Chapter 4
Maeve
It was raining as I walked from the corner shop.
In Edinburgh, saying it was raining was like saying the sky was up.
The mist was fine and gray, and it turned the cobblestones of the old city into mirrors, which was picturesque if you were a tourist but a death trap if you were about to drop a baby and your center of gravity had gone on strike.
Fergus made a yip, so I picked him up and tucked him inside my duffel coat, pinning him against my chest. He weighed three pounds which meant he contributed nothing to warmth, stability, or personal safety.
What he did contribute was a small, vibrating heartbeat against my ribs, and on most days, that was enough for me to keep going.
As we headed home, he again made what he thought sounded like a growl through gritted teeth. To others it was far too high-pitched.
"Fergus, don't," I muttered as I looked around me.
But Fergus didn't listen. He never listened. Fergus was a Yorkshire Terrier who had been on this earth for approximately two years and had spent every one of them operating under the assumption that he was a Rottweiler.
I turned the corner into my side street, my shopping bag swinging in one hand, and stopped walking.
There was a man at the door of the Highland Bean.
I’d been running from dangerous men for three years and had gotten rather good at it. So, I did what sensible people do in those situations, I hesitated for a second while wondering if I should turn and run, but then I looked more closely at the man.
Tall, athletic build with dark hair, plastered flat by the rain. He was standing in the downpour in what looked like a charcoal suit, the fabric drinking up the wet. He was just standing there, staring at my hand-painted sign like it had said something offensive about his mother.
I should’ve turned but I kept walking. He didn’t move as I got closer. His back was still to me, head tilted up at the sign. I was close enough now to clock his stillness. He was probably deciding his options, working through them in order.
Pick the lock or kick it in.
Both very plausible.
Then I recognized the black long lashes that I remembered surrounding the most gorgeous sapphire eyes.
Ivan.
His name hit my bloodstream like an electric current. My steps faltered. My grip tightened on the shopping bag.
The scent arrived, not as three separate things, not really.
One matched scent, the same notes my body had recognized in Prague and never forgotten.
They smelled like me on a good day, champagne, storm-clouds, and caramel.
It rolled over the Edinburgh rain and the coffee and the wet stone like a wave that erased everything else.
Something traitorous pulled in my chest. Because he found me and now I had to work out what he wanted.
I'd expected more time for him to find me, not days. Though, thinking about it, I was surprised it took that long.
But I needed more time to prepare. To clean the flat.
To shave my legs, not that I could reach my legs anymore, but the principle stands.
I needed a speech, something dignified, powerful, something about independence and choices and the right of an omega to raise her child in peace without three Russian Alphas turning up at her door like debt collectors.
All I had done was waddle to the corner shop for ginger and a lemon, because this morning I had a bout of sickness, which my pregnancy book swore should have stopped in the second trimester, but had returned with malicious enthusiasm.
Three…. Where were the other two?
And then footsteps sounded behind me.
Two sets.
I heard them with the part of my brain that had been rewired by necessity.
The first was fast, a half-jog, the gait of a man who was slightly late for something he found exciting.
The second was measured. Longer rhythmic strides.
My body understood, even before my mind finished the calculation, that stopping was the only honest option left. I was already inside the net.
I walked straight into it.
Fergus made a last rattled growl and then went rigid against my chest.
I turned around.
Gregor was six feet away. He looked exactly as he had in Prague. Six foot four and built on a scale that suggested God had started making a regular human and then kept going. His wide, strong shoulders looked like they held Atlas in his past life.
Rain darkened his sandy-blond hair and caught on the scar above his right eye. His hazel eyes held mine as he got closer.
Beside him was Artem.
His hands were shaking. I'd never seen his hands shake. In Prague those hands had held a glass of Chateau Margaux without a tremor. Now they were still at his sides and trembling.
"Going somewhere, Milly?" Gregor said.
"The corner shop." I held up the bag. "I've been. I'm coming back."
"You slowed down."
"I was being cautious."
"You were about to run."
The lemon chose this moment to escape. It rolled out of the bag and bounced cheerfully across the cobblestones with the unbothered energy of something that had correctly assessed the situation and made its exit. I watched it go. Gregor watched me watch it.
"I'll get the lemon," he said.
"The lemon has better survival instincts than I do."
"Yes," he agreed, and bent to retrieve it.
“I’m getting wet,” I said, gesturing to the Highland Bean. “Coffee, anyone. I could do with the sale.”
“You wouldn’t have to worry about money if you hadn’t ran from us,” Artem grumbled.
“I needed to get home.”
Artem looked at my face and then his gaze dropped.
The duffel coat was not hiding anything. It hadn't been hiding anything for approximately two months. It was, at best, suggesting I had eaten an exceptionally large lunch and had a very bad case of wind.
The world went quiet so I said, “This is Fergus. My guard dog.”
“I was looking lower.”
“I know.”
"You look very close to nine months," Artem said. His voice had been somewhere cold for a long time. I could hear it getting warmer but also like it sounded like it hurt. "You used the card to buy our baby things.”
"I needed a cot." My chin lifted. Automatic. Defensive. Entirely Irish. "Not a Pakhan."
"You could have called."
"I forgot to take the business card.”
“My name is on the card.”
“Oh yes, silly me. And what should I have said Artem? Hello, this is the woman who ran out of your Prague hotel room with your credit card and most of her dignity. Do you mind if I use your card to make my life a little easier?"
Ivan made a strangled sound behind me.
Artem’s eyes did not leave mine. “Yes.”
That single word was far too sincere for the amount of sarcasm I had deployed.
Rude of him, really.
