Chapter 4

Ashley's POV 

"What arrangement?" I ask, looking between them, taking in the dark hair pulled back tight, the storm-gray eyes that haven't left my face since she arrived. "Liam, what is she talking about?"

He didn’t answer right away, and that hesitation tells me more than words would. Sienna's smile sharpens, clearly pleased with the crack she's put in his composure.

"Ask him about the council clause," she says sweetly. "Ask him what happens if they decide a human isn't fit to carry an Ashworth heir at all."

"Sienna, that's enough." Liam's voice has regained some of its edge, but not all of it. He turns to me, jaw tight. "I will explain everything. Not here."

"You didn't think to mention you'd relocated your little surrogate into the family wing before all of that, either?" Sienna asks, circling us slowly, her tone light and vicious all at once, clearly not finished yet.

"She's carrying my child," Liam says. "This is where she belongs, and I don't answer to you for the arrangements I make in my own home."

"Is that what we're calling it now?" Sienna's smile doesn't reach her eyes. She stops in front of me, close enough that I can smell something sharp and floral, like perfume worn as a weapon rather than for pleasure. "I've known Liam since we were pups, human. Our packs have been in talks for a union for two years. You are a complication. A very temporary one, I'm sure, once things are handled properly."

"Sienna," Liam warns, a rumble in his voice that makes the chandelier overhead seem to tremble.

"I'm only being honest." She tilts her head, studying me like a specimen under glass. "Do you even understand what you've walked into? A human, carrying an alpha's heir. There are wolves in this city who would consider that an insult worth correcting, and I promise you not all of them are as patient as I am."

"That's enough." Liam's voice drops into something that makes the hair on my arms stand up, a low authority that seems to vibrate through the floor itself. Sienna's jaw tightens, but she steps back, some old instinct in her clearly recognizing when to stop pushing further.

"I only came to remind you of the council dinner coming up on Friday," she says, smoothing her expression back into something pleasant and false. "Do try not to bring your houseguest. It would be a needless complication for everyone involved."

She sweeps off down the hallway without waiting for a response, and I let out a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding since she first appeared.

"Ignore her," Liam says.

"She just threatened me. In your own house, in front of you, and you're telling me to ignore it?"

"She postures. It's a habit bred into her from birth." But there's tension in his shoulders that wasn't there before, and it makes me trust his reassurance a little less than I want to. "No one touches you while you're under my roof. That's not negotiable, Ashley, whatever Sienna thinks she can arrange or whoever she thinks she can convince to help her."

I want to believe him. I'm almost there, which terrifies me more than Sienna's threats did, because trusting this man is not part of any plan I ever had for my life. Twenty-four hours ago, I was a woman with a modest apartment and a simple contract, and now I'm standing in a stranger's mansion being warned about rival packs and unions I know nothing about, carrying a child that has somehow already made me a target before I've even had time to process that I'm pregnant at all.

That night I couldn't sleep again, this time for entirely different reasons. My room sits at the end of a long corridor, decorated in soft grays and blues that feel more like a hotel suite than anything lived-in, and around midnight I hear voices drifting up from the garden below my window, low and urgent. I creep closer and crack it open, just enough to hear them clearly.

"...can't keep her here forever," a man's voice is saying. "Once word spreads that a human is carrying the next Ashworth heir, every rival pack from here to the coast is going to see her as a target worth pursuing."

"Then we make sure word doesn't spread," Liam answers, quieter, harder than I've heard him yet.

"It already has. Sienna's people talk, you know that better than anyone. If someone decides the fastest way to stop this pregnancy is to remove the mother, do you really think our current security is enough to stop that from happening?"

Silence stretches long enough that I stop breathing entirely, straining to hear whatever comes next, my forehead pressed against the cool glass of the window.

"I will not lose her," Liam finally says, and something in the way he says it, low and rough, like the words cost him something on the way out, makes my chest ache in a way I don't have a name for. "Not the pup. Not her. Whatever it takes, I will not lose either of them."

I close the window before either of them can hear me, my heart hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat. I press my back against the wall and slide down until I'm sitting on the floor, replaying his words over and over until they stop making sense.

Not her.

I don't have long to sit with it. A crash sounds from somewhere downstairs, glass shattering, followed by a scream that isn't mine but comes from somewhere terrifyingly close to my door.

I freeze, every instinct telling me to stay hidden, every other instinct pulling me toward the sound instead. Before I can decide which one to listen to, the shouting downstairs rises into something frantic, boots pounding across marble, and the calm that Liam promised me only hours ago shatters completely. Whatever is happening down there, it sounds like exactly the kind of danger he swore would never reach me under his roof.