All Chapters of PREGNANT WITH THE ALPHA'S UNWANTED HEIR : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

74 Chapters

Ivy

"She's not alone" means two different things depending on who said it.When Soren says it, his voice doing that careful, controlled thing it only does when he is genuinely concerned, it means the person with Ivy is not a friend."Put her on speaker," I say.He does."Lena." Ivy's voice comes through thin and tight, the voice she uses when she is trying to sound calm and is not even close. She is twenty years old and she has our father's composure and our mother's instincts and right now both of those things are failing her. "I need you to listen to me.""I'm listening. Who's with you?"A pause. Too long."A man came with Dad. He waited in the car while Dad talked to me. But when Dad left he didn't leave with him." Her voice drops. "He's outside my door right now. He knocked twice. I haven't answered."Bastien is already moving toward the door, phone out, and I hear him say two names to whoever picks up, short and direct, and then he is back in the room and his eyes are on me."Address

Cassian Wolfe

"Don't move the car," Bastien says.The driver goes still. Bastien's hand is still on my wrist, not gripping, just that steady contact, and I can feel his pulse against my skin. It is slower than mine. That is either impressive or terrifying and I have not decided which.The black car ahead of us does not move either.We sit in the grey afternoon like two chess pieces waiting for the other to commit."He's in that car," I say."Yes.""He wants me to know he's in that car.""Yes." Bastien's thumb moves once across the inside of my wrist. I don't think he knows he does it. "He's not going to take you off a public street with my team present. This is another message.""He's very fond of messages.""He's been planning this for years. He wants you to understand that he is patient and precise and everywhere." Bastien finally looks away from the car and looks at me. "He wants you scared enough to make a mistake."I look at the black car. At the tinted windows that reveal nothing. At the engi

Over my body

Volana bloodline assets."I say it out loud in the car and the words feel exactly as obscene as they are.My father has filed a legal claim over my unborn child using pack law language that treats a baby as an extension of a bloodline rather than a person. The same language he used when he locked me in that compound at ten years old. The same logic that said what runs in your veins belongs to the family that carries it, not to you.He has been preparing this filing for months. Possibly longer. You do not draft pack jurisdiction claims in an afternoon. This was always the backup plan for if the clean delivery failed."How enforceable is it," I say.Bastien's voice is flat and precise. "Under old pack law, bloodline asset claims have standing in three territories. None of them are mine." He is already on his phone. "Under current inter-pack agreements, a claim like this requires a neutral council hearing before any enforcement. That process takes a minimum of sixty days.""He doesn't ne

The deal they made

"What does my father get out of sharing with Wolfe?"Nobody answers right away because nobody has the answer yet and I have learned that in a room with Bastien Rourke you do not fill silence with guesses. You wait for the real thing.Soren is at the desk with his laptop open, pulling pack registry records. Ivy is sitting in the chair by the wall with her knees pulled up and her face doing the careful, controlled thing it has been doing since I finished telling her everything an hour ago. She is processing. I know the look because I invented it.Bastien is standing at the window with his back to the room. He has been there for four minutes since delivering the news about the joint filing and his shoulders are doing the thing that means he is working through something he does not like the shape of.The Ashen Pack has something the Crest Pack needs, I say. It's the only reason my father would share a claim. He doesn't share anything unless the other party has leverage he can't get around

The wrong floor

It's a council representative," Bastien says.He is looking at his phone, at the security feed thumbnail, and his face has done that particular rearrangement where something unexpected has arrived and he is deciding in real time what it means."Pack council?" Soren is already at the door."Inter-pack neutral council. Her name is Maren Voss. She's a binding arbitration officer." He looks up. "She handles disputed claims.""My father moved fast," I say."He filed this morning. Council response within hours means he had a representative pre-positioned." Bastien pockets his phone. "This was always part of the plan. File the claim. Trigger a council visit before I can build a counter. Get a neutral party in the building who can compel a statement from you directly."I stand up.What kind of statement?A welfare declaration. If a council officer requests it, any individual named in an active bloodline claim is legally obligated to confirm their status and location on record. He looks at me

