13. Lincoln
Lincoln
Mary looked too pale. She also looked as if a strong breeze might talk her into leaving her body behind.
I didn’t like it.
I liked it less when she looked at the menu with a sigh.
“What do you need?” I asked.
Mary lifted her eyes. “A slice of black forest gateau but I know I shouldn’t.”
Hudson sat beside me, one hand around his water glass. His mouth lifted at one corner. “You can eat anything you want to.”
“I’m going to get fatter.”
I growled and it made her eyes pop open. “You’re pregnant. And you’re not fat, you’re perfect.”
Hudson lifted his hand and gestured to the waiter.
“Have you seen my breasts? I look like I could model for a Hucow romance book.”
“A what?”
“Human cows. It’s a BDSM type of book where woman roleplays—“
I held up my hand. “I can guess the rest. Is that what you like to read?”
She bit her lip to hold back a grin. “And breeding books. Especially when the man is really hot for it. A little like you and Hudson were in my heat.”
I arched an eyebrow. “You think we got you pregnant on purpose?”
She shook her head. “You didn’t know I wasn’t taking anything. I know it was just words and the heat of the moment.”
Hudson cleared his throat. “Or maybe we wanted you pregnant and permanently in our bed, but we didn’t know how to tell you.”
She gripped the white tablecloth as the soft music was interrupted by another cleared throat. “Are you ready to order?”
“A large slice of black forest gateau please, two glasses of champagne and…” He turned to Mary who was smiling. “What would you like to drink?”
“Sparkling water please.” Her hand stopped twisting the tablecloth and rested in her lap beneath the table.
When the waiter left, the silence came again.
Mary folded her napkin on her lap. She did it carefully, smoothing one corner, then another. Her nails were short, with a faint smudge of blue paint near her thumb.
I wanted to ask about it.
I wanted to ask everything. I would.
A few minutes later, her slice of cake arrived with our drinks. Mary stared at it.
“Eat,” I said.
Mary looked at me, the cake, and then me again. “Have you always been this bossy, or did my pregnancy activate your subscription to How To Be Overbearing Weekly?”
“Always,” Hudson answered. “No subscription is necessary.”
“Traitor,” I muttered.
“Yet accurate,” he said, looking at Mary. “Now do I need to feed you?”
Mary smiled. “You wouldn’t.”
Hudson picked up the fork, pressed it into the cake and lifted the full fork to her lip. “Open. And never again tell us you’re fat.”
She licked her lips before opening them and letting Hudson feed her.
The waiter came. Hudson ordered soup, chicken salad for him and for Mary, because he knew she needed more than cake. I ordered the steak because I needed to sink my teeth into something that wasn’t her neck or those breasts she complained about.
“Mary, about Damien.” Hudson started with the thing neither of us could keep circling.
Her hand stilled on the napkin. Then she nodded once. “Yes.”
“You were his girlfriend.”
“Ex-girlfriend.”
Hudson glanced at me, but his own scent had changed too, the whiskey easing by a fraction.
“Definitely his ex?” I asked.
Mary looked straight at me. “Yes. Ex.”
“When?”
“The day in the hotel was the day it was over.” The day she had crossed the hallway dragging a blanket and trying to call it anything except part of her nest. The day she’d come to us shaking with pre-heat and still somehow made me laugh hard enough to ache.
“Before us?” Hudson asked.
Mary’s brows lifted. “Yes, before you. I do have a basic sense of chronology, despite recent evidence.”
The waiter returned with drinks. I waited until he moved away.
“My friend Nina warned me he was cheating,” Mary said. “Or close enough to cheating that only a lawyer would care about the distinction. Of course, I didn’t listen because I was being loyal, which is apparently what clever women call stupidity.”
I smiled.
She saw it. “Don’t look entertained.”
“I’m not.”
“You absolutely are.”
She lifted the water to her mouth but didn’t drink. “It was only when I saw him that I understood she was right. He said we weren’t exclusive. In public. While I was going into heat. Then later he called me a bitch because he thought I was with alphas.”
The glass in Hudson’s hand made the smallest sound against the table.
I wanted to find Damien and say several things that wouldn’t improve our family dynamic. But I also remembered him at seven, asleep on the sofa with a hockey stick tucked under his arm.
Fatherhood was a rotten arrangement at times.
“He’s an ex,” Mary said. “Definitely for the best.” Her voice wobbled on the last word.
She hid it by drinking water.
Hudson let the silence sit for two beats before he asked, “What do you want from us?”
Mary’s hands stilled in her lap.
What the fuck! I looked at him. He realized how it sounded at the same moment Mary did.
