24. Lincoln
Lincoln
Mary chose London.
Not for a trial but forever. I didn’t quite believe it until I saw her walk back into the penthouse.
She may have had shadows beneath her eyes from fear, poor sleep, and a day that had involved her father, a helicopter, and more Russians than anyone needed in their lives.
But when she stepped into the apartment, her scent opened with rain, blackberry, whiskey, and a burst of wild violet.
Hudson paused beside the console table, his hand still at Mary’s back, and looked at me over her head.
“Well,” Mary said, glancing around the penthouse. “No helicopters hovering outside so that’s an excellent start.”
“Ivan is working on them being banned in the area,” Hudson said.
She narrowed her eyes. “That was a joke.”
“Ivan wasn’t joking.”
“Of course he wasn’t. That man thinks he can organize anything. He should be Prime Minister.”
She shoved her arms out of her coat.
“You need to eat,” I said.
“I need to sleep.” She looked at me then handed over the coat. “I’m going to fall over.”
“I’ll take you to your room.”
“My room? Will I always have a room of my own, or…”
Hudson’s mouth curved upward. “We have a pack room. Ready for the day we found an omega who chose us.”
“You do?” She smiled suddenly alert. “I’d love some toast with loads of butter on.”
“Come on.”
Later, after Sienna left for the guest suite and Hudson went to take a call from Pax about an emergency injunction, I found Mary in her bedroom. Not the pack room.
The door was half open.
I stopped before knocking because her voice reached me first.
Her palms rested on her stomach. “Please at least one of you be a girl.”
Mary sat cross-legged on the bed in the middle of her nest, wearing one of my old rugby shirts and nothing on her feet. The shirt came nearly to her knees. Her hair fell over one shoulder, dark and wavy.
The London lights glimmered beyond the glass behind her.
“Four men in the apartment will be a nightmare.” She hesitated and smiled. “Then again, I suppose being the only female might be good. Being the only omega will be even better. I’ll be spoiled by all the alphas in the house. And I’ll probably get away with anything.”
She looked down at her belly as if the babies were listening.
“But then there’s the...” She sighed. “No, please be girls. Or at least one of each. I can handle girls.”
My throat tightened.
“And I promise Mama will spoil you.”
I put one hand against the doorframe.
Mary bent closer to her stomach. “Oh, and P.S., thank you for not making me sick anymore. You’re being really good babies.”
I backed away and found Hudson in the corridor. He had come looking for me, phone in hand, brows drawn. I touched his shoulder. He stopped. I placed one finger to my lips, then nodded toward the open door.
We crept back toward the room.
“And no rugby,” Mary added, her Irish accent so strong now. “I’ve seen your father. That sport is why his naked thighs are for my eyes only. I’m not complaining about that, but you know I’ve seen the ears of some of those players.”
I covered my mouth. Hudson closed his eyes as he looked into the room as if the sight of Mary speaking to our children had reached some place in him he kept locked even from me.
“All right,” Mary said. “Sleep well in there. Or whatever it is you do. Float responsibly. And no fighting. Save that until you’re thirty.”
Hudson reached for my wrist, fingers tight as he pulled me away before she could see us listening.
In the hall, he let out a breath. “She called herself Mama,” he said.
“Aye.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
I thought of Damien when he was small and furious, refusing to call us anything because his mother had told him we were friends.
I thought of his mother on the balcony of our first London flat, smoking though she had promised to quit, looking out at the city as if it were a room she had already decided to leave.
She hadn’t been cruel. She’d been lonely, restless, and tired of being needed by men who weren’t her scent matches and a boy who had already been hurt.
And we were young. Too young to understand that we would never be enough.
But we cared for her. She cared for us, in her way. But it hadn’t been enough.
When she left, years later, she wrote that she had mistaken being settled for being happy.
Damien had been seventeen and had pretended he didn’t care until I found him in the kitchen at two in the morning, eating cereal from the box with dry eyes and a face like stone.
“Damien texted again,” Hudson said.
My teeth came together. “When?”
“During the call. He lands on Thursday.”
“Does he know anything?”
“No.”
“We need to tell him before he arrives here.”
