carrying something that belongs to me."

I didn't bother to beat around the bush.

"How did you know about the baby?

He tilted his head slightly, studying me like I was a puzzle he was trying to solve. Before he could answer, another figure emerged from the shadows in the corner. This place gave me the creeps.

"You were also there at the club."

The blonde man grinned awkwardly.

"Guilty."

The stranger, the one with the steel-grey eyes, took another step closer to me, running a finger under my jawline. Those fingers had been inside me, and now I had the sudden urge to bite them.

"Let me introduce myself properly," he pulled back his finger. "My name is Dante Frost. And this," he gestured to the blonde man, "is my Beta, Cade."

"Right now," he continued, "you are in my pack. My office...." His eyes dropped deliberately to my stomach again. "And my baby is inside you."

"How did you know?" I demanded, pulling against the restraints again. "How the hell did you know about the pregnancy?"

Cade stepped forward with his hands in my pocket.

"The nurse who ran your tests miss, Dr. Helena Morris. She is a friend of mine from an ally pack. She recognized the scent signature from the fetus, and since she knows Dante..." He shrugged. "She put two and two together."

"Helena called me immediately," Dante continued. "And she told me about your reaction."

"My reaction?"

"She figured that you were likely to terminate it."

Wonderful.

"So you kidnapped me, had me drugged and thrown in a van because I made a choice about my body?"

"It takes two to make...that." Dante corrected, gesturing to my stomach.

"I don't even know you."

"You knew me well enough two weeks ago."

Heat flooded my face.

"T-That was a mistake."

Instead, he leaned down, bringing his face level with mine.

"You'll stay here, under my protection and until the child is born."

"Like hell I will..."

"You don't have a choice."

"Everyone has a choice."

"Not when it comes to my heir.

There it was.

Heir.

Not a baby or child.

Heir.

This wasn't about me at all.

This was about bloodlines, legacy and the exact same werewolf politics I had spent my entire life avoiding.

"Well, you can't make me."

Dante's smile was cold.

"Can't I?"

×××

Nothing was making sense to me at this point.

He had power and influence, even the looks. He could find anyone to mother his children.

"Plus, I'm an omega," I rambled. "Everybody knows that Alphas aren't supposed to mix with omegas, especially an outcast."

"I'm well aware." He cut me off.

Was he even listening to me?

"Look. I don't want to be the mother of your heir."

"And you think I want you to?" For the first time, something other than cold control streaked across his face. He seemed...frustrated.

"If I had my way, I wouldn't have children at all."

That stopped me short.

"What?"

Dante turned away from me, running a hand through his dark hair in a gesture that seemed almost... un-Alpha.

"I am cursed," he said quietly. "By the Moon Goddess. I cannot have children with anyone except my fated mate. And until two weeks ago, I believed that mate didn't exist. That I would live my entire life unable to fulfill my duty to my pack."

Understanding slapped me in the face like a freight train.

"You think I'm..."

"You are," he responded firmly. "I've never been able to conceive with anyone. Believe me, my mother made sure I... explored that possibility." Disgust flickered across his features. "But I've never even been able to get hard for those women, no matter what I tried."

Fated mates?

No. Fuck no.

"I don't want to be anybody's mate," I murmured, hating how small it sounded. "So let's just... let's start the rejection process and—"

His finger pressed against my lips, silencing me.

"The kind of bond we share," Dante whispered into my ear, "is not one that a simple rejection can sever. At least, not easily without consequences that would destroy us both."

"I don't care."

"You should." He withdrew his hand. "But I'm not unreasonable. I understand that this is... complicated for you."

I cut a glance at his obedient beta who had been staying silently still at a corner.

"I'll make this easy for you. You see..." He leaned in close. "I had someone run a background check on you."

I scoffed.

"You had no right to do that."

So now he was a stalking creep too? I had the worst of luck.

"I had every right," he cut me off. "You are carrying my child, of course I looked into who you are." His gaze sharpened. "A packless omega, raised by a human woman she calls Granny. Working two jobs, one as a barista, one as an exotic dancer to pay for medical treatments for said grandmother who suffers from a degenerative illness the doctors can't seem to cure."

"You...bastard."

"Perhaps," he agreed. "But I am a bastard with a deal for you."

"What kind of stupid deal is that?"

Dante's expression remained neutral.

"Your grandmother's illness."

"What about it?"

"It's not a normal disease," Dante crossed his hands. "Which is why human medicine can't cure it."

"What are you talking about?"

"Tell me, Sage. How long has she been sick? Five years? Six? And in all that time, with all those treatments, all those medications, has she gotten better? Even a little?"

She hadn't. I hated to say this to him but truly, she hadn't.

Every treatment, every new medication, every hopeful doctor's appointment had ended the same way, with temporary improvement, then decline. Over and over again, like we were trapped in some endless cycle of false hope.

"The doctors said it is kidney disease..."

"The doctors are wrong."

I scoffed.

"And you can somehow do better than them?"

"My pack can," he corrected. "We have the cure."

My throat wobbled for a second. No. This was likely a trap.

"You're bluffing," I chuckled. "You're just trying to manipulate me into—"

"Into what? Staying?" He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Sage. If I wanted to force you to stay, I wouldn't need to offer you anything. I could simply... keep you."

The casual way he said it...

My brain was definitely fried because it didn't scare me. The idea of him 'keeping me' should've scared me.

"But that's not what I want," he continued. "I don't want a prisoner or a terrified mate who despises me. What I want is an arrangement till the baby is born, and in exchange your grandmother gets the cure, and you get compensation after the child is birthed."

The price tag of what he was asking was greater than any expensive vodka I had ever taken a sip of.

"Do you know what you are asking me to give up?"

"I'm asking you to make a sacrifice for the person you love most in this world," Dante corrected. "Isn't that what you've been doing all along? Working two jobs you hate, dancing for men who disgust you, living in poverty...all to keep her alive? I'd say...almost, if I believed in fate that it was fate we met."

My head was swarming with different thoughts warring against each other, And somehow my big mouth opened on its own.

"I don't trust you."

That wasn't what I wanted to say. Well, I didn't trust him, but then that wasn't what I had planned to say.

"Cade."

Dante shrugged, gesturing to his Beta.

The Beta straightened immediately.

"Yes, Alpha?"

"Bring me the box."

Cade nodded and disappeared through a door I hadn't noticed before, hidden behind one of the massive bookshelves.

I was curious to say the least.

Cade returned less than a minute later, carrying something in his hands. A green box, about the size of a shoebox, with intricate dagger designs. The craftsmanship was beautiful, almost hypnotic.

He handed it to Dante with a worried glance on his face.

Dante placed it on my lap.

"What is that supposed to be?"

"The truth your grandmother has kept from you all these years."

I looked up at him, arching a brow.

"What truth?”