All Chapters of PREGNANT WITH THE ALPHA'S UNWANTED HEIR : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

74 Chapters

The last warning

"Congratulations, Miss Crest. You're eight weeks along."I've been saying it to myself the whole drive home. Practicing it like a speech. "Bastien, I'm pregnant." Four words. I even tried different versions. Casual. Nervous. Smiling. I settled on smiling.I'm still smiling when I push through the lobby doors of Rourke Tower. The security guard at the front desk says good morning and I say it back without stopping because I cannot stand still right now. The elevator feels too slow so I take the stairs, one hand skimming the rail, the other pressed flat against my stomach over my coat.Eight weeks. There's something in there that is half me and half him and I don't know what to do with how much that means to me.Third floor landing. I can hear my own heartbeat.Fourth floor. I'm already thinking about his face. Bastien doesn't do surprised. He does controlled. He does measured. But maybe, just maybe, this will be the one thing that cracks that wall open a little. Maybe he'll reach for m

What soren knows

You need to eat something before you make any decisions."That is the first thing Soren says when I come back inside. Not are you okay. Not what just happened out there. Just eat something, like food is the answer to the fact that my entire life just reorganized itself in a lobby chair.I follow him to the kitchen anyway.It's the staff kitchen on the second floor, not the main one upstairs where Bastien takes his morning coffee standing at the window like he's surveying territory. This one is smaller. Used. It smells like burnt toast and someone's leftover lunch and it is the most normal room in this entire building.Soren opens the fridge like he owns it, pulls out a container of leftover rice, and puts it in the microwave without asking. I sit on the counter the way I'm not supposed to and watch him move around the space with the comfort of someone who has spent his whole life finding the informal version of every formal room."You're not going to ask what happened outside," I say.

The morning after endings

"Your eyes."That is all he says. Two words. But the way he says them makes my stomach drop straight to the floor.I turn around slowly because there is no version of this where running helps me.Bastien is standing two steps above me on the landing, and he is looking at me the way I have never seen him look at anything. Not calculating. Not controlled. Just raw, like something underneath all that careful composure has come loose and he hasn't figured out how to put it back yet."They were silver," he says. "For a second. Your eyes were silver.""Trick of the light," I say.He looks at the stairwell window. There is no direct light in this part of the building. We both know it."Lena.""I have a car coming at ten." I keep my voice even. "I should finish packing."I turn back toward the stairs and I get exactly two steps before his hand closes around my wrist. Not hard. Not a grab. Just a stop, firm and warm, and I hate how familiar it feels because he has touched me exactly four times

What the blood carries

"Who called?" I ask.Nadia doesn't answer right away. She gets up and checks the hallway again through the narrow gap in the door, then closes it and turns the small lock at the handle. I have never seen her lock that door in three years."He didn't give a name," she says. "He asked if we had a Volana wolf registered with the pack. I told him no. He said he already knew the answer and hung up."The folder is still open on my lap. I look at the test results without really seeing them. My brain is doing that thing it does when there is too much incoming at once, going very quiet and very still, sorting fast underneath the surface."How would someone outside this pack know to call here?" I ask."Because a Volana pregnancy puts off a signal." Nadia sits back down across from me, her hands flat on the desk. "I know that sounds impossible given what your father did to you. But the suppression ritual didn't eliminate your bloodline, Lena. It buried it. And buried things don't stay buried whe

What he knows now

"You knew," Bastien says. "This whole time."It is not a question. He is looking at me the way he looks at contracts with hidden clauses, like he is already three steps past the surprise and deep into the calculation of what it costs him.We are in Nadia's office. She has moved to stand beside her desk with her hands clasped in front of her, the body language of someone waiting for a verdict. Bastien is in the doorway and I am between them and the space feels very small for three people carrying this much."I found out eight weeks ago," Nadia says. "When I confirmed the pregnancy."The word lands.I watch it hit him. His face doesn't change the way most people's faces change. There is no gasp, no visible crack. Just a stillness that gets a degree colder, and his eyes move from Nadia to me, slow and deliberate, and stay there.I don't look away. I decided years ago that I would not be the person who looks away first in this building and I am not starting now."How far along," he says.

