20. Lincoln
Lincoln
Before Mary, I’d thought muslin was muslin. That was until I was standing in a baby shop in Chelsea, holding three different muslin cloths and trying to decide whether cream, sage, or pale yellow felt more like twins.
She walked down the aisle of strollers with her dark hair loose over a soft blue sweater, and my entire body went tight with the need to pull her against me.
Hudson stood beside me, reading the specifications card on a twin stroller with the concentration of a man reading the requirements of a ransom note.
“This one folds with one hand,” he said.
“So did the last one.”
Hudson flicked the stroller but it stayed in place. “This one lied.”
Mary looked over her shoulder. “Are you interrogating the strollers?”
“Hudson is,” I said. “I’m merely supervising.”
“You have three towels in your hand.”
“Muslins.”
“Congratulations on the vocabulary.”
I lifted them. “Which color?”
Mary came back down the aisle, slow because she’d been queasy that morning and refused to admit it until Hudson handed her a ginger sweet without comment. She touched the yellow cloth first, then the sage.
“Not cream.”
“Practical,” Hudson said.
“Babies leak from everywhere. I’ve met Mila. Cream is dangerous.”
The shop assistant, a polished beta woman in black pants, smiled from behind the counter.
“Sage is very popular for gender-neutral nurseries.”
Mary’s hand stilled on the cloth and I smelled the change in her scent before her face altered. Blackberry pulling back. Violet turning careful.
Too early, I thought. Too early to know if we were having boys or girls, too early to be decorating anything, or assuming she was staying for good.
“And Sage hides sick better,” Mary said.
The assistant laughed politely.
Hudson placed the stroller card back in its holder. “We’ll take twenty in sage and twenty in yellow.”
Mary turned to him. “Forty?”
“We’re shopping for two babies.”
“They’ll be small. Not octopuses.”
“I bet Mila can go through three in an hour,” I said.
“Mila is unique.”
“Our children may inherit the same traits. They will be related.”
Mary blinked at the word our, then whispered, “I’m sure her messiness is from the Russian side of the family.”
“Perhaps,” Hudson muttered.
Mary looked down at the muslins. “Fine. But if they grow up with a muslin addiction, that’s on you.”
“We’ll start a fund,” Hudson said.
“A recovery fund?” she quipped.
“A textile fund.”
She stared at him and I laughed before I could stop myself.
Mary pointed at me. “Don’t encourage him. He already has the confidence of a man who thinks showing me his forearms is foreplay.”
Hudson’s mouth lifted at one corner as he pushed up his sleeve. “You hate them, don’t you?”
The assistant made a small noise and busied herself with the register.
Mary’s cheeks went pink.
I stepped closer, letting my hand settle at the back of her neck for one brief second, my thumb brushing beneath her hair.
Her scent opened again. Sugared blackberry, the warmth of whiskey, and fresh rain, and underneath it all was violet.
Hudson’s head came up on the other side of the aisle. He smelled it too.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
“If either of you asks me that in this shop again, I’m buying the ugliest thing here and making you live with it.”
I looked around. “That giraffe lamp is a good contender.”
Mary followed my gaze to a lamp with a long neck and eyes that were too big. “Oh, that’s ugly.”
“Exactly.”
“We should buy it for Artem for Christmas.”
Hudson glanced at me and smiled.
Mary was grinning to herself, unaware she’d just planned to be around for longer.
We moved through the shop, picking up items. Hudson chose practical things. A changing mat with raised sides. Bottles with good reviews he’d read online at midnight. A monitor that didn’t connect to the internet because he had opinions about hackers and babies.
I chose soft things. Blankets. Tiny socks. Two knitted hats with little ears until Mary looked at me as if I’d betrayed her personally.
“No ears,” she said, shaking her head.
“They’re small.”
“That’s worse.”
“They’ll be warm,” I pushed because the hats were cute.
Her eyebrows lifted. “They’ll look like mice.”
Hudson lowered the bottle sterilizer he was holding. “That’s too specific.”
