Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Damien
“How long were you planning on hiding your pregnancy from me, Raven?”
Raven went completely still with shock at my words, color leaching from her rosy cheeks, her beautiful green eyes widened with panic, her defense coming slow and stilted.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Raven denied without meeting my gaze.
I nodded, unsurprised.
“You missed a message on your office line from Dr. Warner about your missed appointment,” I said casually, and Raven stiffened, but I wasn’t done yet.
I pulled out the pictures that had been taken over a month ago. My foggy memories had made me completely forget about the older woman who’d walked in on Raven and me at the elevator.
The older woman had a mini camera in her hands, vlogging her day when she’d happened upon us. The pictures were from an awkward angle, but it was unmistakable. Raven’s face stared back at us from the washed-out pictures, her body pressed against mine.
“Imagine my surprise when I did a cursory background check and discovered Raven Caine didn’t exist. Rather, I found Raven Nightbane, absconded alpha heir of the Ivory Moon Pack and ex-fiancée of my nephew.”
After that moment I had with Raven in my office, I’d been shocked by the rawness of my need for her and by how much I craved her after a single kiss.
But most of all, I’d been struck with a sense of deja vu.
An unshakable sense of familiarity. That was when the memory of the older woman had come to me in bits and pieces.
It hadn’t taken long to find the older lady, mostly because she’d taken special permission from the hotel to make her videos in exchange for a shoutout online.
The pictures had come in alongside the background check I’d ordered on Raven during the anniversary celebration, and as I went through it all, I was overcome by all the lies I’d been fed.
So many lies. Not just from Raven but Elias.
His insistence that I keep out of his mating ceremony arrangements suddenly made sense.
Ivy hadn’t been his fiancée. Raven had been.
Then something happened during their failed mating ceremony that had left the Alpha Heir of the Ivory Moon Pack both without an inheritance and a fugitive.
Raven staggered back away from me as though she could avoid my queries if she moved far away enough. I followed, tucking my hand beneath her chin and making her meet my gaze.
“I did know you.”
Raven stared at me, those emerald eyes ablaze with so much emotion that I couldn’t read them all, and her breathing faltered as I placed my hand on the barely noticeable bump on her lower belly.
My words came out hushed and uncertain, even though I’d already guessed the truth.
“Is it mine?”
“I…” Raven’s voice was thick as molasses, her words as inaudible as her guilty expressions were damning. It was mine. Shock raced through me. A father. I was going to be a father.
Rielle and I had tried for years. The pack doctor came often, running every test, offering the same answers over and over again. We were perfectly healthy, but month after month, year after year, there was no child.
And now, impossibly, it was happening, after a drunken, reckless night, with a woman I barely knew yet felt such a maddening desire for. A woman who had never lain with anyone before.
Raven’s breaths came harder, but she didn’t seem capable of speech. Squashing the asinine urge, I had to pull her close and cradle her in my arms until she understood that she was safe here with me.
“Use your words, Raven,” I demanded roughly, and that fire I was used to seeing in her eyes ignited, burning away the panic.
“Let me go,” Raven growled, shoving me away, but I didn’t move an inch.
Rather, I levelled a glare at her.
“How much of this was an act?”
Raven blinked.
“What?”
I chuckled darkly, feeling anything but amused.
“Did you expect me to believe that Elias ditched you at the altar and you just happened to find your way into my bed and my company?”
Suspicion honed from years of being betrayed bit at me, warning me of the dangers of my draw to Raven.
Warning me that everything was just too convenient.
Even the call from her doctor concerning the cancellation of her appointment that I’d gotten purely by chance just before heading to the anniversary celebration seemed contrived.
Raven stared at me, a look of disbelief and betrayal clouding her gaze.
“You think I orchestrated all of this?” she whispered.
The crack in her voice did something to me. Something I didn’t care to dissect.
“What’s your endgame, Raven?” I growled, my thoughts spiraling. “Money? Power? Fame? To trap me with a baby and claim a position as my Luna?”
The thought that every moment with Raven had been carefully calculated hurt like shards of glass digging beneath my skin. I wanted to believe I knew Raven, but I’d been wrong before, and I’d paid for it. The memory of that past hurt sharpened my words into something dark and cruel.
“If your terms are reasonable, I won’t hand you over to the Ivory Moon Pack.”
At my words, Raven shivered. It wasn’t a shiver of pain or anguish. No, it was pure, unadulterated anger.
“Fuck you, Damien Blackwell,” Raven snarled with such vehemence that the wind went right out of my sails.
“I broke up the engagement, not Elias. You came onto me in that elevator. You bought the company I worked at. You dug up my past. You kissed me in your office, and you claimed me in front of the entire world,” Raven’s index finger stabbed at my chest, her emerald gaze ablaze with rage.
“Don’t you dare turn any of this on me.”
I didn’t want to hear the logic in Raven’s words.
I didn’t want to hear the truth in them and how it clearly depicted the edge of paranoia I’d nearly spun off into because of my past. A growl ripped from my throat, and I buried my fist in the wall, eliciting a small, shocked gasp from Raven.
Raven took a step away from me, a stubborn tilt to her jaw.
“I’ll turn in my resignation letter,” she said quietly, and her words ripped me from the mess that was my mind back to reality. I couldn’t hold in my confusion.
“What?”
Raven let out a shuddering breath, burying her anger beneath a facade of calm as she met my gaze.
“This baby is mine, not yours, and I’m keeping it,” she stated evenly. “But you don’t need to worry, I won’t tell anyone you are the father. Don’t hand me over to the Ivory Moon Pack, and I’ll leave quietly.”
I went silent, Raven’s words and actions proving what I already knew deep, deep down. Raven hadn’t planned any of this any more than I had. I’d just wanted, no, needed to put a wall between myself and the unreasonable attraction I felt to her.
