17. Mary
Mary
Two days later, I’d built a nest. Officially, I’d arranged my bedding in a manner that maximized comfort, minimized nausea, and made excellent use of the throw pillows Hudson insisted were decorative.
Unofficially, I’d stolen one of Lincoln’s hoodies, Hudson’s scarf, two blankets from the linen closet, and a cashmere throw with a Harrods label and probably required its own insurance policy.
The room Hudson and Lincoln had given me looked different now. Less like a guest room in a London penthouse and more like a place a woman might survive the next few months. The bed sat near a wall of glass, the curtains half open to a gray morning and the Thames below.
The ultrasound photos were on the bedside table, tucked beneath a glass paperweight because I couldn’t bear to put them away and couldn’t bear to look at them too long.
Two tiny shapes. Two heartbeats. Two people who had taken one look at my life and decided it needed a more advanced difficulty setting.
I touched the edge of the photo. The paper was smooth beneath my fingertip. “Good morning,” I whispered.
I got up slowly, because the nausea held veto power. The nest tugged at me as I left it, soft and scented. Lincoln’s hoodie and Hudson’s scarf carried clean rain with controlled whiskey under it, a scent that made my thoughts stand up straight and then misbehave.
I shouldn’t have had their things in my bed.
Beyond the bedroom, the penthouse was already awake. Somewhere down the hall, a coffee machine hissed. An elevator chimed behind the private lobby doors.
I paused in the hall.
Hudson and Lincoln were in the glass-walled study off the main living room, working from home. Their home, technically, though I’d been there two nights and still moved through it like someone expecting a museum guard to ask if I’d touched the furniture.
Hudson sat at the desk in a dark polo shirt with his laptop open, hair perfect, jaw clean-shaven. He wore glasses that rested low on his nose while he read something on the screen with the focus of a man deciding whether a village deserved a future.
Lincoln stood by the window on a call, wearing a black button-down shirt that stretched across his broad shoulders.
One hand in his pocket, the other holding his phone to his ear while he listened.
His expression was warm enough to be polite and dangerous enough to remind me that warmth wasn’t the same as softness.
Hudson looked up. His gaze found me immediately, and the serious line of his mouth softened. “Morning.”
Lincoln turned from the window. His eyes moved over me with the slow, bright attention of a man cataloguing signs of sleep, sickness, and whether I might need food. He mouthed, “How are you feeling?”
“Like a miracle of modern reproduction and poor planning.”
Hudson’s mouth lifted on one side.
Lincoln ended his call. “Breakfast?”
“I’d love something to stop my stomach from rebelling.”
Hudson smiled as he leaned back in his chair. Lincoln’s smile reached his eyes, and for one weak, dangerous second, I felt less like a scandal in borrowed space and more like someone they’d been waiting to see.
Then I saw a woman walking toward me.
“This is Sienna.” Lincoln introduced me to my new bodyguard, who I'd found out from her paperwork that she was thirty-six and a beta.
“I really don’t need a bodyguard,” I whispered as I stared at her. She was at least five foot nine, brown-skinned, calm-eyed, and dressed in black pants, a soft gray sweater, and boots that said she could kick someone hard.
“Mary,” Sienna said, shaking my hand. “I’m here to make your life easier, not smaller.”
“Did Lincoln brief you about my life?”
“Extensively.”
“Did he use the words my omega?”
Lincoln coughed into his coffee.
Sienna’s expression didn’t change. “He did. And that you needed protecting.”
I looked at him. He looked back, completely unrepentant and slightly red at the tips of his ears.
“Interesting,” I said.
“Is it?” he asked.
“Very.”
Hudson looked down at his laptop, but not quickly enough to hide the smile.
The rest of the morning moved around us.
Hudson and Lincoln worked from the study while Sienna took a slow, practical tour of the penthouse, the private elevator, the service corridor, and the terrace that looked out over the Thames.
Hudson answered every question as if he’d expected an audit. Lincoln made her coffee.
By lunch, I’d eaten soup, half a roll, three crackers, and a pear because Lincoln had discovered I’d eat more if food appeared beside me without ceremony. Hudson pretended not to notice, which meant he noticed constantly.
By mid-afternoon, Hudson had taken a call on the terrace while Lincoln attempted to assemble a flat-pack side table for my room without looking at the instructions, which went badly enough that Hudson ended his call, glanced at the table, and said, “We could have bought one that didn’t need assembling. ”
“But this is the right color.”
Hudson picked the leaflet off the rug, turned it the right way up, and set it back down beside Lincoln’s knee without a word.
“I saw that,” Lincoln said.
I pulled a cushion into my lap and settled in. “Is it always like this?”
“Always,” Lincoln said.
I sat on the sofa with Sienna nearby and watched them. The ache in my chest wasn’t sadness. It was the fear of wanting a thing while standing close enough to smell it.
That evening, after dinner and after London had turned itself into lights beyond the glass, I went to my room to rest.
I woke sometime after midnight with the room dark, the rain whispering against the window, and Hudson’s scarf bunched under my cheek.
