27. Hudson
Hudson
Mary had been gone for two days.
She’d picked up the phone once, and that was to tell us to deal with Damien before finding her. She hadn’t sounded cruel. She’d sounded tired.
My alpha command had slipped beneath the words when I told her to come home. Since then, the silence on the other end had gone cold.
Lincoln didn’t speak for nearly a minute after that call. Then he sent flowers. White tulips, purple irises, and wild violets in a low ceramic bowl because Mary disliked things that looked designed to die dramatically in a vase.
They came back six hours later with the courier looking terrified and a note in Maeve’s handwriting.
She said no.
Lincoln read it once, then took the flowers to the terrace and stood in the rain with them until I went out and brought him back inside.
Then I sent messages I could barely look at afterward.
Lincoln sent voice notes because he said she needed to hear his voice.
She didn’t reply to either of us.
This afternoon, we went to Surrey. I drove too fast, and Lincoln didn’t tell me to slow down.
At Maeve’s gates, the guard looked apologetic before he even spoke. Artem came down himself, standing on the other side of the iron in a dark coat, rain threading through his black hair.
“Hudson. Lincoln.”
“Open the gates,” Lincoln said.
Artem’s eyes moved to him. “I am sorry.”
“She’s carrying our children,” Lincoln said.
“I know.”
“She’s our omega.”
“I know that too.”
“Then open the gates.”
Artem looked at me. “Only Mary can open them.”
“She knows we’re here?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“And?”
Artem’s voice softened by a fraction. “She said no.”
I nodded because there were guards watching and because if I didn’t move my body in some civilized way, I might have stood there until the rain turned me into stone.
We left.
Now we were back in London, with the moon glistening over the Thames to end another day without her.
Lincoln sat in the chair by the glass wall with a tumbler of bourbon he hadn’t drunk much of. Neither had I. It was something to hold.
The penthouse had become too large. Mary’s mug by the sink.
Her sketchbook was half-hidden under a cushion because she’d still been pretending her painting was casual.
Her slippers near the bedroom door. The folded blanket on the sofa where she sat with her feet tucked under and insulted whichever one of us asked if she was comfortable.
Now the rooms stretched into glass, stone, river, and silence.
“God, I miss her,” I said, staring at the empty place she liked to sit. “Not just miss, I love her.”
Lincoln walked toward the window, the amber in his glass catching the city light. “Me too.”
“Good,” I said.
He took one swallow of bourbon, then set the glass down on the table. “We failed her.”
“I agree. We should’ve told Damien in Boston.”
“We should have at least told him before he reached the penthouse.” There was no anger in his voice.
For a while, the city moved below us in headlights and rain.
“I know I was scared of losing him,” Lincoln said. “Which is crazy because we lost him years ago.”
I closed my eyes. “I know.”
“We hesitated...” Lincoln murmured. “When he asked if she planned it. Planned the meeting with us to hurt him. We hesitated.”
I groaned. “I know.”
Damien’s voice had replayed itself in my mind until it became a wound with sound.
How do you know she never planned it to hurt me?
The question was absurd and impossible. And for half a second, I hadn’t answered. Not because I believed it, but because Damien was my son in every way that mattered except blood, and he had looked at me with his whole broken childhood in his face.
For half a second, I had seen two hurts and failed to defend the one that needed defending.
Mary had heard the silence. She heard everything we didn’t say.
“We chose wrong,” Lincoln said.
“We didn’t choose Damien.”
“No.” His voice roughened. “We chose hesitation.”
I took a sip of my bourbon, letting it burn my throat. “And she still wants us to help him before going to her.”
“She’s more nurturing than she realizes.”
I smiled. “Imagine her face if you told her that.”
Lincoln grinned. “Should we speak to Damien? He’s still our son. And then we go to Mary again and crash through those gates.”
“Or call her,” I said.
Lincoln smiled.
“Damien’s downstairs,” I said.
Damien had been given one of the guest apartments on the lower floor. He hadn’t left London or gone back to Boston. He was sulking, raging, texting, apologizing and withdrawing it in alternating bursts.
Not once had he asked if Mary was safe.
I couldn’t get around that fact.
He had asked whether we were still angry. He had asked whether he could come upstairs. He had asked whether we were seriously going to throw away family over a girl who had lied to everyone.
That omission sat heavier than anything he had said.
Lincoln’s phone buzzed. He looked at it, then handed me the phone.
Damien: Tell Hudson I need to talk. If you both still care.
“He knows where to press,” Lincoln said.
“Are we going down?”
I looked toward the hallway. The old Hudson would have waited until morning. Made notes. Prepared language. Controlled the circumstances.
The man Mary had left was done mistaking control for care.
“Yes,” I said.
Damien opened the guest apartment door before we knocked. Bare feet, a sweatshirt, hair damp from a shower. His eyes were red-rimmed in a way that would have moved me if I wasn’t so angry I could feel it in my teeth.
“You came,” he said.
“You asked,” Lincoln replied.
Damien looked between us. “Is she still gone?”
“Yes,” I said.
His mouth tightened. “So what, this is my fault?”
Lincoln made a sound under his breath.
I stepped inside. “It’s your fault that you were cruel,” I said. “It’s our fault that we hesitated.”
Damien flinched. “What?”
“When you asked if she planned it,” Lincoln said.
Damien looked away. “It was a fair question.”
