Chapter 26
Presley
The Kensington house felt too large today. The ceilings stretched looking impossibly high, the marble floors clicked cold under my bare feet, and every room echoed with the absence of voices that should have filled it.
Without Etienne's terrible puns or the way he hummed off-key while he made coffee.
It was a beautiful place, and full of expensive things. But things that belonged to someone else's life. I didn’t know why I was feeling off-balance, or perhaps I did…
I sat on the edge of the sprawling bed, my hand trembling as I looked at the plastic stick in my lap.
Two pink lines.
They were bold and undeniable, bright against the white background. It should have been a celebration.
Hastings had left the test kit by my nest this morning, placing it carefully on the nightstand while I pretended to sleep. He'd kissed my forehead, his lips warm against my skin, his scent wrapping around me like a blanket.
"We'll celebrate tonight, Presley," he'd whispered, his voice thick with a certainty that unnerved me.
It was like he already knew. Like his internal logic had already calculated the exact day the hormone levels would shift, the precise moment the embryo would implant, the optimal time to run a pregnancy test for maximum accuracy.
I should have been ecstatic. I wanted this. I wanted them. I wanted the family and the security and the chance to give a child everything I'd never had.
But staring at the test, I didn't feel like a woman starting a family.
I felt numb because Etienne wasn’t here.
My phone rang, the vibration rattling against the glass top of the side table. The sound was too loud in the quiet room, jarring and insistent.
I picked it up without checking the screen.
"Hello?"
"It's me. I'm in London." Maeve's voice was small, thin, competing with the roar of city traffic in the background. Car horns. The rumble of a bus. The mechanical voice of a crossing signal.
My chest tightened. "I thought you got anxiety here."
"I do. My chest feels like a squeezed lemon and my hands won't stop shaking, but I need to speak to you. I'm in a cab." A pause, the sound of her breathing fast and shallow. "Now what's the address?"
"I'm in Kensington."
"I know, Presley. Don't be dense." Her voice went sharp, edged with panic she was trying to hide. "Tell me the address. The meter is clicking and the cost is getting ridiculous. I don't have rich alphas to pay my bills."
The words hit like a slap.
I felt a sharp prick of insult, my thumb brushing over the two pink lines on the stick. The plastic was smooth, clinical, impersonal.
"I'll text it to you."
I hung up before she could say anything else, my heart doing a messy, frantic stagger in my chest.
Maeve didn't leave the moors for nothing. She didn't get on a train to London—a city that made her hands shake and her breath come too fast—unless something was wrong.
Maeve didn't look like she belonged in the drawing room.
She looked like a ghost haunting a palace. Her black hair was disheveled, strands escaping from the hasty ponytail at her nape. Her green dress was buttoned wrong, the hem uneven. Her eyes tracked the room.
“This is nice.”
“It is. I’ll show you my nest in a minute.”
“Your nest.” She inhaled a deep breath, and stood and paced the length of the room, her movements jerky and anxious.
Her eyes darted to the gilded moldings, the tall windows, the chandelier.
Then she looked at me, her gaze hollow.
"Maeve, talk to me." I stepped toward her, my bare feet silent on the plush rug. "What's happened? Why are you in London?"
She stopped pacing, her shoulders hunching inward. She looked smaller than she had in Yorkshire. Diminished. Like the city had already started eating away at her.
"I have to leave the caravan park soon, Pres. I've probably got another couple of weeks to work out where I can go. I wanted to let you know in case–"
My stomach dropped. "Why?"
"My mother called." Her hand went to her throat, fingers disappearing beneath the high collar of her dress. "He's looking for me. He knows I'm in England."
The air in the room felt suddenly cold, despite the radiators pumping heat into the space. My skin prickled with goosebumps.
"Who? Your alpha?"
Maeve's fingers pressed harder against her neck, like she was trying to hold something in. Or keep something out.
"He's called Callaghan and he's an Irish 'prince.
'" The word came out bitter, dripping with sarcasm.
"My father traded me to him. It was an arrangement, Presley.
A way to settle a debt between families.
Gambling debts, business deals gone wrong, I don't even know the full story.
I wasn't supposed to be his. I was in love with someone else.
A boy from the village who smelled like—"
Her voice broke, and the first tear tracked through the dust on her cheek, leaving a clean line in its wake.
