Chapter 4

Ava dropped to her knees on the cold marble and gripped the sides of the toilet, body heaving, eyes watering, one hand pressed flat against the floor for balance. The marble was icy against her palm. The morning light through the frosted window was thin and grey.

She stayed there until it was over.

Then she sat back against the cabinet beneath the sink, pulled her knees up, and pressed her forehead to them.

*Nine more months.* No — five. Roughly five more months of this. Werewolf pregnancies were shorter than human ones, and triplets moved faster still. She didn't have the luxury of a slow timeline.

She flushed, rinsed her face, brushed her teeth, and stared at herself in the mirror for a long moment.

The woman looking back at her had dark circles pressed beneath her eyes, a mouth that had stopped trusting easily, and a bump she was running out of ways to hide.

She'd managed it last night. The coat. The dim light. The way Ryder had pinned her wrists, pressed against her thighs rather than her torso — she'd been lucky.

She wasn't going to stay lucky.

She changed quickly and opened the bathroom door.

The bedroom was empty. The sheets on Ryder's side were flat, already smoothed, as if he'd slept on top of them rather than under them. Or hadn't slept at all.

She found the main hallway and followed it toward the kitchen smell of coffee.

A man was waiting for her at the corridor junction.

He was lean and dark-haired, dressed in a charcoal suit, with the kind of face that wore blankness like a weapon. Pack beta. She could feel it in his posture — the contained authority of a second-in-command who was used to delivering messages that people didn't enjoy receiving.

"Ms. Sterling," he said. "I'm Marcus Kane. The Alpha's head of security."

"Ava," she said.

He didn't adjust.

"I wanted to welcome you to the household." A pause, precisely placed. "And to make one thing clear."

She waited.

"The War God built this empire through loss. He has buried pack members, allies, and enemies without flinching. People who have crossed him have not remained a problem for long." His eyes stayed steady on hers. "You are here under contract. That protection extends to you — so long as you don't create complications."

Ava held his gaze.

"Thank you for the welcome," she said.

He stepped aside. She walked past him.

The kitchen was empty. Coffee was already made — she poured it half-strength and diluted it with hot water the way the doctor had instructed, trading the full taste for something that wouldn't spike her heart rate. She drank it standing at the counter and tried to quiet the thrum of unease Marcus had left behind.

She needed to know the house.

She needed to know every exit, every room, every variable.

She started with the east wing.

Most of it was what she'd expected — a formal sitting room, a dining room large enough to seat twenty, a private gym. She moved past each one and kept going until the hallway narrowed and a heavy door appeared, slightly ajar.

She pushed it open.

Maps.

They covered three of the four walls — detailed terrain maps pinned with colored markers, red strings connecting location points across the Pacific Northwest. Surveillance photographs. Population numbers. Supply line routes.

And in the center of the east wall, ringed in red marker, a cluster of territorial maps that she recognized immediately.

Evergreen Pack lands.

Every border crossing. Every forest access route. Every residential zone where pack families lived — where she had lived, once, in a house with a blue door and a garden her mother had planted before she died.

The red markers weren't defensive positions.

They were strike points.

Her stomach turned cold.

She turned and walked back to the kitchen, sat down at the island, and pressed both hands flat against the cool countertop. The triplets shifted. She breathed.

*He bought her to erase the debt. He bought her to produce an heir.* She knew that. She'd signed the contract with open eyes.

She had not known he was planning to destroy what was left of her home regardless.

Her phone buzzed.

She didn't recognize the number. Blocked. She opened the message.

*The pups are a problem. Handle it or we will. You have one week. — L.R.*

Logan Reed. She knew the initials without needing a name. Son of the Evergreen Alpha, her former almost-mate, the man who'd known about the pregnancy for three months and had never once offered anything but ultimatums.

Her thumb hovered over the screen.

She deleted the message.

"You look pale."

She turned.

Ryder stood in the kitchen doorway in a dark training shirt and black trousers, wet hair pushed back from his face, a glass of water in one hand. His eyes were on her — focused, quiet, the same tracking gaze from the limo.

Ava put her phone face-down on the counter.

"Morning sickness," she said.

It wasn't a lie.

His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. He looked at the phone on the counter, then back at her face.

"Are you going to be a problem?" he asked.

She held his gaze.

"No more than you are," she said.

Something moved in his eyes. Not anger. Something more complicated than that — the look of a man who'd expected a different kind of answer and wasn't entirely sure what to do with the one he'd received.

He set his water on the counter and walked out.

Ava exhaled slowly.

She turned her phone over.

The message was gone. The sender was gone. The only thing that remained was the map on the east wall and the three heartbeats she was running out of time to protect.