Chapter 6

Chapter 6 

Ashley POV 

Sienna crosses the room and shoves the phone into Liam's hands before he can ask what she means. I lean in without thinking, my curiosity outweighing the ache still radiating through my body from the last hour.

The screen shows grainy security footage, timestamped less than twenty minutes ago. A figure moves along the outer wall of the estate, slipping between camera blind spots with the kind of precision that only comes from knowing exactly where those blind spots are. When the figure finally turns toward the light, I catch a flash of ink along the side of his neck, a jagged mark shaped like broken antlers.

Liam goes very still.

"That's a Vane pack brand," he says quietly.

"I know what it is," Sienna snaps, some of her usual bite returning now that the shock has worn off. "What I don't know is why a Vane enforcer was inside your perimeter tonight, unless someone invited him."

"No one invited him," Liam says, jaw tight. "The Vane pack and mine haven't spoken in three years, not since the border dispute. Marcus Vane wouldn't send his own men onto my land without expecting a war."

"Unless he wasn't planning to get caught." Sienna crosses her arms. "Or unless someone wanted it to look like the Vane pack, so you'd start a war with the wrong enemy."

The room goes quiet enough that I can hear my own pulse in my ears. I look between them, feeling more lost with every second. "I don't understand any of this," I admit. "Who is Marcus Vane, and why would anyone want a war?"

"He's the alpha of the pack that borders mine to the north," Liam says, not looking away from the screen. "Ambitious. Old grudges. He's wanted a piece of my territory for years, and a scandal involving a human surrogate carrying my heir would be exactly the kind of leverage he'd need to bring before the council." He finally looks up, and the calculation in his eyes is almost as unsettling as the fury was minutes ago. "But this feels too clean for Marcus. He's a blunt instrument. This has planning behind it."

"So you think he sent that man to hurt me?"

"I think," Liam says slowly, "that someone wants me destabilized right before Friday's session. Whether that's Marcus acting on his own, or someone using his mark to point fingers in the wrong direction, I don't know yet. But I intend to find out."

Sienna's phone buzzes again in Liam's hand, another notification lighting up the screen before he can set it down. He reads it, and whatever color had started to return to his face drains right back out.

"What now?" I ask, my stomach twisting at the look on his face.

He turns the phone so I can see it. A press release, sent to every pack-affiliated outlet in the city less than ten minutes ago, headline glaring up at me in bold black letters. Ashworth Succession Under Review: Council to Address Concerns Over Unrecognized Human Surrogate at Emergency Session.

"They moved it up," Liam says, voice flat with barely contained fury. "The session isn't Friday anymore. It's tomorrow night."

"What does that mean for me? For the baby?"

"It means the council is going to vote on whether to recognize this pregnancy at all," Sienna says, tone clipped and businesslike rather than kind, the sort of voice someone uses when they're stating a political reality rather than offering comfort. "If they rule against it, the child has no protection under pack law. No claim to succession, no guaranteed safety, nothing. Anyone who wants to make a move against either of you would be doing so without consequence."

"That's not going to happen," Liam says, but the words come out rougher than I've heard from him before, like he's trying to convince himself as much as me.

"You can't control a council vote, Liam," Sienna says. "Not when someone clearly already has enough support to move the timeline up without your approval."

I sit down hard on the edge of the exam table, my hands pressed flat against my stomach, trying to process the fact that some room full of strangers I've never met is about to decide whether my child has any right to exist safely in this world. Twenty-four hours ago I was worried about rent. Now I'm being told a council might strip my baby of all legal protection.

"Who has that kind of influence?" I ask quietly. "Who could move an entire council session without you knowing?"

Liam and Sienna exchange a look I don't like, the kind of look that says they both already have a name in mind and neither wants to say it out loud first.

"There are only a handful of families with that kind of pull," Liam finally says. "And most of them owe me favors, not the other way around."

"Most of them," Sienna repeats pointedly.

Before Liam can respond, the doctor who's been quietly monitoring the machine beside us clears her throat, her voice hesitant. "Mr. Ashworth, I hate to interrupt, but there's someone at the front gate asking for you by name. Security says he claims to be family."

"I don't have family who would show up unannounced at this hour," Liam says, frowning. "Who is it?"

The doctor glances down at the tablet in her hands, scrolling to find the name the guards radioed in. When she reads it aloud, Liam goes rigid beside me, every trace of the fury from moments ago replaced by something that looks unmistakably like dread.

"He says his name is Julian Ashworth," she says. "He says he's your brother."

Liam didn’t move. Didn’t breathe, as far as I can tell.

“Liam." My voice catches somewhere between disbelief and something sharper, though the shock written plainly across his face stops me from pushing too hard. "you don't have a brother. Do you?"

For a long moment he says nothing at all, staring at some point past my shoulder like the walls of the estate have just turned to glass, and when he finally speaks his voice is barely above a whisper.

"I did. Once. Everyone believed he died six years ago."