Mary set down the glass with careful hands.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Mary,” I began.
“No, it’s fine. I just thought I should let you know. About the baby, I mean.”
Hudson’s jaw tightened. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know I’m too young for you both. I know you can’t hurt your son. I just thought you had a right to know because…”
She had turned our fear into her rejection.
“Mary,” I said, but she kept going.
“My sister Maeve is being a pain in the arse. She wanted me to let the fathers know. Her alphas are very involved in everything, and her life is hers. This one’s mine.”
“You think we don’t want this because you’re young?” I asked.
Her cheeks flushed. “You just said as much.”
“We were worried.”
Mary’s fingers reached out for the fork. “Yes. About my age.” She shoved a piece of cake into her mouth. Nodding. “This is good.”
“No. We’re worried about taking advantage of you.”
“Same result from my side of the table.”
That shut me up, which was only fair.
Hudson leaned forward slightly. “I worded that badly.”
“Very businesslike. In fact you could’ve been a lawyer. Here’s the paperwork, sign here.” She shoved another spoonful of cake into her mouth and chewed angrily around it.
“Mary.”
“Don’t.” She dropped her fork, then picked it up again. “You don’t even have to be in the baby’s life. At least I can go home and tell Maeve I let you know.”
The food arrived.
Nobody spoke while the waiter set bowls and plates in front of us. Mary pushed the plate of chicken salad to one side and continued to eat her cake.
“You need protein.” I pushed the chicken salad closer to her.
She glared at me. “I don’t need an alpha…” She glanced at me and then at Hudson. “Or two. I can do this alone.”
“Eat one piece,” I said, ignoring her rant.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes. We’re letting you have your rant while you eat.”
“Is that normal?”
“I don’t know.”
She stared at me for a moment before she picked up a piece of chicken and nibbled it. That shouldn’t have felt like victory, but it did.
“Tell us about your family,” Hudson said. “About Maeve.”
Mary’s face changed, and strangely the guarded look returned. Something trained.
“My sister lives in Surrey with her pack and children. They’re Russian Bratva.”
Hudson choked. “Fuck. No way. Should you be telling us that?”
She smiled. “They’re lovely. And…” Her eyes met mine and then Hudson’s. “My father is worse.”
Hudson smiled. “Worse than Bratva?”
She pressed her fork into a cherry on the top of the cake. “My father isn’t a good man.”
That wasn’t the whole truth, but it might have been the only truth she could give.
Hudson understood too. He didn’t press. “Does he know you’re pregnant?”
“No.”
“Will he try to use it if he finds out?”
The cherry slid off the cake and Mary stabbed her fork into it to stop it escaping. “He uses everything.”
My hands curled into a fist beneath the table.
“We can keep you safe from him,” I said.
Her laugh was quiet and empty. “That’s very alpha of you.”
“It’s very true of me.”
She looked at me then. I held her gaze as the urge to reach for her nearly put me out of my skin.
Instead, I stayed where I was and watched her.
Mary noticed. Then the color drained from her face, and she set the fork down and pressed two fingers to her lips.
I was on my feet before I decided to move.
“Bathroom,” she whispered.
Hudson stood too. “This way.”
We didn’t touch her. Not in the middle of the restaurant. Not while she looked mortified enough to combust. We made a corridor with our bodies instead, Hudson leading, and me behind her, shielding her from every curious glance as she walked quickly toward the back.
She barely made it.
I stood outside the bathroom door with my hands shoved into my pockets and wanted to punch something because now I knew Mary was Marli for a reason. A reason Damien knew nothing of.
Hudson came back with a glass of water and a damp cloth.
“She’s unwell,” I said.
“She’s pregnant.”
Mary came out five minutes later, pale and furious.
“Nobody make a comment.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.
“You look like a man who can’t help himself.”
“My face is under strict instruction not to look anything but happy.”
Hudson handed her the water and cloth. “Rinse. Then we go.”
“I haven’t eaten all my cake.”
“I’ll order a fresh slice to go.”
She took the cloth. “A whole one.”
“We want you to eat, Mary. And if you like cake, then we’ll feed you cake.”
Outside, the rain had thinned to a mist. Mary stood under the awning while Hudson settled the bill and bought another slice of cake to go.
“Where are you staying?” I asked.
“My sister’s home.”
“Surrey.” I looked at her. “Did you come into London from Surrey alone?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Uber.”
“From Surrey?”
“Cars do move in both directions.”
“Why not the train?”
Her mouth twisted. “The thought of getting on the train made me want to be sick before I’d even left the house. Also, trains have smells, and people, and nowhere to be privately pathetic.”
