Chapter 31
Ivan
Two weeks later, the Surrey estate was significantly louder.
Mary McCarthy arrived with four suitcases, two Boston University sweatshirts, an alarming number of American slang words I had to Google, and the firm belief that jet lag could be defeated through sheer force of will.
She'd been wrong about that. I knew because I'd found her asleep on the east wing sofa at four in the afternoon with her laptop open to a course registration page and a half-eaten bag of crisps balanced on her chest, but I admired the commitment.
"Maeve used to do that," I told her when she woke up, disoriented and annoyed about it. "Fall asleep in strange places. Usually with a book. Once in the bathtub."
"The bathtub?"
"Artem nearly had a cardiac event. He thought she'd drowned."
"What did you do?"
"I laughed. Then Gregor carried her to bed and Artem banned reading in the bathroom for a week."
Mary had considered this. "That's the most romantic thing I've ever heard."
"That's the most Russian thing you've ever heard. The romance is incidental."
She'd hugged Maeve in the foyer for a long time when she first arrived, then she'd scooped up Mac, and cried again when he grabbed her necklace. Then she announced that England looked "weirdly small" after Boston, which made Artem blink like she'd insulted the concept of landmass.
Within a day, she'd restored the east wing to its previous state of controlled chaos.
Within two, she'd taught Mac to clap, which he now did at random intervals like a tiny approving dictator.
Within three, she'd convinced one of the guards to try iced coffee, pronounced it "mid," and then told me my version was "actually good, like, genuinely," which made me smile so hard from pride, because making food taste nice was still beyond me.
"She's lying," Gregor said after the coffee conversation.
"She's not lying. She said ‘genuinely.’"
"She's American now. They say everything genuinely."
"You're jealous because she hasn't complimented your coffee."
"I don't make coffee."
"Exactly. You have nothing to be complimented on."
Maeve relaxed with her sister under our roof.
That was the part I watched most closely.
The way her shoulders dropped incrementally over the first few days.
The way she laughed. The way she and Mary sat on the kitchen floor with Mac between them, whispering about Dublin and childhood and things they could finally remember without the memories winning.
I wanted that for her forever. The ease of it. The certainty.
So naturally, Maeve’s heat arrived and nearly killed us.
It was mid-morning. Mary was in the family room attempting her version of yoga. Mac was in his bouncy chair. I was leaning against the kitchen counter with a coffee, watching Gregor watch Maeve with more intensity than needed.
Maeve was on a stool, bouncing Mac on her knee. Her face was flushed and a sheen of sweat made her skin glisten in the morning light. Fergus was glued to her side, whining weirdly.
"You're unwell," Gregor said.
"I'm fine. Someone turned the heating up."
"The heating is off."
She fanned herself with a burp cloth. "Then it's warm outside."
"It's fifty-two degrees."
"Fifty-two is practically tropical for Edinburgh. My body is confused by the southern climate."
I set my coffee down. “It’s the south of England, not Spain.”
I was about to respond when I noticed the scent rolling off her wasn't just caramel and champagne anymore. The storm-cloud note had gone thick and heavy and sweet in a way that made my alpha instincts sit up and take notice.
"You smell like Prague," Gregor said.
"I do not."
"You're in heat," I said.
"I am not in heat." She wriggled on the stool, clearly uncomfortable. "It hasn't even been long enough since Prague. And Mac is still a baby. My cycle isn't due."
"You said the same in Prague. And now we have Mac."
She glared at me. Her eyes were hazy and slightly unfocused, which undermined the glare considerably. "That was different."
"Yes. In Prague you lied to yourself with more confidence."
"I was not lying. I was medically uninformed."
Gregor's brow furrowed.
Maeve pointed at him with the burp cloth. "Don't say anything. I'm vulnerable and overheated."
"Different how?" I pressed. "You're flushed, irritable, and you smell like a fancy bakery in a lightning storm. You've stolen three of Artem's shirts this week. Yesterday you yelled at your pillows because they weren’t soft enough."
"It wasn’t soft enough!"
“You’re nesting.”
“Because I was annoyed that my pillow made my ear ache.”
"No, because you're in heat."
"I—" She stopped. A violent cramp rolled through her and she gasped, doubling over, her hands gripping the marble edge of the island. "Oh, God."
The scent of her slick hit the kitchen like a wave. My vision actually blurred for a second. Gregor made a sound that wasn't quite human and gripped the back of her stool with both hands.
"Oh God," Maeve whimpered again. "Mary!"
"Finally," I rasped.
Mary appeared in the doorway, took one breath of the air, and went pale. "Oh. Oh wow. That's—" She waved a hand in front of her nose. "It smells like a liquor store exploded in a bakery during a thunderstorm."
"Take Mac," Artem said. He'd materialized from his office, which meant he'd smelled Maeve from across the house. His eyes were already black. "East wing. The cook prepares his food. No one else."
Mary, despite standing in front of a feral Pakhan, looked offended. "Excuse me? I make the best ramen on the East Coast."
"The heir to the Bratva is not ready for ramen."
"He could suck them through his lips. Ramen is a theoretical concept."
"East wing. Now." Artem looked at Fergus. "You too. Guard duty."
Fergus yipped once and trotted after Mary, who was already retreating with Mac clutched to her chest. Luckily, she decided that arguing with three alphas who could go into a rut was above her pay grade.
Artem scooped Maeve off the stool and headed for the stairs with her gripped in his arms. Gregor and I followed.
