Chapter 14
Maeve
"What are you doing here?"
The words scraped out of me before I could stop them.
Mary stood up so fast her chair tipped and hit the floorboards. She was trembling, her dark eyes tracking my face like she was looking for evidence of a ghost.
She'd gotten taller.
That was what my brain offered me. Not your sister is alive. Not your father is selling the spare now. Just she got taller.
The last time I'd seen her, she was fifteen and cross-legged on my bed while I painted her toenails glitter-blue and told her she could absolutely leave Dublin and do something ridiculous like study art history or date a drummer. She'd laughed. Bright and reckless.
The girl in front of me didn't look reckless.
She looked cornered.
Her hair was darker than mine, loose around a face that had been sharpened by fear and not enough sleep. A blanket hung off her shoulders. Her fingers were white on the edge of it. Jasmine and rain and panic rolled off her in waves.
My baby sister smelled afraid in a house full of men.
Something in me went very, very still.
"I thought you were dead," Mary breathed.
The words landed like a slap. Of course she'd thought that.
When our father sold me, I vanished. When Finn locked me away, I was cut off from everything.
And when I finally got out, I'd been too scared of being dragged back to reach for her.
I'd left her in that house, telling myself it kept her safe.
Tears spilled over my lashes. "I'm very much alive." I swallowed and glanced at the three massive men behind me. "And I'm their omega."
Mary's gaze flicked over my shoulder. "All three?"
"Yes."
"That seems excessive."
"I've had a difficult few years, and decided to overcorrect."
Her mouth wobbled.
Mine did too.
Then she made a sound—somewhere between a laugh and a sob—and for one impossible second we were girls again, making jokes in a locked bedroom because it was safer than admitting we were frightened.
She crossed the room in two steps and threw her arms around my neck.
I buried my face in her shoulder. She was shaking. She smelled like home. Like the kid I used to read to when our father was downstairs drunk and shouting, my voice steady so hers didn't have to be.
I had trained myself not to think about her.
Not because I didn't love her. Because I did.
Because if I'd let myself picture Mary still in that house, eating breakfast across from our father, learning to keep her footsteps quiet and her voice even.
I'd have done something stupid long before Prague.
Gone back. Tried to save her with no money, no pack, no plan, and a body still shaking from Finn's teeth.
So I locked her in the part of my heart where grief lived.
Now she was in my arms, crying, and the lock broke so hard I felt it snap in my ribs.
"I'm sorry." The words came out wrecked. "Mary, I'm so sorry I left you."
"You're alive." She pulled back and grabbed my face with both hands, thumbs wiping at tears I hadn't noticed. "You're actually alive."
"Disappointingly so, given how many people have tried otherwise."
She laughed through the crying. "You still do that."
"Do what?"
"Say terrible things like they're polite observations."
"It's called coping. Very fashionable. It goes with everything."
She pressed her forehead to mine. "I missed you."
The words nearly folded me at the knees.
"I missed you too," I whispered. "Even when I couldn't afford to."
Then her eyes looked past me and landed on Artem. The terror rushed back in. Her whole body tensed, and she pulled me slightly behind her. It was instinctive, ridiculous, a girl with a blanket trying to shield me from the Pakhan of the Petrov Bratva.
"Dad made a deal with them," she said, voice shaking but still fighting. "I was supposed to marry Artem. An alliance. McCarthy routes into America, Petrov routes through Europe." She swallowed. "But he refused."
She looked at me, and I could see the pieces clicking.
"He refused," she repeated, slower now, "because he had an omega."
I turned.
Artem was still on the porch, hands shoved deep in his pockets. He didn't look like a Bratva boss. He looked tired and, for the first time since I'd met him, completely unsure of his footing.
"You refused the McCarthy alliance," I said. My voice wasn't quite working. "And now your side is demanding you secure it."
He held my gaze. "I told my father I wouldn’t buy a bride. And I told him I wouldn’t bind myself to a woman when I already knew who I wanted."
The anger I'd been running on for the last ten minutes just stopped.
He hadn't brought Mary here to replace me. He'd refused the most powerful alliance in Europe. Because of me.
“Why is she here?”
“To protect her.”
“To protect her,” I parroted. "Then why the wedding?" I asked.
"Yuri is contesting succession," Ivan said from the doorway. "The council gave Artem one month to prove he'd secured the alliance. If he can't, they’ll strip London and probably kill us."
Mary was still clutching my hand. "Artem came to me tonight. Offered a deal. Fake wedding for the council. In exchange, I get a new identity, passport, enough money to vanish so Dad can never find me."