Hudson nodded. “He’s going to hate us.”
That was what people never understood about wounds. They wanted a villain because it made the scar easier to explain. But we’d already taken the blame for his mother leaving. This was just another scar.
Mary’s door opened then. She stepped into the hallway and stopped when she saw us. Her eyes narrowed. “Why are you both standing there looking emotionally suspicious?”
“We’re not,” Hudson said.
“You absolutely are.”
“How are the babies?” I asked.
Her cheeks went pink. “Spying is illegal.”
“Listening in one’s own corridor is a gray area.”
“Morally gray.”
“Legally defensible,” Hudson said.
Mary pointed at him. “You’re exactly why no one trusts rich men.”
He came closer and caught her hand. “You were talking to them.”
“Briefly.”
“Mary.”
“Fine, extensively. They deserve guidance. They have made several strange decisions already.”
“Such as?”
“Implanting in my body without consulting my diary.”
I fell to my knees and put my hands on her hips. “I’ll speak to them.”
“Please do. You may have more authority.” She glanced down at her belly. “Now listen to your dada.”
I looked up. “You said dada.”
She looked down at me on my knees. “But that’s what you and Hudson are.”
I lowered my mouth to her belly. “It sounded right, didn’t it?”
Her scent trembled. Then she said, “Well, I’m growing them. It would be rude if they called you Barry or me, Barbara.”
“Barry?” Hudson laughed. So did I.
Mary smiled, but her eyes were wet.
I kissed her tummy and whispered, “Keep being good.”
Then I stood. Hudson nodded for me to tell her.
She sighed like she already knew.
Hudson came to her other side. “Mary,” he said, “we need to talk about Damien.”
The light left her face. “Now?”
“Soon,” Hudson said. “Not tonight if you can’t.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “He’s coming in a few days..”
“Yes.”
“And he doesn’t know about me and he’s going to think I ruined everything.”
“He may,” I said.
Hudson looked at me, but I wouldn’t soften that lie for her.
“He may think that at first,” I said. “He will be hurt. Angry. Probably cruel.”
Mary flinched.
I put my hand on her stomach. “And he will still be wrong.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“You were his girlfriend,” I said. “You left him because he cheated and treated you badly. You didn’t know who we were. We didn’t know who you were. You didn’t trap us. You didn’t replace him.”
The word replace lodged between us.
Mary heard it too.
“Did she?” she asked. “Damien’s mother. Did she think she was being replaced?”
“No,” I said. “She left us to go back to Damien’s biological father.”
“Were you scent matches?”
“No.”
Mary’s breath changed.
Hudson touched her chin, lifting her face gently. “We cared for her.”
“Loved her?”
“In a way,” I said.
She needed alphas. We needed an omega. Damien needed people who stayed. It worked until it didn’t.
“Do you miss her?” Mary asked.
Hudson answered. “No. But I regret the hurt.”
“Damien’s?”
“Yes.”
I brushed my thumb along Mary’s waist. “I miss who Damien was before he learned people could leave twice.”
Mary closed her eyes. “And now here I am.”
“No.” My voice sharpened before I could stop it.
Her eyes opened.
I turned her fully toward me. “No, Mary. You’re not the second hurt. You’re not another woman walking out of his life or another reason to feel abandoned. Damien’s pain is real. It isn’t your guilt.”
Hudson’s hand settled at the back of her neck. “You’re our scent match.”
“And if I weren’t?”
“We’d still want you,” I said.
“You keep saying that.”
“Because you keep needing to hear it.”
Her mouth trembled. I lowered myself to my knees in front of her again.
“Lincoln.”
I rested both hands on her hips and looked up at her.
“I’m forty years old, Mary. I’ve lived enough years to know the difference between need and want.
Between guilt and love. Between an omega we cared for because life put her in our path and a woman whose scent turned my whole world toward her before I knew her name. ”
Her eyes filled.
Hudson stood behind her, one hand at her shoulder.
“You’re not a replacement,” I said. “You’re not a consequence. You’re not a scandal we’re managing.”
Mary swallowed. “Then what am I?”
Hudson bent, his mouth near her ear. “Ours.”