I put the hats back because I was a strong man, but not strong enough to resist Mary when her mouth curled like that.
We were debating a crib mobile when an older alpha woman passed the aisle, glanced at Mary’s belly, then at Hudson and me flanking her, and smiled with recognition. “First babies?” she asked.
Mary froze for half a breath.
Hudson answered before the moment could bruise her. “Yes.”
The woman looked at Mary. “You look well, sweetheart.”
Mary’s chin lifted. “Thank you.”
“Exhausted but well,” the woman added. “That’s the beginning of motherhood. Then it becomes a lifestyle.”
Mary laughed, startled. I loved the sound of it in public. I loved other people seeing her with us. I loved the woman looking at us and seeing a pack.
Mary glanced between Hudson and me after the woman moved away. “You both answered that very quickly.”
Hudson adjusted the sleeve of his coat. “It was a simple question.”
“Was it?”
I knew that tone. Hudson did too.
“Mary,” he said quietly.
“No, I’m curious. First babies. Yes. Just like that.”
I set the basket down so my hands were free, because Mary had started folding herself inward by degrees. Shoulders first. Then chin. Her fingers found the cuff of the hoodie she had stolen from me and picked at the seam.
Hudson stepped closer. “Ask the question you want to ask.”
Mary looked at the tiny socks in the basket, then at the strollers, then anywhere except our faces. “Am I still on trial?”
“You were never on trial,” I said.
She gave a small laugh. “You didn’t even confer.”
“We don’t need to.”
Hudson’s voice was steady. “You’re not on trial, Mary.”
“Then why does everything feel temporary?”
I reached for her hand. She let me take it.
“Because we said we’d try,” I said. “You needed that word. It made the door easy for you to walk through.”
Her eyes shone.
Hudson touched her other hand. “But that doesn’t mean our wanting is temporary.”
“Do you want me to stay?”
Hudson stepped in front of her, cupping her face with both hands. I moved behind her because she swayed, barely.
She was warm against my chest. I lowered my mouth to her hair.
Hudson’s thumbs moved over her cheeks. “More than anything,” he whispered.
I pressed my lips near her ear. “More than anything.”
Her scent broke open so fast I nearly closed my eyes. Violet filled the narrow space between us, lush and wild. It wasn’t faint now, or hidden beneath blackberry, whiskey and rain.
Mary’s hands lifted, one closing around Hudson’s wrist, the other finding mine behind her.
Then, because she was Mary, she doubled down. “If I wasn’t pregnant?”
Hudson’s hands stilled.
I felt the blow of it in my own chest. Of course that was the wound. It wasn’t whether we wanted the babies. She believed that now, at least in moments. But wanting her was another matter.
Hudson breathed in slowly. I knew him well enough to know he was choosing his words with care. “We’d want you,” he said.
Mary’s mouth trembled.
“We want you,” I said against her hair. “Babies or no babies.”
“You say that now.”
“Aye,” I said. “Because it’s true now.”
Hudson’s gaze held hers. “We just didn’t think you would choose us.”
Mary blinked. “Why wouldn’t I?”
I huffed a laugh. “Because you’re young.”
“Beautiful,” Hudson said.
“Vibrant,” I added.
“Terrifyingly alive.”
“And you’ve got the world at your feet,” I said. “Why would you look at two men old enough to know better, tangled in a family mess with your ex, and decide we were worth the trouble?”
Mary stared at us. The tears spilled then, quick and silent.
“Oh, love,” I murmured.
She shook her head as if the endearment hurt. “I want you both,” she said.
Hudson’s eyes changed.
I stopped breathing.
Mary’s fingers tightened around my hand. “I want you both, and I just never thought I’d ever have this.”
Hudson brushed a tear from her cheek. “Have what?”
“Alphas.” The word was barely a whisper. Mary swallowed, and her cheeks went pink with terror. “I never thought I’d smell alphas as mine.”
Hudson looked at me over her head. His face had gone very still. “Mary,” he said, “what do you smell when you’re with us?”
She frowned, wiping at her cheek with the back of her hand. “What?”
