Chapter 28
Maeve
I watched Finn O'Shea arrive on the security feed before he reached the house.
That was Artem's idea. He'd asked if I wanted to see the monitors or wait in the study, and I'd said yes to both.
The security hub had a wall of screens and I stood in front of them with Gregor at my shoulder, watching a black Range Rover pull through the gates that my father had chewed up with his tires a week earlier.
For years, Finn had lived in my memories larger than life.
He liked door slamming. A hand squeezing my wrist. Teeth in my neck.
The smell of another omega on sheets that were supposed to be mine.
He was in every room I had been locked inside and every morning I had woken with my body aching for a bond that had never been love.
On the screen, he was just a man getting out of a car.
Not a monster. A man. Medium height. Expensive coat, but it didn't fit quite right across the shoulders. He'd put on weight since Prague, or lost it in the wrong places. His hair was thinner at the crown.
Oh my God, I'd spent three years running from someone who was going bald. I wanted to yell out of the window to shave it off.
Ivan leaned closer to the monitor, squinting. "He thinks he's mafia but he looks like a regional sales manager who's been passed over for promotion."
"He looks like a man who peaked at twenty-four and has been blaming other people ever since," I said.
"Same thing."
It wasn't, but I let him have it.
The camera tracked Finn as he marched up the front steps with his men behind him. His walk was aggressive, chest-forward, the walk of someone who expected doors to open before he reached them.
Blade opened the door anyway.
The study was my choice.
Artem had suggested the old receiving room, the one with dark paneling and portraits of dead Petrovs who looked like they'd personally enjoyed the Inquisition. Ivan wanted the armory. Gregor recommended the outer security office because it had wipe-clean flooring, which I pretended not to hear.
Once I was comfortable with Mac being in a panic room with the housekeeper, I went to Artem's study.
I chose it because I'd spent the morning there with Mac asleep in his bassinet while Artem read the shipping reports that came from his Dutch contact, and Ivan taught Fergus to retrieve a tiny rubber knife.
Finn had turned my home into a cage once. I wasn't giving him a room that had never seen me happy.
The fire was going. It was too warm for a fire, technically, but I'd asked the groundsman to lay one anyway because fires made rooms feel occupied in a way central heating couldn't. I sat on the edge of Artem's desk with a mug of chamomile tea and my feet dangling.
The cashmere sweater was deliberate. Soft. Oversized. And it kept slipping off one shoulder to show my love marks.
All three of them now. Artem's over the old scar, the one Finn had carved into me and called a bond.
Ivan's high on the opposite side, bright and defiant.
Gregor's at the junction of shoulder and throat, deep and steady, the one that had made me cry out not from pain but from the sheer overwhelming rightness of it.
They ached, the new ones. Not like Finn's had ached. Finn's bite had been hot and infected and wrong, a wound my body had tried to reject even before the bond was dissolved. These ached the space between my legs, like proof these were my alphas.
And I wanted Finn to count every tooth mark.
Artem was by the bookcase, turning his phone over in his hands with the ease of a man who had already won and was just waiting for the other side to notice.
Ivan leaned against the far wall near the door, cleaning his nails with a knife that was definitely not designed for nail care.
Gregor stood by the window with Fergus cradled in one arm like a fluffy grenade.
The dog was vibrating.
Not growling yet. Just vibrating, the way he did when he sensed something wrong and was waiting for Gregor's signal to escalate. His ears were flat. His tiny teeth were visible.
Fergus had never met Finn. Fergus had been a stray in Edinburgh, half-starved and shivering, when I found him. But he knew. Dogs always knew.
The doors opened.
Finn walked in with two men behind him and went straight for me. He didn't look at Artem. Didn't register Ivan. Didn't see Gregor at all, which was impressive given that Gregor was six-foot-four and built like a war bunker.
"Get your coat." The Belfast accent hit me in the chest before the words did. "You've made a fool of me for years. We'll be dealing with that."
I took a sip of tea.
It was chamomile. I hated chamomile. I was drinking it because it was the tea the housekeeper had brought and I hadn't wanted to make a fuss, and now I was going to be stuck drinking chamomile in front of my abusive ex.
Chamomile. For the most important confrontation of my life. I should be drinking vodka.
Presley would never let me live this down.
"You brought six men," I said. "That seems optimistic."
"I brought six men because I know what you're like.”
“What am I like? I’m surprised you even know.”
“You always were dramatic."
"I was dramatic? Again, how would you know when I spent most of our relationship locked in a bedroom."
He took a step forward. "I'm not asking, Maeve. I bought you. You're coming with—"
He stopped.
He stopped because the two men who'd followed him in were no longer behind him. The doors were closed. Ivan was standing in front of them, and he was smiling, which was significantly worse than if he'd been frowning.
Finn's hand went to his jacket.
Artem was already there. Not a rush. Artem was stealth-like, a liquid glide that ended with the barrel of a suppressed Glock resting against the center of Finn's forehead.
"Do not raise your voice to my omega," Artem said.
Finn froze. His eyes went wide and I watched him finally register the pheromones in the room.
The scent of three alphas, fully bonded, none of them pleased to see him.
He looked at Artem. At Gregor. Then at Fergus, who had started a low, continuous growl that sounded like a lawnmower in another room.
Back at me.
"I owned her first." His voice had gone thin. "She's mine by right. You know the rules of—"
I laughed.
It wasn't fake. It just came out, bright and genuine and completely inappropriate, and Finn flinched like I'd slapped him.