“Mary.”
“What?”
“Let us drive you home.”
“No.”
“You’re pale, you’ve just been sick, and you’re pregnant.”
“That list is becoming less charming every time someone says it.”
“Let us drive you home,” I said again.
She looked toward the road, where black cabs moved through the mist and people hurried under umbrellas. Her scent was tired now, violet tucked low under rain.
“Maeve will ask questions.”
“She already knows about us?”
“She knows there are alphas.” She rubbed her thumb over the damp cuff of her coat. Mary’s eyes flicked to mine.”You’re not ready for Maeve.”
“Probably not.”
“She’s five foot five and full of grudges.” The first hint of a smile touched her mouth.
“I’ve survived worse.”
“Not with an Irish accent.”
Hudson joined us, pulling on his coat. “We’ll take you home.”
“You’re not put off by the Bratva men?”
“No,” he said.
She stared at him. “That’s very arrogant.”
“It’s also accurate. You and the baby are our priority.”
“Okay.”
The drive to Surrey was quieter than I liked.
Mary sat in the back because she claimed the front passenger seat made her nauseous, which might have been true and might have been an excuse not to sit too close to either of us. Hudson drove. I sat beside him and watched her in the rearview mirror more than I looked ahead.
At first she stayed upright, chin angled toward the window. Then traffic thickened leaving London, and the motion made her face pale again. She cracked the window. Rain-damp air curled through the car.
“Should we pull over?” I asked.
“No. If I vomit in this car, you can afford another one.”
Hudson glanced at the mirror. “I don’t care about the car.”
Mary swallowed hard and turned her face toward the cracked window. “That’s because you’ve clearly never been poor enough to care.”
“Have you?”
She looked away. “Artem gave me enough to get free,” she said after a while, voice quieter. “Before anyone decides I’m here because you’ve got offices that smell like polished capitalism.”
“We didn’t think that,” I said.
“People think things.”
“Let them. We’re two ordinary alphas who gave up caring what anyone thinks a long time ago.”
That earned me a look in the mirror. “Ordinary. Right.”
Hudson glanced at the mirror. “Two men trying very hard not to make this worse.”
Mary looked down. Her hand drifted to her stomach, then stopped, catching herself.
I turned in my seat. “Don’t hide that from us.”
Her gaze lifted. “What?”
“Touching your stomach.”
She looked startled. Then defensive. “It’s my stomach. And that was bossy.”
“I am bossy.”
“I remember.” Her eyes met mine as she fought a smile and lost a little of it.
Progress. Tiny, ridiculous progress.
By the time we reached the long drive to Maeve’s house, the sky had settled into evening. The gates opened before Hudson pressed the intercom, which meant someone had been expecting the car or watching us arrive.
“That’s ominous,” I said.
Mary sighed. “That’s Gregor.”
“Does Gregor usually open the gates to strange cars?”
“Gregor is perceptive, especially when one of the children tries to hand him something sticky.”
Hudson drove slowly up the gravel drive.
The house appeared through trees and mist, warm lights glowing in the windows. Big without being showy. Old brick, ivy, security tucked into the shadows. The house was safe.
We stopped near the front steps and none of us moved. We were delivering her back to a house that wasn’t ours, to a life she might decide to build without us.
Mary unbuckled her seat belt. “Thank you for lunch,” she said.
“You barely ate it,” Hudson said, handing her the slice of cake he bought her.
“Thank you.” She reached for the door.
Hudson turned in his seat. “Mary.”
She paused with her palm on the handle.
“May I touch your stomach?” His voice changed, softer now, without the careful edge that made him sound like a man arranging a crisis into manageable columns.
Mary stared at him. Then she laughed. “There’s only fat to touch.”
The words hit me in the chest.
Hudson stopped breathing for a beat. “And I already told you not to say that,” he said.
Mary’s laughter died.
He didn’t reach for her. Didn’t move closer. He simply held her gaze across the quiet car. “Don’t speak about yourself like that.”
Her fingers tightened on the door handle. “It’s true.”
“No,” he said. “You’re perfect. You’re beautiful. You’re—“
The air changed. Mary didn’t move a muscle. “Don’t,” she whispered.
She looked from him to me, and the blue of her eyes had gone bright in the dim car.
I leaned over the console just enough that she could see me clearly. “He isn’t wrong.”
Her mouth trembled and for once, no joke came to save her.
“Nobody has ever called me perfect.” Then she stepped out of the car leaving Hudson with the scent of violet, blackberry, whiskey and rain, and a future we hadn’t yet been invited to enter.