Chapter 2

The limo smelled like leather and his cologne.

Ava sat pressed against the far door, one hand resting in her lap, the other flat against her abdomen beneath the cover of her oversized coat. Outside the tinted windows, Seattle slid past in streaks of amber and wet asphalt. Inside, the silence was the kind that had weight.

Ryder sat across from her. One ankle crossed over his knee. Both arms loose at his sides. He looked like a man who'd just closed a business deal and was already thinking about the next one.

He reached into the breast pocket of his coat and pulled out a folded document.

He didn't hand it to her. He set it on the leather seat between them and pushed it forward with two fingers — the way you'd slide a contract across a boardroom table.

Ava looked at it without touching it.

"Read it," he said.

She picked it up.

The paper was thick, expensive. Twelve pages of clean black type. Her eyes moved fast — she'd grown up watching her father negotiate pack agreements, had learned to read legal language before she learned to cook. She didn't let her expression change.

*One year.* She was to live in the Blackthorn mansion as his Luna. She was required to maintain the appearance of a bonded mate at all public events. She was to remain under Blackthorn Pack protection. All contact with Evergreen Pack was to be suspended for the duration of the contract.

In exchange, Evergreen Pack's debt was erased. Fully. Immediately.

And there — buried in clause seven, halfway down page four — the heir clause.

*The Luna is expected to carry and deliver a viable heir within the contract year.*

Ava's hand went perfectly still on the page.

She was four months pregnant with his triplets.

The math was not in her favor.

She kept her eyes down, reading the same line twice, then a third time. Her heart was doing something irregular against her ribs but she breathed through it — slow, even, controlled. The coat was good. Loose through the waist, structured enough at the shoulders that nothing showed. She'd chosen it specifically.

*He doesn't know. He can't know yet.*

She flicked her gaze up.

Ryder was watching her.

Not with impatience. Not with the cold disinterest he'd shown in the warehouse. His eyes were tracking her — her hands, her face, the slight tension at the corners of her mouth that she couldn't quite iron out.

"You're hiding something," he said.

Her stomach dropped.

"I'm reading a contract," she said.

"People who are just reading don't grip the page like that."

She eased her fingers deliberately, smoothed the paper across her knee.

He studied her for another moment, then his nostrils flared — subtle, barely visible — and something moved behind his eyes before he looked away.

*He thinks it's fear.* She could feel it in the way his posture shifted, a micro-relaxation, like a man who'd solved a small equation. *He smells fear and he's filed it under 'normal.'*

She needed to keep it that way.

"The heir clause," she said, keeping her voice flat. "That's non-negotiable?"

"Everything else is."

"What if I can't—"

"You can." His voice held no room for debate. Not cruel. Just certain, the way a man is certain of gravity. "Sign it."

Ava looked back at the page.

One year. She could survive one year. She'd survived him leaving. She'd survived her father's decision. She'd survived two months of morning sickness alone in a flat with no pack support and a phone she was afraid to answer.

She could survive this.

She uncapped the pen he'd set on the seat beside the contract. Her hand was steady. She signed her name at the bottom of the last page — clean, deliberate — and set the pen down.

The moment she did, something shifted in the air.

Quiet. Sealed. Final.

And then one of the triplets moved.

Not a flutter. Not the soft nudge she'd grown used to in the small hours of the morning. A full kick — hard and insistent, right up under her ribs, as if the baby wanted to announce the exact moment everything became legally complicated.

Ava's breath caught.

Ryder's head snapped up.

His eyes went to her midsection.

The coat covered everything. She knew it covered everything. But he'd heard that small, sharp intake of breath and now he was looking at her with those crimson eyes gone very still, his nostrils flaring again — longer this time, slower, like a man who'd caught a scent he couldn't immediately identify.

The silence stretched.

"What the hell was that?" he said.

Not angry. Not accusing. Something stranger than both.

Ava met his gaze.

Her heart was a fist slamming against the inside of her chest.

"Nothing," she said. "I'm tired."

Ryder stared at her.

Outside, the limo turned off the highway and the Blackthorn penthouse tower appeared through the windshield — glass and steel climbing into a sky that had gone the color of old bruises.

He didn't push further.

But he also didn't look away.

And Ava sat perfectly still with her signed name at the bottom of an iron contract, three heartbeats thumping quietly beneath her hands, and the slow, terrible understanding that she had bought herself exactly as much time as she could count on one hand.