The nursery

"He built a nursery," Ivy says. "In his study."She is standing in the doorway of the meeting room with her phone in her hand and her face is the specific white of someone who has just had a childhood memory turn over and show its underside.I take the phone from her.The contact, a woman named Ruth who has worked the Crest compound household for eleven years, has sent four photographs. Low quality, taken quickly, the slight blur of someone who knows they have thirty seconds and is using all of them. But clear enough.A corner of my father's private study has been cleared. The heavy reading chairs he has had since before I was born are gone. In their place is a crib, white wood, plain and expensive. A changing table. A small dresser. A mobile above the crib with no animals on it, just geometric shapes in grey and white because my father does not do sentiment even when he is furnishing a room for a baby he intends to take.I hand the phone to Bastien.He looks at the photographs withou

What the case contains

"She's here," Soren says.Ruth is a small woman in her mid-fifties with short practical hair and the careful posture of someone who has spent a decade making themselves unnoticeable in a house where being noticed had consequences. She is holding the document case against her chest with both arms, the way people hold things they are afraid someone will take from them, and when Bastien opens the secure floor door she looks at him the way people look at power when they are not sure if it is the safe kind.Soren steps forward instead. He takes her coat and speaks to her quietly and gets her a glass of water and has her sitting at the meeting room table inside ninety seconds, which is the specific talent he has that his brother will never fully appreciate.Bastien moves to acknowledge her directly. "Your daughter's placement is secured. I have the documentation here." He places a single folded page in front of her. "Gregor Crest has no standing to alter or revoke it from this point. That i

Not alone

"How many," Bastien says.He is already at the door, phone up, and his voice has dropped to the register it uses when something has moved from a problem to an emergency and he has accepted the difference.I look at my phone. The unknown number has not sent anything else. Just those two sentences sitting there like a door someone opened and then stepped back from.I type back: Who are you.Three seconds. Then: Someone who has been inside Gregor Crest's operation for two years. I got out last month. I have been watching since.I show the screen to Bastien. He reads it, jaw set, and looks at Soren. "Get a trace on that number. Now.""Already running," Soren says from the laptop.I type again: How many people is he bringing.The reply comes fast: Six Crest pack enforcers. Two of Wolfe's men. And Wolfe himself.The room gets very quiet.Wolfe is coming personally. He sat in a car on a Tuesday afternoon and made a phone call and sent a measured message about grief and sanctuary and now he i

Hold the floor

"They want you moving," Bastien says. "So we stop moving."He says it like it is simple. Like standing still inside a building with eight people coming up two stairwells is a reasonable Tuesday night decision. His voice has not changed register once in the last two minutes and that steadiness is the only thing in this red-lit hallway that feels like solid ground.I forward the message to him without comment. He reads it and nods once."Our people have the west stairwell door," he says into his phone. "Hold it. Do not engage unless they breach. East door same. I want them contained on the stairs, not on the floor."He ends the call and looks at me."The meeting room," he says. "Interior wall, away from both stairwell sides."We move back inside. The emergency lighting in here is a single strip above the door, casting everything in that flat red that makes faces look like versions of themselves rather than the real thing. I sit down in the chair nearest the interior wall, not because I

Ending it tonight

"Tell me," Bastien says.He is at the west stairwell door with two of his team when I find him, one hand flat on the reinforced surface, listening to the disruptor cycle on the other side. He turns when he hears me coming down the hall and takes one look at my face and steps away from the door toward me, leaving his team in position.I show him the messages from Dara. All of them. He reads them in order, fast, and when he gets to the syringe part something in his expression goes very cold in the specific way that is not anger but is considerably more dangerous than anger."He brought a sedative," I say. "He needs me compliant and conscious enough to verbally consent on whatever recording device he has. The ritual requires willing blood." I watch Bastien process this. "He was going to make me appear willing."What are you thinking, he says. Not a challenge. A genuine question.I want to call him up, I say. Not the enforcers. My father specifically. Call him up to this floor and end the

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