Two days later, the master bedroom looked like a crime scene.
The nest took up the center of the bed. There was a carefully constructed fortress of stolen clothing and strategic blankets.
My favorite cashmere sweaters. Gregor's heavy flannels.
Artem's shirts, which were now being used as pillowcases.
The curtains were drawn. The lights were dim.
The remnants of a twenty-four pack of bottled water and a basket of high-calorie snacks sat on the nightstand.
Maeve had spent the first day still trying to deny she was in heat.
She'd denied it while stealing Artem's shirt directly off his body.
She denied it to Mary when she told her she was going back to Boston once it was over.
She'd denied it while ordering Gregor to bring her the "good blanket, not the one that's scratchy."
She'd denied it while burying her face in my sweater and making a sound that nearly put me through the wall.
"This is just nesting," she'd insisted, kneeling in the middle of the bed with wild hair and flushed cheeks, surrounded by our clothes like a dragon who'd raided a department store.
"Nesting happens during heat," Artem had said carefully.
"Nesting happens when a woman has taste and access to cashmere and fancy material."
Gregor looked at me over her head. I looked at Artem. None of us corrected her. We were brave men, not stupid ones. The last time she was in heat she had a knife in her hand.
Now, on the second day, the denial had burned off completely. Maeve was on her hands and knees in the center of the nest, skin flushed and covered in our marks, hips rocking back against Artem as he drove into her.
"Please," she whimpered. Her voice was hoarse. "Ivan, please."
I was at the edge of the bed, trying to remember how breathing worked. "I need five minutes. You're going to kill me."
"Give me a baby." She looked over her shoulder, eyes fever-bright. "Give me another baby. Please, Alpha."
The words hit me straight in the heart. Gregor, who was lying beside her, made a deep rumbling sound and tangled his fingers in her hair, kissing the side of her neck where his claim mark sat silver and permanent.
"My turn," Gregor said. His patience had limits and we'd just found them. I knew that because every time he had sex with her over the last months, he talked dirty about filling her with his baby.
And now she was ready.
Artem pulled out with a groan and collapsed onto the pillow. Gregor didn't waste the transition. He pulled Maeve onto his lap, positioned her straddling his thighs, and sank her down onto his cock in one motion. She cried out in a beautiful broken sound as her body clamped around him.
As I watched her ride him, his hands gripped her hips, my chest went tight with a terrifying amount of love.
I grabbed a fresh water bottle from the nightstand, unscrewed it, and pressed it to her lips. She drank between moans, eyes fluttering.
When she finished, I wiped sweat from her cheek with my thumb, tracing the claim mark I'd left on her neck.
"I'm going to knot you, little bird," I told her. "As soon as he's done. And we're going to give you exactly what you want."
“Please,” she whined.
She was completely lost in the heat, but safe in her nest, and she was ours.
Another day passed before the fever broke.
We carried her into the bathroom and filled the marble tub with water hot enough to steam and lavender oil that Artem had been stockpiling for exactly this event.
The tub was massive but four people was still four people, and we ended up in a configuration that would have looked absurd to anyone who wasn't us.
Artem sat behind her, her back against his chest. Gregor and I flanked her sides. The water turned milky with the oil and the bruises on her skin stood out in vivid, possessive colors.
Gregor took a sponge and ran it over her shoulders and down her arms with the same methodical gentleness he applied to everything. I pressed a kiss to the claim mark on her neck.
"You were perfect," I said. "So perfect."
Maeve leaned her head back against Artem's shoulder. The sigh she let out was so content it made my chest ache.
"I can't believe this is my life." Her eyes opened, green and clear now that the heat had passed.
“Always believe it.” Artem's arms tightened around her waist, his chin resting on top of her head.
"I do now," she said, "and I'm so incredibly glad I stole that credit card from you in Prague."
Artem's chest vibrated with a low chuckle. The water rippled around us.
"You never stole it."
Maeve blinked and lifted her head. "What?"
"We slipped it into your pocket. In case you ran while we attended to business. The card had a micro-tracker embedded in the chip. It was supposed to lead us to you." Artem said. "The tracker never worked."
Maeve stared at him. Her mouth opened and closed. "You put it in my pocket? You let me run?"
"No. You ran. The card was our insurance. I just didn't expect it to take nine months to find you again."
She looked at Artem, then at Gregor, then at me. The smile that spread across her face was the kind of thing men wrote poetry about and failed.
"The tracker never worked," she said.
"Until it did."
"Perhaps," she added quietly, "I hoped you'd come and find me."
I kissed her shoulder. Gregor's hand found hers under the water. Artem pressed his lips to her hair.
"We were always going to find you," I said. "You were ours from the moment you walked into that alley with a steak knife and a bad plan. The credit card just made it official."
"It wasn't official," Gregor said. "The tracking failed."
"I'm being romantic."
Gregor grunted. "The tracking was still substandard. I remember speaking to the security team about it. I was not happy."
"You filed a report on a romantic gesture?"
"It was a security failure with emotional consequences."
Maeve laughed. The sound echoed off the marble and the water and the tiled walls
"Only this pack," she said, "would turn a credit card tracker into a security debrief."
"Only this pack," I agreed, "would need to."
“I’m so happy,” she said. “Who would ever think this Irish mafia princess would have a pack baby for the Bratva?”
“Babies, Maeve Petrov.”
“Yes, lots of babies.” Her hand rested on her stomach. “I love you all so much.”