Her scent broke open. Want, relief, fear, and the wild violet note of a bond she was beginning to trust.
I kissed her stomach through my shirt. She moaned.
Hudson caught her waist from behind.
“And these babies,” I said against her belly, “are very much part of the want. But they aren’t the cause of it.”
Mary’s hand slid into my hair. “So you were listening.”
“Of course.”
“Did you hear the part where I asked for at least one girl?”
“I did.”
“Any thoughts on that?”
Hudson kissed the side of her neck. “I think any daughters of yours would be terrifying.”
“Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
“It was to me.”
I laughed against her stomach as Mary’s fingers tightened in my hair, and her scent bloomed in the air.
Hudson felt it too. “Bedroom,” he said.
Mary turned her head enough to look at him. “That sounded like a command.”
“It was an order,” I said, rising.
“I like it.” Her eyes darkened. She didn’t object to Hudson when he guided her back into her room, or when I closed the door, or when Hudson sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her between his knees.
“Tell us yes,” he said.
Mary’s breath shook. “Yes.”
“Now tell us what you want,” I said.
She tilted her head back against my chest, eyes closing. “I want to feel like I have a pack. Like I’m wanted.”
Hudson’s control fractured in his scent first, then in his face. “We are your pack and you’ll always be wanted,” he said.
He kissed her, with his hands framing her face while I slid the shirt from her shoulders. She wore nothing beneath it. Her skin warmed under my palms as I kissed the slope of her neck.
My mouth lingered at her neck, and her knees softened.
“You liked that before,” I said.
“I like it now.”
Hudson’s hand moved to her belly. “And this?”
Mary looked down at his palm. “Yes.”
He kissed her stomach, then lower, until her breath broke and her hands shook.
“Hudson,” she whispered.
“I’ve got you.”
She laughed, breathless. “You always say that.”
“I always mean it.”
We took her to the bed together, into the nest she had built and was no longer pretending was a practical bedding arrangement. Hudson lay behind her, one arm beneath her head, his mouth at her shoulder.
I settled between her thighs, watching her face as I licked her inner thigh. Then I put my mouth on her.
“Lincoln,” she breathed.
I loved her like that. Mary in our bed, Hudson holding her, our babies inside her, and my mouth against her while her scent filled the room with violet.
I loved her, but I didn’t say it. Not yet.
Hudson’s hand found mine over her stomach as she came, her body trembling beneath both of us. I moved up to kiss her, letting her taste herself on my mouth.
“More,” she whispered.
Hudson made a rough sound.
“Greedy,” I murmured.
“Pregnant,” she said. “Legally allowed.”
“Is that in the handbook?”
“Yes. Page one. All pregnant omegas sex requests should be obeyed.”
Hudson smiled against her shoulder. “We’ll need to see this handbook.”
“It’s private.”
“Convenient.”
She reached back for him. “Hudson.”
He understood.
We shifted carefully, no weight where there shouldn’t be, pillows under her hip, Hudson entering her slowly while I held her face and kissed her through the first stretch. Her eyes stayed on mine, clear and choosing.
Afterward, we held her between us with the lights low and the city spread bright beyond the glass. Hudson’s hand rested over her belly. Mine rested there too.
Mary had gone boneless and warm, her hair across my chest. “Do we have to go out tomorrow?” she asked.
“No,” Hudson said.
“Good.” A pause. “Could we?”
I smiled into her hair. “Where?”
“Anywhere with witnesses, so if I faint from being publicly cherished, people can assist.”
Hudson’s hand stilled over her stomach. “You want to go out with us?”
“Don’t make it weird.”
“It isn’t weird.”
“You said that in your weird voice.”
I kissed her hair. “Coffee, and then a walk?”
“And you can...” She went quiet.
I waited.
“Show me the pack room,” she said. “If you want.”
Hudson closed his eyes.
I pressed my mouth to her temple. “Love, we would want that very much.”
“Good.”
“You’re sure?”
She sighed. “Lincoln, I’ve had two orgasms, a lecture on emotional replacement, and a conversation with my unborn children about gender politics. I’m as sure as anyone can be under these conditions.”
Hudson laughed softly.
I held her tighter.