Chapter 4

Chapter 4

ANTONIO

I did not know why I had done it.

That was the part that bothered me, even as I watched my mother rise from her chair slowly, not sparing me a single glance as she gathered herself. Christiana followed her, and I caught the brief hesitation at the door — the way she stopped, her eyes finding me, her lips parting like she was going to say something. Then she shook her head, pressed her lips into a thin line, and followed my mother out.

The door shut behind them.

I stood there in the silence of the room and asked myself why I had snapped over a comment my mother had made numerous times across four years and had never drawn that response from me before.

The answer was practical. I had received a check-in message from the elder council this morning, and after yesterday — after Annalisa had essentially threatened me — I had been on edge, watching for signs that she had already gone behind my back. The message had contained nothing alarming, just the standard formality, but that had not been enough to fully loosen the tension I had been carrying since she had looked at me across my study and said what she said. I was wound up, and my mother's words had been the final push.

That was all it was.

I looked at Annalisa.

She had not moved from her chair. Her head was bent over her notebook, her pen moving steadily across the page, and she had given no outward reaction to anything that had happened in the last several minutes. No gratitude. No acknowledgment. I had called her my mate in front of his mother and his fated mate, and she had simply continued writing.

She had always had a talent for that. It had always irritated me. At this particular moment, it irritated me more than usual.

"You didn't have to do that," she said, without looking up. "To defend me."

"You wanted me to act like your mate for a month," I said, moving further into the room. "That is one of the things a mate does."

She said nothing.

"Besides," I continued, taking the chair across from her, "I have no interest in letting this play out with any interference. You are not going to sabotage that ceremony. I want it done cleanly and done well. There is nothing for my mother to monitor because you will not give her anything to find." I looked at her steadily. "If you do, I'll rip your throat out."

She looked up at that — briefly — and something flashed across her eyes, something too fast for me to name. Then she lowered them back to the notebook and continued writing.

The room was quiet except for the soft scratch of her pen.

I found myself watching her without meaning to. The way she held the pen. The way her hair had been pinned back but had started to come loose at one side, a single dark strand falling against the back of her neck. The notebook was already half full of notes I could not read from this angle.

She was competent at this. I knew that, technically. She had always handled things quietly, without drawing attention to herself. My father had always said her leadership instincts were sharp. I had not paid much attention at the time, because there had been no reason to.

There was still no reason to. I noted it and moved on.

The other thing that had been sitting at the back of my mind since yesterday resurfaced.

She had said she was pregnant. I had told her she was lying. I still believed she was lying, but I had found myself in quiet moments running the check anyway, because I needed to be certain. Pregnancy would complicate everything with Christiana, and I could not afford complications built on something that wasn't real.

I had not slept with her. The night at the Halverson estate was blurred in places, but I remembered arriving. I remembered seeing Christiana with Marcus Halverson and the fury that came with it. The next memory I had was waking in my own room with a headache that lasted most of the morning. I did not remember going to Annalisa's room. I did not remember any of what she claimed had happened.

And I could not scent it on her. Whatever a pregnancy did to a female wolf's scent, I could detect nothing of it. Her heartbeat was slightly erratic, but it had always been slightly erratic around me. There was no second heartbeat. I had listened more than once without her knowing, and there was nothing there.

She was lying.

Still, if I was going to be certain, I needed proximity. A proper scenting, close enough and long enough for her walls to come down and her scent to open fully. It was also part of our agreement. Two purposes, one action.

"Come here," I said.

She looked up, narrowing her eyes with suspicion clear in them.

"Come here," I said again, my voice even.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"You said you needed my scent. For the pregnancy." I let the word sit between us exactly as she had left it — unqualified. "I am fulfilling my end of the agreement. Unless you were lying about that part as well."

"I wasn't lying," she said, her hands tightening against the notebook.

"Then come here."

She wanted to argue. I could see it in the tension at the corners of her mouth, the way she was weighing whether to push back. Then something shifted in her expression, and she exhaled, and she stood.

She came around the table and sat beside me, spine straight, a careful distance maintained that I had not asked her to keep.

"Closer," I said.

"Antonio—"

"You gave me a list of requirements. I am satisfying one of them. If you want to argue, we can revisit the entire arrangement."

Her jaw tightened. Then she shifted and laid her head against my chest.

It was stiff. Everything about it was stiff — her shoulders, her neck, the careful way she had positioned herself so as little of her as possible was touching me. I raised my arm and wrapped it around her and began releasing my scent slowly, the way an Alpha did it deliberately, measured and controlled.

There was no intimacy in it. This was a test.

I kept my eyes forward and waited.

A minute passed. Then another. Her breathing was shallow when she sat down. It evened by degrees — slow, quieting, the way breath changed when a body surrendered something it had been holding without deciding to. Her shoulders came down gradually, in increments so small I would have missed them if I had not been watching. The careful distance between us closed without her seeming to notice.

Her scent began to come through.

Faint at first. The familiar surface of it, the one I had catalogued without meaning to years ago. Underneath that I was listening for something layered beneath, the secondary note that would either confirm or deny what she had told me.

I was still listening when her head settled more fully against my chest and her breathing reached something close to stillness, her walls just beginning to come down. I saw her inch closer, her nose finding a place to bury her face in, looking adorable like a small fluffy animal, as I felt a fondness for her.

"Adorable" I thought almost reaching out to ruffle her hair.

Her scent was just starting to open when the door moved.

She was off me before I had fully registered the sound, straightening, that careful distance reinstated instantly, as though the last several minutes had not occurred.

Reyes stood in the doorway, his expression already apologetic. "I'm sorry. Miss Christiana was in the east garden. She's hurt. She refused to let me come get you — she said you were occupied and she didn't want to be a bother."

I was already on my feet.

I looked back at Annalisa. She had turned back to her notebook, pen in hand, writing like I was not in the room.

Something about it made my blood run hot, though I could not have explained why.

"I spent time with you today," I said. "The proximity. The scent. And the thing with my mother. It is enough for today. I will find you tomorrow."

"All right," she said, and did not look up.

I followed Reyes into the hallway.

He fell into step beside me, and after a beat, he reached into his jacket and held out a folded document without a word — the result of the blood test I had quietly arranged two days ago, pulled from the medical records she had signed over when she became Luna of this pack.

I took it. Unfolded it. Read it as we walked.

Negative.

There was no pregnancy. There had never been one. The numbers were unambiguous — hormone levels flat, no indicators of any kind. She was not carrying anything.

She had lied to my face. Looked me in the eye and constructed an entire medical scenario to buy herself thirty days, and I had let her do it because I had not been able to confirm it fast enough.

I folded the paper, slid it into my jacket, and kept walking.

She was going to pay for this.