"Who claimed you, Maeve?" I whispered, my heart doing that frantic, ugly somersault. "Was it the man you loved?"
Maeve let out a sob that sounded like it had been ripped from her lungs. Raw and ragged and full of years of pain.
"I thought I could run. I thought if I hid in a tin box in the middle of nowhere, the bond wouldn't find me.
That I could just disappear and he'd forget about me.
" Her hand reached for her collar, yanking it down to reveal the scar on her neck.
It was an old bite, but jagged and deep.
Not the clean, purposeful bite of a loving claim, but something violent.
Angry. A mark made to hurt, not to bond.
"It was my husband." The word dripped with venom. "He took the claim to make sure no one else could. He didn't want my heart, Presley. He wanted the property. The omega his family had paid for. The dowry my father owed."
I reached for her, my hand outstretched, but she stepped back like I'd burned her.
Her eyes went sharp, cutting through the tears. "We're the same, you and I. Traded like livestock. You think your pack is different because they have nice manners and silk sheets? You think Hastings wants you?"
"They do," I said, but my voice trembled, betraying me. I thought of the way Hastings kissed my forehead this morning. The way Fritz tucked my hair back when I was eating. The way Etienne called me Princesse. "They care about me, Maeve. They're taking care of everything."
"Are they?" Maeve's voice dropped to a dangerous whisper. She moved closer, her footsteps silent on the rug. "Are they still paying you, Pres?"
The question hung in the air like a noose.
"I... I haven't checked." My throat felt tight, my tongue too thick. "Hastings said everything was taken care of. He said I'd never have to worry about money again."
"Check." It wasn't a suggestion. It was a demand.
"Look at the numbers, not the alpha. If they're still paying you, you're not a mate.
You're a transaction. And now that there's a baby.
.." Her eyes dropped to my stomach, then to the pregnancy test I'd left on the side table.
"You aren't the priority anymore. The baby inside you is the asset. "
My fingers felt like ice as I pulled out my phone. The screen was too bright, the colors too vivid. I toggled over to my banking app, my thumb slipping on the glass.
I had to wait for the FaceID to click, my own reflection staring back at me with wide, haunted eyes. I looked pale. Scared. Like a woman who already knew what she was going to find.
The screen loaded.
My breath hitched.
Five thousand pounds. Deposited yesterday.
Five thousand pounds. Deposited the week before.
Five thousand pounds. Deposited the week before that.
"There's... there's nearly fifteen thousand pounds in there," I whispered, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. "They just kept depositing it. Five thousand a week. Even this morning."
Even after Hastings had claimed me. Even after I spent my heat in their arms. Even after the bond had snapped into place and I felt him in my chest like a second heartbeat.
They were still paying me.
"There's your answer," Maeve said, her bitterness thick enough to taste. It coated the back of my throat, made me want to gag. "Callaghan paid my father a dowry. Hastings is paying you a salary. Different price, same cage. Don't confuse a gold-plated contract for a home."
I looked at the two pink lines on the stick across the room. An hour ago, they were the start of my life. The beginning of something beautiful and terrifying and real.
Now, they looked like the terms and conditions of my sale.
"That's not the action of a pack that wants a mate," Maeve continued, relentless. "That's the action of a corporation paying for a service. They're making sure the surrogate stays happy while the investment grows."
"He kissed me this morning," I whispered, my hand flying to the claiming mark on my neck. It throbbed under my fingers, a dull ache that had nothing to do with physical pain. "He said we were celebrating tonight."
"Of course he is." Maeve's laugh was hollow. "He's getting a return on his investment."
I paid for Maeve to stay in a hotel nearby. A nice one, with room service and soft towels and a door that locked. She'd argued. Said she couldn't take my money, that it was wrong, but I'd insisted.
"It's their money," I'd told her. "Might as well use it for something good."
She'd hugged me, fierce and tight, before climbing back into a cab. "Be careful, Pres. Men like that always have an angle."
I'd watched the cab disappear into London traffic, then walked back into the house that suddenly felt more like a prison than a palace.
I spent the rest of the day pacing. Kitchen to drawing room to hallway to bedroom. My feet wore a path on the carpets. My thoughts spun in circles I couldn't escape.
Were they paying me because they didn't trust me to stay?
Were they paying me because they wanted an exit clause?
Were they paying me because I was an employee, not a mate?