14. Mary
Mary
By the second day Lincoln and Hudson had called six times.
Not in a frantic way, which would have been easier to dismiss. Frantic men could be placed in a mental drawer marked ‘do not touch’.
Hudson called in the morning, once after lunch, and once in the evening. Each time, he left a short message.
“Mary, it’s Hudson. I hope you’re well. Call when you want to.”
“Mary, I won’t keep ringing if you tell me to stop. Until then, I need to know you’re safe.”
“Mary, Lincoln says to tell you he isn’t going to text too often. This is a lie.”
It was because Lincoln’s texts were worse, not in quality but in effect.
He sent practical things.
Have you eaten? Was the nausea better? Did I have ginger biscuits? Did I need him to send a particular brand? Did Maeve’s house have enough blankets? Did I know a lack of sleep could make sickness worse? Did I want more cake? Did I know he was aware I was rolling my eyes?
I rolled my eyes at that one so hard I nearly saw my own brain.
Then I saved every single message, which was pathetic but none of anyone’s business.
On the third morning, I sat cross-legged on the bed with my laptop open, pretending to listen to an online lecture about business ethics while reading Lincoln’s latest text for the fourth time.
Lincoln: Morning, love. Eat before tea if you can. Tea on an empty stomach can make sickness worse.
Lincoln: Hudson says that sounded bossy.
Lincoln: Hudson doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I’ve got manuals.
The lecturer on my screen said something about stakeholder accountability.
I wrote in my notebook.
Stakeholders are people who text about ginger biscuits.
The bedroom door opened after one polite knock, which was Maeve’s way of pretending I had privacy before ignoring it and coming into my room, anyway.
She leaned against the doorframe with Mila on her hip and Mac half hiding behind her leg. Mila had jam on one cheek and a smile that had me hoping I had a smiley child.
“What’s happening?” Maeve asked.
I closed my laptop. “With capitalism?”
“With your alphas. Is your phone broken?”
“No, why?”
Mac peered around Maeve. “If it’s broken Gregor can fix things.”
“Gregor can intimidate things into fixing themselves,” Maeve said.
“That’s a useful skill,” I said.
Maeve looked at me with sisterly patience, which was different from ordinary patience because it carried a full Irish threat. “Mary.”
Mila held out a sticky hand toward me. I accepted it because I was brave and also trapped.
“They’ve been calling,” I said.
“The alphas?”
“No, the tax office. They sensed joy and became suspicious that I’d earned some money.”
Maeve’s mouth twitched. “Mary!”
“Yes. The alphas.”
“And?”
“And they’re as old as God.”
Mac’s eyes widened. “God is old.”
“Exactly.”
Maeve covered his ears with one hand, which did nothing because he immediately ducked. “You need to rein in the exaggerations.”
“I’m Irish. That would be cultural erasure.”
She pursed her lips. “They’re not as old as God.”
“Lincoln is forty.”
Maeve stared at me. I stared back. “Gregor is nearly forty.”
“Yes, but Gregor looks like he was carved out of a mountain during wartime. It suits him.”
“And Lincoln?”
I looked down at my phone.
Lincoln: Also, drink water.
“Lincoln looks like he was built to ruin a woman’s ability to make sensible decisions.”
Maeve’s eyebrows rose.
“Unfortunately,” I added.
“I see.”
“You don’t. You’re standing there with your extremely large, emotionally stable husbands and pretending to have perspective.”
“My perspective is that you should have thought about age, logistics, and consequences before going through your heat outside a clinic with two strangers and no protection.”
I flinched enough for Maeve to see it.
Sisters were awful like that. They had access to the old wiring.
Mac tugged her sweater. “Mama, Mila’s sticky and she is touching Mary’s painting.”
“What!” I twisted.
“Made you look.” Mac laughed. I didn’t.
“Mila is always sticky. And stop trying to get your sister into trouble.”
Mila smiled, showing her small milky teeth.
Maeve took Mila’s hand and led her to the door. “Mac, take Mila and go find Daddy I and ask for a sandwich.”
Mac took Mila’s hand and led her out of the room with a smile because he’d been entrusted with a quest.
Maeve waited until their footsteps faded down the hall. Then she came in and shut the door, crossed the room and sat on the edge of my bed, moving a stack of notes aside. Her gaze caught on the page where I had written stakeholder accountability and several question marks around the word ginger.
“Mary.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m not judging you.”
“That’s exactly what you did.”
“I’m not judging the heat or what you did. I’m saying actions have consequences.”
“Thank you, Mother Superior.”
“And I’m saying that because you’re acting like being wanted by them is the worst thing that could have happened.”
My throat tightened. I looked away fast, toward the window, where the Surrey morning lay bright over the lawn. A guard walked past the far hedge. Fergus barked from somewhere below, high and indignant, probably because a leaf had made eye contact.
“They don’t want me.”
Maeve turned her head slowly. “You said they’re too old. Now they don’t want you.”
“This is me being realistic. I’m twenty-one years old, Maeve. They won’t want to keep me.”
“What else is bothering you?”
Heat crawled up my neck, sharp and humiliating. “Nothing.”
“I know you.”
“You know pieces.”
“Then give me the rest.”
The words sat between us.
I wanted to make a joke. I could feel it rise, bright and sharp, the old defense arriving exactly on time. But I was tired in a way humor couldn’t fix.
The phone buzzed beside my knee, and I turned it over without reading the screen.
“Father was giving me to an alpha, like he didn’t care,” I said.
“Mary.” Maeve’s voice softened. “He did the same to me.”
I picked at a loose thread on the blanket. “I hate that we were just daughters who are nothing more than contracts with hair.”
Maeve reached for my hand. I pulled it back before I could let her have it.
“Then Artem refused me because he already had his omega.”
