Chapter 6: The Phone Call

At three months, I could see it.

Just a small curve beneath my shirt, barely there if you were not looking. But I was always looking now. I would stand sideways in the bathroom mirror and press my palm against the warm swell, and feel the quiet flutter of something alive moving under my skin.

My baby. My tiny, impossible baby.

I was sitting on the cabin porch when Lillian arrived unannounced for the third time that month. She burst through the door and dropped into the chair across from me, her face tight with an emotion I recognized all too well.

"I need to ask you something and I need you not to lie to me."

"Good morning to you too, Lillian."

"How can you just sit here and accept this?" Her voice rose fast. "How can you accept being labeled an inferior wolf? Being thrown away like garbage? Like you are nothing? Like everything you ever were means nothing?"

"Lillian, calm down."

"Do not tell me to calm down! You were supposed to be Alpha! You were supposed to lead our pack! And instead you are hiding in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, growing a baby that has no father, no pack, no future, and you are just sitting here drinking tea like that is fine?"

Weston stepped through the front door with a bag of groceries. He took one look at Lillian's face and set the bag down very carefully.

"Okay," he said slowly. "What did I walk into?"

"She will not fight!" Lillian jabbed a finger at me. "She just accepts everything! The exile, the brand, the shame, all of it! Like she does not even care!"

"I care, Lillian." My voice was quiet. "I care more than you know."

"Then do something about it!" She was crying now, angry tears that she kept swiping away. "At least make the father take responsibility! At least make him acknowledge what he did!"

Weston sat down beside me and gave me a look that was careful and measured. "She has a point, Serena. Every child deserves a father. And this baby did not ask to be born into a mess. It deserves at least a chance."

"Weston, you do not understand."

"Then help me understand. Help both of us understand."

"You do not know who the father is. If you did, you would not be sitting there so calm."

"Then tell us." Lillian leaned forward. "You have been hiding his name for months. Whoever he is, he cannot be worse than what you are already going through."

I looked at my hands. They were trembling. The name sat on my tongue like poison, and every part of me wanted to swallow it back down and never speak it out loud.

But they were right. My child deserved a father's name. Even if that father was a monster.

"It is Dominic Blackwell."

Silence. The kind of silence that fills a room after a bomb goes off, where everything stops and the air itself holds its breath.

Weston's face drained of color. His mouth opened and closed three times without producing a sound.

Lillian stood up so fast her chair flew backward and crashed against the wall.

"Dominic Blackwell?" Her voice was a whisper at first, then it climbed, fast and sharp. "The Alpha of the Dark Night Pack? Our father's worst enemy? The man who has been trying to destroy our family for a decade? That Dominic Blackwell?"

"Yes."

"I will kill him." Her eyes went wide and wild. "I swore I would kill the man who did this to you and I meant it. I will rip his throat out with my bare hands."

"Lillian, sit down."

"Do not tell me to sit down! He ruined your life! He took everything from you!"

"He does not even know who I am. He does not know my name. He does not know I am an Ashford."

That stopped her cold. She stared at me, processing. "He does not know?"

"No. I was wearing heavy makeup that night. He never saw my real face."

Weston rubbed his temples with both hands. "This is bad. This is really, really bad."

"I know."

"No, Serena, you do not know. If Dominic Blackwell finds out he slept with Richard Ashford's daughter, it will start a war. An actual war between the packs."

"Which is exactly why he can never find out."

"But the baby deserves a father," Lillian whispered, all the fire suddenly gone from her voice. "You said it yourself. You grew up with Dad. You know what a father means. Are you really going to let this child grow up without one?"

That hit somewhere deep. I thought about my father's hands, strong and steady, lifting me onto his shoulders when I was small. Teaching me to read the stars. Telling me I was brave when the thunderstorms came. Before everything fell apart, he had been the greatest man I had ever known.

Every child deserved that.

"I will call him," I heard myself say. "I will tell him about the baby. What he does with that information is his choice."

Weeks passed before the moment came. Lillian had dug through our father's private files and found Dominic's personal number, though she was too closely watched to bring it sooner. Then one evening, Weston showed up at the cabin with a heavy expression and held out his phone. Dominic's number glowed on the screen.

My hands shook so badly I could barely hold the phone. I dialed and pressed it to my ear, and each ring felt like a countdown to something terrible.

"Who is this?" His voice was deep. Low. A little irritated. And the sound of it sent a rush of heat through my body so sudden and so vivid that my knees almost gave out. Fragments of that night crashed over me. His mouth on my skin. His hands in my hair. The growl in his chest when I whispered his name.

I closed my eyes and forced the memories down.

"You do not know me. But we met at the Annual Alpha Conference. The hotel. That night."

A pause. Then a low, dismissive laugh. "Do you know how many calls I get from wolves claiming they spent the night with me? What do you want? Money?"

"I do not want your money. I am pregnant. The baby is yours."

The silence that followed was ice cold.

"Listen to me very carefully." His voice dropped to something flat and dangerous. "I do not know who you are. I do not know who put you up to this. But if you think you can threaten me with some cheap pregnancy scam, you have made a very poor decision. Do not call this number again."

The line went dead.

I stood there with the phone pressed to my ear, listening to the silence, waiting for something that was not coming. Then the screen lit up with a notification.

This number has blocked you.

My knees buckled. Weston caught me before I hit the floor, his arms wrapping around me from behind as I crumpled against his chest.

"What did he say?" Lillian's voice was tight. "Serena, what did he say?"

"He hung up." The words came out hollow. Empty. "He called it a scam. He blocked the number."

"That son of a..."

"Lillian. It is done."

Weston lowered me gently into a chair and crouched in front of me, his face level with mine. "Serena. Listen. Maybe this is a sign. Maybe it is time to consider... letting go. Finding a family for the baby. Someone who can give it a proper life."

A sudden sharp movement inside my belly made me gasp. A kick. Tiny but unmistakable. A small foot pressing against the inside of my stomach like a little fist knocking on a door.

I pressed my hand against the spot and felt it again. Stronger this time. Insistent.

"No." My voice steadied. "This is my child. I felt it kick just now. I am not giving my baby to strangers."

Weston looked at me for a long time. Then he nodded slowly and stood up.

"Okay. Then we figure it out."

"There is something else." He shoved his hands into his pockets and looked at the floor. "I have to leave for a while. Some personal business I need to handle. I will not be able to come by for a few weeks."

Something in his voice made my stomach tighten. "What kind of personal business?"

"Nothing important."

"Weston. Look at me." He raised his eyes, and I saw it immediately. The tension around his mouth. The way he would not hold my gaze. "Is this about your family? About your father?"

"No." He smiled, but it was thin and forced. "It is nothing. Just some stuff I need to sort out. I will be back before you know it."

He waved a hand casually and backed toward the door, and everything about his body language screamed liar. But I was too exhausted and too broken to push harder, so I let him go.

The door closed behind him, and I sat alone in the quiet cabin with my hand on my stomach and the terrible, growing suspicion that Weston's departure had everything to do with me.