My nest smelled of them, not faintly, completely.
Lincoln’s hoodie was tucked around my side.
Hudson’s scarf lay beneath my face. The blankets held traces of the penthouse, clean laundry and the faint sweetness of omega-safe detergent, but underneath it all were the alphas, whiskey, rain, blackberry and the violet was back.
Desire moved low and fast through me, without the violent need of heat, the pain, or the body taking over because biology had grown tired of negotiations. This was quieter, and worse for being quiet. Want without an excuse.
I lay still, breathing into the scarf.
“No,” I whispered to myself.
My body ignored me.
I rolled onto my back. The sheets slid against my thighs, and slick gathered there, warm and unmistakable. The first real rush of it since the heat.
I pressed my thighs together and stared at the ceiling. I needed a shower. Cold, possibly with holy water.
I grabbed my robe and opened the bedroom door and squeaked seeing Hudson standing in the hallway, with Lincoln beside him.
Hudson wore dark sweatpants and a white T-shirt that fit across his shoulders and chest in a way that made my mouth briefly forget its function.
His hair was mussed. Lincoln was shirtless.
Broad chest. Silver-dark hair. Rugby shoulders.
Soft sweats low on his hips. Beard slightly rumpled, as if he had been running a hand over it while deciding whether to come up.
I clutched my robe closed with both hands. “This corridor has become very crowded.”
Lincoln’s nostrils flared and Hudson’s eyes darkened.
They smelled me.
“Are you all right?” Hudson asked.
“Perfectly.”
Lincoln’s gaze dropped to my hands gripping the robe, then came back to my face. “Mary.”
“I’m going to shower.”
“Now?” Hudson asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you sick?”
“No.”
“Pain?”
“No.”
Lincoln’s scent deepened. “Then why shower?”
“Because apparently pregnancy has turned my body into a badly supervised nightclub, and I need cold water before I do something compromising in a hallway.”
For one second, neither man spoke. Then Lincoln closed his eyes. Hudson looked at the floor.
“Don’t,” I said.
Hudson lifted his eyes. “Don’t what?”
“Enjoy my suffering.”
“I’d never.”
“That was very unconvincing.”
Lincoln’s voice had gone rough. “Love, we can leave you alone if that’s what you want.”
The offer landed softly, with no pressure and no assumption, not even with our joined scent and want hanging between us.
My grip on the robe loosened. “I know.”
That was the terrifying thing. I did know.
“I just need a shower,” I said. “Cold. Possibly Antarctic. If I don’t survive, tell Maeve I was brave and unreasonable to the end.”
Hudson’s mouth softened. “She knows.”
“Rude.” I stepped into the bathroom and shut the door before I could ask them to come in.
The cold shower helped. For eleven minutes. Then I went back to bed and discovered the nest still smelled like them, because blankets were traitors.
I tried to sleep. I shifted onto one side, then the other. Kicked off a blanket, then pulled it back. Pressed my face into Hudson’s scarf and immediately regretted every life choice that had led to my nose having access to him.
My body warmed again. It didn’t come sharply, but slowly and deeply, desire winding through my stomach, over my skin, between my thighs. I was tired. I was pregnant. I was frightened. I was also wanted, and the knowledge of it had become a hand at the back of my neck.
Late into the night, rain pattered against the window, and I gave up pretending.
I slid my hand beneath the waistband of my panties. The first touch made my breath catch. I bit my lip and closed my eyes.
This was mine. No heat, no panic, no hotel or coin toss. No pain driving me to decisions faster than my mind could follow. It was my body, my want, and the scents of two men who had made my fear feel less lonely.
I moved my fingers slowly, chasing the ache without rushing it.
My other hand curled into Lincoln’s hoodie.
The fabric smelled like him, warm and solid and too much.
I imagined his hand over mine. Hudson’s mouth at my ear.
Their voices, one rough, one controlled, both careful until I asked them not to be.
A knock came at the door just as my hips lifted.
I froze.
“Mary?” Lincoln’s voice came through the door, low and careful.
My hand was still inside my panties, which made this a fine moment for hospitality. “Yes?” My voice sounded too breathless to be innocent.
Hudson spoke next. “Are you okay in there?”
“Everyone keeps asking me that tonight.”
“You didn’t answer,” he said.
I closed my eyes. They knew. They were alphas. My scent was probably in the hall, under the door.
“I’m fine.”
Lincoln made a soft sound. “Love.”
That one word nearly finished what my hand had started. I pulled my fingers away and sat up, robe slipping off one shoulder. My heart beat hard enough to make the room feel smaller.
“We can go,” Hudson said. “If you want privacy, say so.”
And that was the most dangerous thing they kept handing me. Choice.
I looked around the room at the nest, their clothes, the ultrasound photos beneath the paperweight, and the rain on the dark window with the river beyond it.
Then I looked at the door.
I wanted them. No heat made me, or pain pushed me. I wanted them because they had spent the whole day making ordinary things feel like somewhere to land.
My voice shook when I spoke, but I spoke anyway.
“Come in.”