She smiled. “Wasn’t I lucky. And so were you.”
I sighed. “But they’re Damien’s dads. And they never once said they’d told him, which means they don’t want me. They only want the baby.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’m rubbish at this. I’m not even a wanted omega.”
Maeve’s mouth pursed. “Now you’re being dramatic.”
“And you know that Damien cheated,” I said. “Constantly, apparently. And he wasn’t even an alpha. He was a beta with a complex and a face that tricked me into thinking loyalty might be reciprocated.”
“Mary.”
“I’m the only omega in the world nobody wants.”
Maeve smiled. “That’s quite the statistic.”
“I told you. Cultural exaggeration. It’s in the genes.”
“No.” She shifted closer. “That’s pain dressed up as theater.”
I pressed my lips together. It didn’t help because the tears came anyway. I wiped them with the heel of my hand before they could become a whole event.
“I hate this,” I said.
“I know.”
“I hate being pregnant and frightened and stupidly attached to men who have had whole adult lives before I even worked out how to use the university printer.”
“Printers are designed to humble us all. It was fax machines before that. And pagers.”
A laugh broke out of me, wet and unwilling.
Maeve smiled faintly.
“And I hate that they keep calling,” I said. “Because part of me wants them to stop so I can be right.”
“And the other part?”
I looked down at my phone. “The other part keeps reading the messages.”
Maeve took my hand then.
This time, I let her.
Her fingers were small and warm around mine. “You’re not unwanted,” she said.
“You have to say that. You’re my sister.”
“Yes, which means I’ve seen you at your worst and am still sitting on your bed voluntarily.”
“You once tried to sell me to a visiting cousin for two packets of crisps.” I swallowed. “I was only six.”
“I admit, that was a poor business decision on my part.”
I laughed again, but softer. Then my phone rang.
Maeve’s eyes dropped to the screen before mine did, and Damien’s name lit between us.
Every soft thing inside me tightened.
“Don’t answer,” Maeve said.
“I should.”
“Why?”
“Because if I keep avoiding him, he’ll keep finding new numbers.”
Maeve’s jaw set hard. “Put it on speaker.”
“Bossy.”
“Yes.”
I answered and pressed the speaker before I could change my mind.
“What?” I hissed.
There was a beat of silence. Then Damien’s voice filled the room, careful and too familiar. “Marli.” I rolled my eyes to the ceiling. “I miss you.”
Maeve’s hand tightened around mine.
“Did you run out of cheerleaders to fuck?”
Maeve’s eyebrows went up.
Damien swore under his breath. “Why do you have to be like this?”
“Hormones, probably. Or personality. Hard to know.”
“You don’t have to be a bitch.”
Maeve’s face closed over.
I pulled my hand free before she could seize the phone and turn the call into a crime report.
“Stop calling me that,” I said.
“Then stop acting like one.”
“I’ll stop acting like one when you stop calling, and perhaps we’ll both have a personality transplant in time for Christmas.”
He exhaled hard. “Jesus, Marli. I’m trying here.”
“No, you’re trying to make yourself feel better.”
“I miss you.”
“You said that.”
“I made a mistake.”
“Several. There was a theme.”
“Can you just give me another chance?”
I looked at Maeve. Her face had gone from furious to painfully calm.
“No,” I said.
Damien’s voice dropped. “Please.”
The please hurt more than the insults, and I hated him a little for that.
“I’m staying in England,” I said. “I’m not coming back to Boston.”
“What?”
“I’m finishing my studies online.”
“Because of whoever you ran off with?”
“Because of me.”
“Marli.”
“Mary,” I said, and silence opened on the line.
Maeve’s eyes filled.
I looked away. “My name is Mary,” I said. “And I don’t want you to call me again.”
For once, Damien didn’t have an answer ready and I ended the call.
My hand shook when I set the phone on the bed. “He doesn’t know.”
Maeve didn’t speak immediately. That was kind of her. Or terrifying. With Maeve, those things often shared the same space.
“Forget Damien. Are you okay?“ she finally asked.
I leaned back against the headboard and stared at the ceiling. “I hate feelings.”
Maeve grinned. “Everyone sensible does.”
“Do you need a lift to the clinic tomorrow?” Maeve asked.
I closed my eyes.
The circle sat in my calendar like a tiny, glowing dare. Maeve saw me looking. “Did you tell them?”
Mac thundered down the hallway before I could argue. Mila followed at a less reliable speed, shrieking with laughter while someone, probably Ivan, called after them in Russian and then in English to please not give Fergus any chocolate.
Maeve stood. “Duty calls.”
“Your duty sounds sticky.”
“It often is.” She paused at the door and looked back at me. “Tell them about the appointment.”
“Bossy,” I said again, but there was no heat in it.
She smiled. “You can thank me later.” Then she left, closing the door softly behind her as Mac shouted something about Fergus being innocent, which suggested Fergus was absolutely not innocent.
The room went quiet.
My phone lay on the bed beside my notebook, carrying Hudson’s missed calls, Lincoln’s texts, and Damien’s new number, another one blocked.
I picked up the phone and opened the thread with Hudson and Lincoln, and stared at the blank message box.
Me: I know you’re busy men, but I have an appointment for an ultrasound tomorrow at 2 p.m. at Surrey Omega Health Clinic. If you want to go, that is.
I sent it before I could fix the wording into something less pathetic.
The reply from Hudson came less than thirty seconds later.
Hudson: Definitely.
My chest tightened.
Lincoln’s message arrived almost immediately after.
Lincoln: We’ll take you. Be ready at 1 p.m.
I stared at the screen.
“Bossy,” I whispered.
Then I texted Nina, who had spent three weeks sending me increasingly unhinged messages from Boston and deserved to know I was alive, pregnant, and being fed cake by two alphas.