Something moved across his face. Then he took a step forward, and his hand came up but stopped. His fingers hovered an inch from the curve of my stomach as if the concept of touching me without permission was physically impossible for him, even now, even after all of this.
"And you’ve now got a Pakhan," he said. "Get inside."
Inside, the Highland Bean was too small for all of us.
It had been my sanctuary. I loved the smell of coffee and the taste of cinnamon that was thick enough to override the memories. I liked to listen to the hum of the espresso machine filling the silences.
Now it felt pressurized.
Three Alphas and their collective certainty that the situation had resolved itself took up more room than the square footage allowed.
Artem stood at the counter. Ivan paced the length of the room, hands flexing. "We should have taken the jet," he muttered, for what I suspected was not the first time today.
"The jet was hours out," Artem said.
"She's been here the whole time." Ivan stopped pacing, ran a hand through his hair. Then he looked at my stomach with a startled expression, like a man who'd walked into a room and found it full of furniture he hadn't expected. "She's been here just miles from us."
“Hundreds of miles.” Gregor had taken up his position by the door. “She wasn’t in the next street.”
“I know what,” Ivan replied. “I was just saying she’s been living here the whole time.”
Gregor smiled at me before he went back to scanning the street outside with the patient vigilance of a man professionally incapable of letting a room go unsecured. "She's been surviving," he said, eyes back on me. "That's not the same thing, is it, Milly?"
“Maeve.”
“What?”
I wanted to keep lying, but I was so tired I could barely hold it together. Tired of running. Tired of the fake accent I sometimes forgot to drop in my own flat. Tired of wishing for three bodies to hold me in the small hours that weren't there.
“My name is Maeve, not Milly.”
I didn’t know I needed them until I reached the UK.
Fergus, tucked inside my coat, must have felt something from me, and chose this moment to make his feelings known.
He poked his head out of the neckline, assessed the three largest and most dangerous men he had ever encountered, and began barking with the fury and conviction of a creature who genuinely believed he could take all of them.
"Fergus!"
Fergus didn’t stop. Three pounds of righteous Yorkshire indignation, snarled at the Bratva from the safety of a pregnant woman. His one good ear was pinned back. He was shaking, which may have been from rage or terror, the distinction didn't matter because the energy was identical.
"Your dog," Artem said.
"My dog," I confirmed.
"He's threatening me."
"No, he did not. He's protecting me."
"He weighs less than one of your shoes," Ivan said.
"And yet he has more courage than several men I’ve met in expensive suits."
Gregor looked at Fergus with grave approval. “Accurate. I like him.”
“Don’t encourage him,” I said. “His ego already needs its own postcode.”
Ivan crouched down, his face softening, genuinely, in a way that had nothing tactical about it.
He looked at Fergus like one professional recognizing another.
And Artem looked at the tiny dog that had positioned itself between me and the world, and then I knew from Prague meant he was fighting something enormous.
"So what now?" I asked. I hated that after nine months of being grand, of building this life brick by careful brick out of stubbornness and decaf coffee and Fergus's three pounds of conviction, just seeing them was making me weak and I hated it.
Artem’s hand cupped my face, his thumb against my cheekbone. And he was so careful, like I was something that might not be real.
"Come home with us," he said when I expected a command.
Ivan came forward next. His palm settled over my stomach, warm and sure. A beat passed. Then the baby kicked. And not a flutter, not a nudge, this baby loved its full and emphatic digs. Ivan's breath caught like something in him had broken open.
"He's strong," he said.
“A boy?” Gregor asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, I was going to wait for the surprise but the technician was desperate to tell me.”
“You mean, you were desperate to know?”
I hesitated, then nodded. “And yes, he is very strong.”
"Of course he is. He's Russian," Artem said.
"He's half Irish," I said. "And half me, which means he’ll be stubborn, suspicious of authority, and capable of holding a grudge through three generations."
Ivan’s mouth curved. “Terrifying.”
"You say that with a smile now. But you wait until he refuses to eat anything green."
Artem's eyes found mine. "He's ours."
The word landed. Ours. Not a negotiation. Not a claim I could dispute. Just the simple, irreversible truth of it.
I looked around the shop. The counter I'd scrubbed a thousand times. The shelves I'd stocked. The sign outside, slightly crooked, because I'd painted it myself on a stepladder at six months pregnant and the angle had defeated me. It had kept us safe, this place. It had done what it needed to do.
It wasn't home. I'd known that for a while. I'd just been pretending not to.
"You know he is," I said.
Artem's breath caught just for a second. Like he hadn't quite let himself believe it would come.
Then his lips were on mine.
My eyes were open and I stared, shocked. Then, when a gentle hand rested behind my neck and pulled me against him, he wasn’t hard and unforgiving, he was soft and loving.
He pulled back and rested his forehead against mine. "Nine months, Maeve. We could have been cherishing you for nine months."
"It was a one night stand, Artem. There was no marriage proposal."
“It was two nights, one omega, her three alphas and one joined scent of three notes, Maeve. Do you know what you did?”
“Ran away?”
“You abandoned your fated mates.”
Ivan made a sound that was half-laugh, half-something-else and then he clapped his hands together. "Let’s get your things and take you back to London."
Gregor was already at the door. "Car's out front." He looked at my belly. “It’s armoured.”
I raised an eyebrow. "Bulletproof glass?"
Gregor didn't blink. "Standard."
"We always have bulletproof glass cars," Ivan said, with the tone of a man explaining that they always brought an umbrella.
I glanced at the car waiting at the opposite curb, sleek and black and wholly absurd on my quiet side street.
Ivan opened the door with a flourish. "Your chariot."
I rolled my eyes. “I need a cup of tea before I go anywhere.”