Taking my silence as acquiescence, Raven moved to leave the room, but my hand went around her wrist, pulling her to a stop.
“Did I say you could leave?”
Raven went stiff at my words, and once more, I had to fight the urge to touch her, really touch her, to hold her and press my lips to her forehead, promising her anything to get her to stay.
I let go of her hand immediately as though scalded by her touch and not my thoughts.
An edge of desperation tinged Raven’s gaze as it met mine.
“Look, I know you hate my guts. Goddess knows the feeling is mutual. But that night was a simple, unmemorable mistake for me as much as it was for you, and we both share equal responsibilities for it. You can’t just punish me for it.”
A simple, unmemorable mistake. A mistake. I suppressed the irrational gut reaction I had to those words.
“Whoever said I was going to punish you, Raven?”
She paused, her confusion apparent.
“Then, what do you want?”
“You.” No, that came out wrong. I didn’t want her. No matter that my wolf and body thought otherwise. “You will be my fiancée, just like I said earlier.”
Raven’s anger escaped her calm facade.
“Whatever new game this is, I’m not interested in playing it,” she snapped, shoving past me to reach for the door.
I didn’t try to stop her this time. Not physically, at least.
“How much time do you think you have left before your cousin kills you?” I asked, keeping my tone very casual, even though just the thought of it enraged me.
If Ivy dared touch a wisp of hair on Raven’s head, I’d fucking kill her. But Raven didn’t know that, so she froze, her hand hanging mid-air just above the doorknob, her scent heavy with fear. I shrugged, moving across the room to the bedside and pouring myself a glass of wine.
“I’d give it a few hours.”
Raven spun on her heels to face me, daggers in her gaze.
“What does it matter to you?”
I met her gaze impassively.
“You are carrying my child, Raven. Everything about you matters to me.”
The statement wasn’t completely true. Even before I knew she was carrying my child, everything about her had mattered to me in a way that made absolutely no sense. But now, I had a valid reason to excuse my obsession with Raven.
Raven’s lips thinned, and if looks could kill, I’d have been six, no, eight feet deep. I shifted on my feet, strangely glad for the distance between us.
“You mean the child you accused me of plotting to trap you with mere seconds ago?” She deadpanned sarcastically, and I found I couldn’t meet her gaze.
I’d viewed Raven with lenses colored by my past, and I’d lashed out at her unjustly.
“I was wrong to accuse you baselessly, and I apologize for that,” I inhaled deeply. “I have a proposal for you that will be beneficial to both of us.”
Raven scoffed with derision.
“I highly doubt that.”
I wasn’t discouraged.
“We will be partners.”
“No,” Raven interrupted me before I could finish, a horrified look in her eyes. “I might be pregnant with your child, but I will not be coerced into a mating with a self-absorbed, conceited asshole like you.”
My wine glass shattered in my grasp. I stared at my bleeding hand for a second before raising my gaze to a baffled Raven.
“Good, because you will never be my mate.”
Raven blinked, clearly overwhelmed.
“But you just said…”
“I’ll buy you time,” I clarified, taking the handkerchief from the breast pocket of my suit and wiping the blood and glass shards off my already-healed hand.
“By claiming you as my fiancée and mother of my heir, I can prevent Ivy from enforcing the duel until months after the birth. I will provide for you, protect and train you to ensure you survive the duel. And if you decide to run, I’ll back you financially.”
Raven eyed me suspiciously.
“And what do you get in exchange?”
The words left me reluctantly. “I need an heir.”
What I needed was for the council to back off on insisting that I reinstate Elias as alpha heir.
We had serious issues. The serial killer was still at large, and my priority as a thirty-seven-year-old alpha who wasn’t stepping down any time soon was preventing an impending human-wolf war that would result in thousands, if not millions, of casualties.
Regardless of how our confrontation this night had gone, I had faith in Elias.
He would shape up to be a great alpha someday.
I was certain of it, even though the secrets I’d unearthed about him recently threatened to shake my faith.
I just had to buy time for now. Naming a new heir would do that.
Raven backed up, her arms going around her middle.
“I’m not giving up my child.”
“Neither am I.” It still didn’t feel real that child already had an unshakable hold on my heart. “But I’m not asking you to give the child up. I would never. We can discuss the terms of custody after you survive the duel.”
Raven stood still for several moments, her eyebrows furrowed in deep thought.
“You don’t have much of a choice, Raven,” I reminded her gently.
A helpless look of frustration swept over her delicate features, and I grappled with that ever-present need to comfort Raven. Raven’s back straightened, all of her emotions tidily swept behind that fragile mask of calm.
“I have my own conditions,” she said pointedly, and I nodded.
“I’m listening.”
Raven hesitated.
“What happened in your office…it can’t happen again.
This is strictly transactional. There won’t be any real intimacy or emotional entanglement between us.
If we need to be… close,” Raven took a breath as though even the words were repulsive to her, much less the act, “it would be just enough to sell the act and nothing more.”
My eyes dipped to her mouth instinctively, my mind generously replaying how it had felt to kiss her, to own her for those few moments against the wall of my office before reality had intruded.
“Fine,” I agreed, pushing the stray thoughts out of my mind. “Just enough to sell the act.”
My wolf didn’t agree. In fact, he was downright livid, but he’d adjust. I wasn’t a slave to my baser instincts.
“I want to keep my job, too,” Raven tacked on combatively, watching me carefully as though she expected me to backtrack in the face of this new demand.
I swallowed my protest. She didn’t need to work. When I said I’d provide for her, I meant it. But right now, I wasn’t ready to push her on anything for fear that she’d leave.
“Done,” I nodded. “Do we have a deal?”
Raven swallowed. Then, very hesitantly, she responded.
“We have a deal.”