“Our scents,” Hudson said. “Tell us.”
“Hudson,” she whispered. “Is something wrong?”
“No.” His voice went rough. “Nothing’s wrong. Tell us.”
She glanced back at me.
I slid my hand from hers. “Please, tell us. We want you more than anything. We choose you, Mary, but we also think this is bigger than choosing.”
Mary looked between us, confused and exposed. “Whiskey, blackberries in the rain and a hint of violet that only appeared when I was in my heat.”
My chest locked.
Hudson’s eyes widened a fraction.
The hidden, fated note Hudson and I had smelled in Boston and argued over in our office.
“Wild violet,” Hudson said.
Mary nodded. “Is there any other kind? I don’t know. Like something growing where it shouldn’t.”
I laughed once, breathless. “That’s us, then.”
Her brows pulled together. “What do you mean?”
Hudson pressed his forehead to hers for one second. “We smell the same on you.”
Mary’s heartbeat quickened beneath my hand. “No.”
“Yes,” I said.
She looked at Hudson, then at me, eyes wide. “I thought maybe pregnancy made scents strange. Or my heat. Or because you were the fathers.”
“It started before we knew about the babies,” Hudson said.
“In Boston,” I added.
Her lips parted. “You knew?”
“We suspected,” Hudson said. “We didn’t know you smelled it too.”
“Why didn’t you ask?”
I gave her a look. “You were very busy telling us we were old and it was only for your heat.”
A laugh broke out of her, wet and disbelieving. “You are old.”
“You can rein in the compliments,” I said softly.
She laughed. “But I like you both being older. It makes me feel…protected.”
Hudson kissed her with enough tenderness that Mary clutched his coat. When he drew back, I turned her enough to kiss her temple. “Ours,” I murmured, too low for anyone else.
She shivered. Then she lifted her chin, even with tears still on her face. “If I cry in a baby shop, I will blame hormones and both of you.”
“Fair,” Hudson said.
“I also want the ugly giraffe lamp now.”
I looked at it across the aisle. “For Artem?”
“For us.”
Hudson stared at her.
Mary wiped her cheeks. “What? It has character.”
I kissed the top of her head because if I did anything more, we would be asked to leave the shop and possibly the borough.
Hudson looked at the lamp, then at Mary. “Fine,” he said.
Mary’s smile was small but real. “Really?”
“But it goes nowhere near the nursery. The babies will be traumatized.”
“Negotiable.”
“No.”
“Trial basis.”
“Mary.”
“Hudson.”
The assistant returned with a careful smile. “Shall I add the giraffe lamp?”
Hudson opened his mouth.
“Yes,” Mary said.
I handed the assistant the muslins before Hudson could argue.
We left the shop nearly an hour later with bags, delivery forms, a stroller order, and one horrifying giraffe lamp wrapped in tissue paper. Sienna stood outside beside the car, scanning the street until Mary held up the lamp box.
“We bought a cursed giraffe.”
Sienna looked at it. “For protection?”
Mary brightened. “Exactly. It’ll give someone one hell of a headache.”
“Good choice.”
Hudson sighed.
We drove back toward the penthouse with Mary between us in the back seat because she’d said the front made her nauseated.
Her head rested on my shoulder. Her feet were in Hudson’s lap.
Hudson had one hand wrapped around her ankle, thumb moving slowly over the bone there as London slid past the windows.
I looked over her head at Hudson. His eyes met mine.
“Forever,” he mouthed.
I closed my hand around Mary’s.
She stirred. “Are you two communicating silently above my head?”
“No,” Hudson said.
“Liar.”
“Yes,” I said.
She smiled without opening her eyes. “Good. Saves time.”
Her phone rang.
Mary lifted her head, blinking. She fumbled in the pocket of her coat and looked at the screen and all the color left her face.
Hudson’s hand tightened around her ankle. “Mary?”
She stared at the screen. “My Da is calling me.”
Her scent changed into something older than fear and colder than panic.
Da. Callum McCarthy was calling.