My father.
Cold settled in my stomach. He'd sold me, and the second I was gone, he'd moved on to the spare. We were never daughters. We were currency.
"I asked him why he didn't just marry you," Mary said, looking at Artem now with something between awe and fear. "He said you weren't ready. He said he wouldn't use you as a pawn."
As I stared at Artem, tears stung my eyes.
Ten minutes ago I'd screamed at him, compared him to the monster who broke me, bared my scar and my trauma and accused him of doing the same thing. He'd taken it. Dropped to his knees on a marble staircase. Held me and never once defended himself.
He was willing to risk everything to give me time.
"Artem," I breathed, holding my hand out to him.
He strode to me and pulled a hand from his pocket, brushed his knuckles against my cheek. "I swore no one would ever force you again. I meant it."
I leaned into his hand and closed my eyes. The weight of what he was doing for me, for Mary, pressed against my chest.
Then I opened my eyes. "No. I can’t let you."
Artem's brow furrowed. "I know—"
"You aren't marrying my sister, Artem." My voice was steadier than I felt. The fear that had run me for years was still there, but something else had shouldered past it and it was fiercer, and hotter, and I was very, very done with being quiet.
He nodded.
I stepped into his space, both hands flat against his chest. His heart was hammering under my palms. "Because you're marrying me."
Mary made a choking sound. "Sorry. We had a deal."
"Apparently you did." I didn't look away from Artem.
Ivan's grin flashed in the dark. "It doesn’t make you only Artem’s."
"True," Gregor said.
We all looked at him.
Artem's hand came up to cover mine. "Maeve. You don't have to do this."
"I know." I held his eyes. "That's rather the point."
"But in one month," Artem said. "The council will be there. Yuri will be there. Men who want an alliance."
"Then we'd better make sure they understand I'm not a weakness. They also need to know I am also the daughter of Callum McCarthy."
Artem made a sound that might have been a laugh or a prayer. Hard to tell.
Mary looked between all of us, then at me. "You're serious. Dad won’t agree to the alliance, Maeve."
"Serious enough to need a dress. Serious enough for my name to be on the wedding certificate," I turned to her, still holding Artem's gaze for one more beat before breaking it. “I’m sure Dad won’t notice the difference between Maeve and Mary. That kind of detail wasn’t his forte.”
“And me. I was getting a good deal out of this,” Mary whispered.
"And you're not going back to him. Ever. That's non-negotiable."
"I wasn't planning to offer a return policy," Artem muttered. “I made a deal with you. You agreed. We’re changing part of the deal but not your input.”
I took Mary's hand. "I've just found you and I'm keeping you until you’re ready to do what you want to."
Mary's eyes filled again, but she blinked hard. "You’re getting married."
I looked at Artem. Then at Ivan. Then at Gregor, who was still standing in the doorway.
"I'm about to marry the Pakhan of the Petrov Bratva," I said. "And my sister is going to be my bridesmaid."
Mary stared at us. Then, very slowly, she started to laugh. The sound was rusty and surprised, like laughter was a language she'd forgotten she spoke. "You've gone completely mad," she told me.
"Probably." I squeezed her hand. "But you're still staying."
She looked down at our joined hands. When she looked back up, some of the terror had cracked open and something fiercer was peeking through.
A McCarthy thing, maybe.
"Okay," she said.
Artem's hand found my lower back. "We should go inside. You need rest."
"I need a plan."
"Rest first."
"Are you managing me?"
"Yes."
I sighed. "Fine. But tomorrow we will discuss the logistics of this wedding. And no more secrets."
"No more secrets," he agreed.
I turned to Mary. Her gaze was on my boobs. “You’re leaking…” Her eyes widened. “Oh my god. You’re leaking.”
“You have a nephew.”
Her bottom lip quivered. “He’s here.”
“No. He’s in an orphanage.”
She chuckled. “Still sarcastic. Let me meet him.”
As we turned back toward the main house, Mary fell into step beside me. Ivan draped the fallen blanket over her shoulders without comment. Gregor and Artem walked behind us.
The path wound through the dark, the house rising ahead of us in gold-lit windows. My alphas surrounded me, and my sister was beside me, and for the first time in years, fear wasn't the loudest thing in my head.
Hope was.
"What kind of dress?" Mary asked quietly.
"Sorry?"
"For the wedding. What kind of dress are you going to wear?"
I considered it. "The kind that says 'I am not to be fucked with.'"
"Good choice."
"Thank you. I've been thinking about it for approximately forty seconds."
Behind us, Artem made a sound that was definitely a laugh this time.