“No,” I said. “It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t clever. It wasn’t the wounded truth beneath the anger. It was cruel, and we should have answered before the silence had time to hurt her.”
He folded his arms. “You don’t know she didn’t.”
“I do know.”
“How?”
“Because I know her.”
“You barely know her.”
“I know her better than you did.”
The words landed hard. Damien’s face went white.
“You knew Marli,” I said. “The girl she invented because Mary belonged to a father who wanted to sell her. You knew the version of her who was trying to survive Boston with a false name and a boyfriend she needed, but who kept her uncertain enough to think crumbs were a meal.”
“That’s not fair.”
Lincoln walked to the window and looked out to the street. “No. It isn’t, but it’s true.”
Damien glared at his back. “She lied to me too. She didn’t tell me her real name.”
“She was an omega who lived on the other side of the ocean. An omega, Damien. She could have been kidnapped by traffickers, taken by an alpha who just wanted her, and all you think about is that she called herself Marli. She was fucking scared. Her father tried to sell her. She fled Ireland and then fled England and all you think about is yourself.”
He recoiled, and I didn’t soften.
“You hurt her first. We hurt her after. That’s the difference between us right now, Damien. We know what we did.”
His eyes shone. “I was angry.”
“So was I.”
“You shouted at me.”
“Because you called her disgusting.”
His jaw worked. “She’s pregnant with your babies.”
“Yes.”
“And you expect me to be fine?”
“No,” Lincoln said. “We expect you to be better than cruel.”
Damien looked at him. “You’d choose her.”
The room fell still. A young man we had raised was standing in front of us with abandonment in his eyes, asking us to prove love by making it smaller.
I thought of Mary in the baby shop, crying because no one had called her perfect. Mary in our bed, calling herself Mama. Mary at the cafe, terrified and brave, letting us scent her in public. Mary behind the gates in Surrey, saying no because we had taught her our safety could falter.
I thought of Damien at seven with scraped knees. At twelve pretending not to care. At seventeen eating cereal in the dark after his mother left, and choosing to leave too.
“I won’t choose between you like that,” I said.
“That’s a refusal.”
He wiped his face with the back of his wrist, angry about it. “She got you both. In three days.”
Lincoln went to speak. I raised my hand.
“Mary is our omega,” I said.
He flinched.
“She’s our scent match. She’s carrying our children. She’s the woman we love.”
Lincoln looked at me. “If you demand that we abandon her to prove we love you, we won’t do it.”
“Then you’re choosing her.”
“We’re choosing not to let you turn love into a weapon,” I said. “That’s not the same thing.”
“Feels the same.”
“I know.”
His face crumpled, and for one second I saw the boy before he stepped back from us. “I can’t look at you.”
Lincoln’s hand twitched, and I caught his wrist gently. Not because Damien didn’t deserve comfort, but because he hadn’t asked for it.
“Then don’t,” I said. “But hear this. We’ll call you tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. You can answer or not. You can rage or not. But we’re not disappearing because you’re angry.”
Damien stared at the floor.
“And Mary?”
“We’ll go to Mary when she lets us,” Lincoln said.
“What if she doesn’t?”
“Then we keep loving her from whatever distance she requires,” I said. “The same with you.”
“My father didn’t want me because I was a beta, and my mother always told me to be good so you’d want to keep me. Mary turned up in a hotel and she didn’t have to do anything.”
The room went quiet for a moment. Then I sighed.
“We always wanted you, Damien. You’re our son,” Lincoln said.
“You called yourself ‘bonus dads,’” he whispered.
I shook my head. “No, Damien, you’re playing with the truth.
We were only ever allowed to be bonus dads because you had a dad.
It hurt at first, but for us it was just a word, we got used to it until you started using it against us.
Don’t now complain about what you wanted because we always gave you everything you asked for. ”
He dropped his head. “I know. I’m fucked up, aren’t I?”
I smiled. “You could do with a few lessons in humility.”
He grinned. “Just a few?”
A tiny breakthrough, hopefully one we could work with.
I reached out and pressed my hand on his shoulder. “We love you, you know that, don’t you? You’re our son, you always will be.”
Damien laughed, but tears spilled. “Don’t.”
“We do love you,” Lincoln said. “We have loved you since you were a small boy with more pride than sense and a backpack bigger than your body. We loved you when your mother left. We loved you when you chose Boston. We love you now, even while you are being a complete little shit.”
Damien’s mouth trembled.
I cleared my throat. “Maybe that was a bit harsh.”
“No,” Lincoln said, eyes on Damien. “He needs the truth. I love you, Damien. I’m also furious with you. Both can live in the same room. And we’ll leave you with that to think about.”
Damien looked up, and for the first time since he arrived, something moved through the wreckage that wasn’t anger. It wasn’t enough yet, but it was something.
We left him standing in the guest apartment with tears on his face and no apology ready in his mouth.
When the lift doors closed, Lincoln leaned back against the wall and covered his eyes with one hand. “You said it.”
“Yes.”
“That you love her.”
My chest ached. “Yes.”
“Good.”
The lift rose toward the penthouse.
“Do you think she’ll believe it?”
Lincoln lowered his hand, his eyes red. “Not from here.”
The doors opened to our empty home, where Mary’s scent was fading.
We had chosen her. Now we had to convince her she could come home without needing to protect us from the cost.