THE ALPHA'S FORBIDDEN SURROGATE

Derek signed the divorce papers without looking at me.

He didn't read them either. The pen scratched across the last page and he pushed the stack to the middle of the table like a bill he was tired of getting.

I sat across from him with my hands under the table. My thumbnail was digging into my palm. I had been doing it since the judge walked in, and now the skin had split.

"One matter remains," the judge said, turning a page. "Mr. Hale's claim on the house on Marlow Street."

"That's my mother's house," I said. "She signed it over to me."

"And Mr. Hale paid for its repairs and taxes for five years," his lawyer said. "Mrs. Hale contributed nothing to this marriage."

Nothing?à I worked two jobs for the first three years so Derek could finish his business course. I cooked for his father every Sunday and smiled when the old man said my rice was dry. I opened my mouth to say all of it.

"Let her talk," Derek said. He leaned back, and he smiled at his lawyer, not at me. "Go on, Nora. Tell them what you gave me. I'm curious."

My throat closed up. "I gave you five years."

"You wasted five years of my life." He said it loud, so the clerk and the two men at the back would hear. "I wanted a family. You gave me a doctor's waiting room and you crying in the bathroom. You couldn't do the one thing a wife is for."

Somebody at the back coughed. Nobody looked at me. That was worse than if they had.

"I went to every appointment," I said. My voice came out small, and I hated it. "You came to two."

"Because there was nothing to come for."

The door opened. Heels clicked across the floor. Brielle walked in without anyone calling her, one hand low on her stomach, her face all soft worry, like she had come to comfort me.

"Derek, please," she said, and touched his shoulder. Then she looked at me. "I'm so sorry, Nora. Nobody wanted it to go like this."

The diamond on her finger caught the light from the window. It was bigger than mine had ever been.

"Tell her," she said to him, very gently.

"Tell me what?"

Derek put his hand over hers on her stomach. "Brielle's pregnant. Eight weeks."

The room went quiet in a thin, ringing way. My wolf had been pacing inside me all morning. She stopped. I felt her go cold from the inside, like someone had opened a door in winter.

"Congratulations," I said. I don't know where it came from.

Derek's eyebrows went up. He had wanted a fight. I could see it. He had wanted me to scream so he could shake his head at the room.

"Your Honour," his lawyer said, "we will file separately on the house this week."

"Fine," I said. "I'll sign."

I pulled the papers toward me. My hand was shaking so badly the first letter of my name came out crooked. I made myself write the rest slowly, line by line, until the shaking stopped. When I put the pen down, nobody said anything.

"You're not going to ask me for anything?" Derek said. He sounded almost disappointed. "The house? A little more time? You used to be good at begging."

I stood up and pushed my chair in. Mama always said you push your chair in, even when you're leaving a place for good.

"No," I said.

* * *

It was raining when I got outside. Not the light kind. The heavy kind that comes sideways and finds the gap in your collar.

I didn't have an umbrella. I stood under the stone arch by the courthouse doors, and I was about to run for the bus stop when I heard Derek's voice around the corner.

"I mean it," he was saying. "I never want to see her again. Not at the market, not at her mother's funeral, nothing. You understand me?"

"Her mother isn't dead, Derek," Brielle said, and she laughed.

"She will be soon."

Brielle laughed again, softer.

I stepped back before they could turn. My heel slid on the wet stone and I caught myself on the wall. I walked away fast, down the steps and into the rain, and I didn't stop until I was across the road.

My phone buzzed in my coat. I took it out with wet fingers. St. Agnes Hospital, billing department. Third message today. I didn't open it. I knew what it said. Mama's account was forty days overdue.

In my bag, under my wallet, was the letter from the bank. I didn't need to take it out either. Ten days. After that, they would put a notice on the door of the only house that still smelled like her cooking.

Water ran off my hair and into my eyes. I stood at the edge of the pavement with the divorce papers folded against my chest, and I tried to think of one person I could call. I got to the end of my contacts list and started again from the top.

A black SUV pulled up in front of me.

It didn't splash me. The driver had stopped exactly at the curb, like he knew where I'd be standing. The back door opened before anyone inside could reach for it.

The street changed. I felt it before I understood it. A courier on a bicycle slowed down and looked at the ground. A woman with a stroller turned her face away. Two men outside the pharmacy stopped talking and dropped their eyes. All of them were wolves, and none of them said a word.

My own wolf lifted her head. She hadn't done that all day.

A man stepped out. He was tall, in a dark coat that the rain didn't seem to touch. He didn't open an umbrella. He just stood there, and the rain ran down his face, and he looked at me for a long moment, like he was reading something printed on my forehead.

"You're Nora Vance," he said.

I hadn't used that name in five years. "Who wants to know?"

"Alpha Adrian Blackthorne."

My mouth went dry. Every wolf in the territory knew that name. Mothers used it to scare children into bed, and fathers said it quietly, like it might hear them.

His eyes dropped to the papers against my chest. Then they came back to my face.

"I'm sorry about your marriage," he said. He didn't sound sorry. He sounded like a man reading an address. "I have a proposition for you. I want you to carry my child."

I laughed. It came out wrong, half a cough. "Is this a joke?"

"I don't joke."

I looked at the driver, then at the wolves on the pavement, who were still pretending not to listen. Nobody was laughing. Rain drummed on the roof of the SUV.

"Ten million dollars," he said. "Just for one year."

My knees felt strange. I made them hold.

"And I need your answer before midnight.”