"You never owned me," I said. I hopped off the desk. My bare feet made no sound on the rug. "You bought a piece of paper from my father. And you know what? I'm glad you did."
Finn's mouth opened. "Glad?"
"I'm glad you ignored me. Glad you humiliated me.
Glad you spent every night with other women while I sat upstairs and dealt with my body, and taught myself to stop crying.
" I stopped beside Ivan, close enough that his free hand found the small of my back.
"Because I know exactly how good my life is now.
I know what a real pack feels like. If you'd just been mediocre.
You know, if you'd been just neglectful enough to keep me from running, but enough to believe, I might still be in your house, convincing myself it was normal to feel nothing. "
"You're a used-up—"
Click.
Ivan's thumb on the hammer. The sound cut through the room like a blade.
Finn's mouth closed. His knees trembled. I watched him realize he was going to die in a study in Surrey because he couldn't stop himself from insulting a woman who'd already beaten him.
“Tell her you’re sorry.”
“Fuck you.”
Ivan pressed the barrel against his temple.
“Sorry–”
"Prove it," I said walking back to the desk.
"Prove what?"
"That you're sorry. On your knees. Prove it."
His face twisted. "I don't kneel for an omega."
Fergus immediately planted himself between me and Finn, growling as Gregor crossed the room in three strides. He pressed one hand on Finn's shoulder, giving him a sharp push. Finn hit the floor so hard I heard his kneecaps crack against the hard floor.
Gregor stepped back.
Fergus stayed where he was. The growl had stopped. He was just standing there now, my tiny fearless Yorkshire terrier was between me and the man who'd spent years making me wish I was dead. And another planning his death.
Fergus, who loved the taste of my slippers, and was now guarding me from a monster he'd never met because he'd decided, somewhere along the way, that I was his to protect.
I crouched down to Finn's level. He was sweating. His hands were shaking. He smelled like fear and expensive cologne and the sourness of an alpha who'd never once been held accountable for anything.
"For years I wanted you dead," I said. "When my body ached and my chest burned, I thought it was you. I thought the bond was still there, buried under the dissolution, pulling me back to Belfast. That's why I went to Prague. To kill you. To cut the last thread."
Finn stared at me. His breathing was shallow.
"But it wasn't you." I stood up. "I never felt you, Finn. I felt them. I smelled my true match in a cigar bar and my body knew before my brain caught up. I went to Prague to kill a ghost. I met my pack instead."
I walked back to the desk and picked up my tea. Bloody chamomile. I was going to have words with the housekeep about her beverage instincts.
"And now I know your death wouldn't help me," I said, turning back. "Because I don't care about you enough to want you dead. You're not worth my peace. And I refuse for my son to grow up knowing his mother killed someone. You don't get to take that too."
I nodded at Ivan.
“You want me to kill him.”
Finn’s eyes had a glisten of water over them. “Please. I don’t want to die.”
“Don’t make me regret my decision.”
“Please. I’ll never hurt you ever again.”
The doors opened. His watery eyes widened as he stared at me.
“You have one more chance. Now crawl to me, then look me in the eyes and say sorry.”
His head lowered as he faced the floor. Then one hand reached forward. Then the other until he was so close that Ivan said, “Do anything stupid and I’ll shoot your balls.”
Finn made a less than alpha-like squeak, then he raised his face to look at me. “I’m sorry. I was a terrible alpha—”
“I don’t care about you being terrible. I want you to be sorry for claiming what was never yours.”
“I was wrong. I tried to control you. I thought I’d feel something for you.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, please let me live.”
"Get out of my home.”
He looked at me. “Can I rise?”
“You may.”
I waited for him to get on his feet. Gregor took his arm and pulled him away from me.
“Finn.” He turned back to me. “If you ever come here again, or if you ever try to contact me, my pack has my full permission to do what they've been wanting to do since you walked in."
He nodded.
Ivan holstered his gun. Slowly. Reluctantly.
"Now fuck off back to Ireland and don't darken my life again."
Finn scrambled past Ivan and out the doors, and the sound of his footsteps faded down the corridor.
The SUV tore out of the driveway thirty seconds later.
I stood in the quiet with my chamomile tea and my three alphas and my ridiculous dog, and I took a breath.
The air didn't smell like fear. It smelled like caramel and storm-clouds and champagne and rain. It smelled like a celebration.
I set the mug down.
"Well," I said. "Who wants to go check on Mac?"
Artem holstered his weapon. "I’ll stop the groundsman from digging the hole."
“You never–”
“It’s always best to be prepared.”
Gregor laughed. “A good Bratva wife would have knifed him.”
"I thought humiliating him was enough. But you have permission to dig that hole if he ever comes again."
Ivan nodded. "One chance. Maybe we could all learn something."
Fergus trotted to the door and barked once, the sharp, demanding bark that meant he had protected his omega and was now owed compensation.
"Motivational rations," Gregor said. "I'll handle it."
"I'm sure you will," I said. "You've created a mercenary."
"I've created an asset with clear incentive structures."
"That's the same thing."
"It is not."
I looked at the three of them.
Artem with his phone already back in his hand, Ivan grinning like he was still mentally rehearsing what he'd wanted to do to Finn's balls, Gregor scooping up Fergus with the gravity of a man retrieving state secrets.
Somewhere upstairs, Mac was probably awake by now, wondering why his milk was late and why the house smelled faintly of adrenaline and victory.
"Come on," I said. "I want to see our son."