He is already here

"Show me the number," Bastien says.I hand him the phone without argument because there is no version of this where I pretend the text isn't serious. I saw you go in. I'll be here when you come out. Eleven words and my whole body went cold reading them.Bastien looks at the screen. His face does the thing it does, closes down, gets very still, the way water goes flat right before something heavy drops into it. He hands the phone to Nadia without a word and she reads it and her mouth presses into a thin line.He's outside, I say.Possibly. Bastien is already moving. He goes to the window and angles himself to look down at the street without being directly visible from below. He stands there for a few seconds, scanning. "There's a car on the south side of the building. Dark, no plates visible from here. It wasn't there an hour ago.How do you know it wasn't there an hour ago?Because I noticed it wasn't there when I came down to find you. He steps back from the window. I notice what's i

The man in the corridor

"Stay behind me."I almost laugh. Not because it's funny but because this morning I was a contract mate with a packed suitcase and a car booked for ten and now Bastien Rourke is pulling me into a stairwell with his hand flat against the door and his entire body tuned to something I can't hear yet.But I can feel it.That is new. Or not new exactly, more like something that was always there behind a wall and the wall just got thinner. A pressure in the air, low and directional, coming from below us. Not sound. More like the feeling before sound, the way your ears know something is coming before your brain catches up.How many? Bastien says quietly. He is not talking to me.His earpiece. He put it in when we left Nadia's office and I didn't notice until now.He listens. His jaw tightens. "One confirmed. Possible second at the east access point." He glances back at me. "Where's Soren?"Another pause.Tell him to come in through the roof access. And get two of our people to the subfloor j

What he got

"Ask him what he got."I say it out loud in the elevator on the way back up and the words taste exactly as bitter as I expected.Bastien is standing beside me, not touching me, watching the floor numbers rise. He has the card in his hand. He has been holding it since the stairwell and I have not asked for it back because I don't need to hold it to remember what it says."You already have a theory," he says. Not a question."I have thirteen years of evidence and a very short list of things my father values enough to trade his daughter for." I look at the doors. "Power. Territory. Longevity." I pause. "He sold me to you for political leverage. That's what I always believed. A contract with the Iron Fang Alpha strengthens Crest Pack standing across three territories.""That's what the arrangement was," Bastien says."That's what it looked like." I turn to face him. "But Wolfe just told me to ask my father what he got. Not what we agreed to. What he got. That's a different sentence."Bast

The father

"Don't let him in," I say.Bastien is already on his phone. He holds up one finger, not dismissing me, just finishing the instruction he is giving to building security, and I hear him say no entry without my direct authorization and then hang up."He'll already be in the lobby," Soren says. He is looking at his own phone, tracking something. "His driver logged into the building's guest system four minutes ago. Standard Crest Pack protocol. He pre-cleared himself.""He pre-cleared himself for today," I say.Soren looks up. "Yes."So my father planned to come regardless of how the morning went. Regardless of whether Wolfe's man made contact or not. He was always going to show up today, the day the contract ended, the day I was supposed to walk out that door alone.The day I was supposed to be deliverable.Bastien looks at me. "You don't have to see him.""I know." I stand up and straighten my coat. "I'm going to see him anyway.""Lena.""He's my father." I pick up my bag, then set it ba

What the baby is

"She knew," I say. "She knew the whole time."Nobody argues with me. That is how I know it's true.We are back in Nadia's office, all four of us this time, and Nadia is standing behind her desk with her hands flat on the surface and her eyes on me and the expression on her face is the specific expression of someone who has been waiting for a conversation and dreading it in equal measure."Sit down, Lena," she says."Tell me first."She looks at Bastien. Just briefly. Then back at me."A Volana pregnancy with a bloodline Alpha father is not the same as a standard wolf pregnancy," she says. "The combination produces something the old pack texts call a Prime. It's not a term used anymore because the last recorded Volana birth was almost eighty years ago." She pauses. "A Prime is born with both bloodlines fully activated. Not latent. Not suppressed. Active from birth."The room is very quiet."What does that mean practically," Bastien says."It means the child will carry Volana blood with

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