30. Mary
Mary
Family dinner , Hudson had said a week later.
Casual, Lincoln had added. I should have known better.
Casual, in the world of wealthy alphas, apparently meant a private dining room above a restaurant in Mayfair.
Maeve arrived first with Artem, Ivan, Gregor, Mac, Mila, and a paper bag containing what she described as emergency biscuits.
“For me?” I asked.
“For everyone,” Maeve said. “But mostly you.”
“Because I’m pregnant?”
“Because your alphas look like they have planned something, and these will stop the nausea.”
I turned toward Hudson. He looked like he was up to something, which meant Maeve was right. I chose not to ask.
Presley came next with Pack Hastings, Henry, Etienne, Fritz, minus her kids but with enough bright, northern energy to make the room feel less stuffy and more survivable.
She hugged me, whispered, “You look gorgeous and terrified,” and then handed me a small packet of ginger sweets as if she had known me all my life.
By the time we sat, the room smelled like succulent meat, roasting vegetables, the scent of the vanilla candle sitting in the middle of the table, and expensive cologne.
It also smelled of a mix of alpha and omega scent, which was the strange, layered comfort of the chosen people gathering around a table.
I sat between Hudson and Lincoln.
Mac sat opposite me, between Gregor and Ivan, with Mila in a high chair beside Maeve. Mila had discovered the bread and was treating it as both food and architecture.
“Don’t build on the plate,” Maeve said. “We’re in Mayfair.”
Mila put another piece of bread on top of the first. “Mama, build house.”
“She’s a visionary,” Presley said, taking a bite of a potato.
“She’s banned from construction,” Maeve replied, putting more broccoli in front of her daughter. “Because it tends to get messy, especially if there’s jam on the bread.”
“Jam is evil for building, never dries,” Fritz said, deadpan.
I smiled.
When the dessert menus arrived, Hudson touched my hand under the table.
“What are you up to?” I asked.
“What?”
“You’re being weird.”
“Because I’m touching your hand?”
Lincoln laughed under his breath. “He loves being weird. Or perhaps—.”
Hudson stood, and the room quieted with terrifying speed.
I looked at Maeve, whose eyes were bright.
“Oh no,” I whispered.
“Mary.”
“If this involves public speaking, I’ve suddenly developed a medical condition called muteititus.”
Maeve rolled her eyes. “You mean selective mutism.”
“Whose side are you on?” I whispered.
Hudson cleared his throat. “It involves listening.”
Lincoln stood too, and that was when my lungs forgot the operating procedure.
Both of them were standing beside me. Hudson was controlled and beautiful in a charcoal suit, black shirt and tie, his eyes fixed on me with a tenderness that made the room blur at the edges. Lincoln also wore a suit, his pale gray with a navy shirt that matched my dress.
Hudson took a small velvet box from his pocket. Lincoln took another from his.
“Oh my God,” I said.
Mac gasped. “Is it treasure?”
“Yes,” Presley whispered. “Emotional treasure.”
Maeve made a sound that might have been a laugh if she weren’t already crying.
Hudson opened his box. Inside was a ring with a single violet stone, deep and luminous, set simply enough that the color did all the work. Lincoln opened his box, inside was a curved band with two diamonds set into the arc like bright points of light.
My eyes filled so fast the rings became color and shine.
“Mary,” Hudson said, voice steady but not untouched. “We know this isn’t simple.”
“Nothing with me is simple,” I whispered.
“No,” Lincoln said. “Thank God.”
A laugh moved around the table, soft and wet.
Hudson continued. “We’re not asking because of the babies. We’re not asking because of scent matching, though I’ll be grateful for that miracle for the rest of my life. We’re asking because you’re the woman we love.”
Lincoln’s voice roughened. “Our omega. Our heart. Our home. Our forever love.”
My hand went to my stomach.
“We want to spend every day proving you can be loved without being owned,” Hudson said.
“But you will be fussed over,” Lincoln added.
“Yes, I agree.”
“And fed.”
“I hope so,” I said, laughing through tears.
Hudson’s smile trembled. “Will you marry us?” he asked.
My mouth opened. Nothing came out, then everything came out at once.
“Yes. Obviously yes. Why would you ask me that before I’ve eaten my dessert? But yes.”
Lincoln laughed and bent to kiss my forehead.
Hudson slid his ring onto my finger first. Lincoln’s followed, fitting against it as if both had been made for the same hand, the same life, the same impossible yes.
Separately, they were beautiful. Together, they became something else.
Everyone clapped.
Mila clapped because everyone else did and then looked outraged when her bread tower collapsed.
Mac leaned across the table. “Are they both marrying you?”
The room changed by half a degree, not badly but carefully.
I looked down at the two rings.
In our world, packs were recognized. Bonds were recognized.
Parental rights could be shared. Households could be built with legal structures, contracts, registrations, and ceremonies older than most governments.
But marriage, in the narrow civil sense, still liked a tidy line of one spouse, one signature, one name beside mine.
I looked at Hudson, then Lincoln.
My chest tightened. “I can’t choose.”
Lincoln’s face softened at once. “Love.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I won’t. I know there are laws and paperwork and probably twelve folders Hudson has already color-coded, but I won’t choose which of you is more mine.”
Hudson’s eyes shone. “We’d never ask that of you.”
“Someone will.”
“Then someone will be disappointed,” Lincoln said.
Mac nodded solemnly. “Daddy A says paperwork can be defeated with better paperwork.”
Artem lifted his glass. “Correct.”
Ivan leaned back. “Sometimes a fire helps.”
“We’re in Mayfair, Ivan,” Maeve said.
“Metaphorical fire,” he added.
Gregor glanced at him.
Ivan smiled and muttered, “Mostly.”
The laughter saved me from dissolving completely.
Then the door opened, and I turned. Damien stood in the doorway, and for one awful second, the whole room stared.
He looked sheepish. No other word for it. His sandy hair was damp from rain, his hands shoved into the pockets of his coat. He looked younger than he had in the penthouse. Smaller, somehow, without any anger making him loud.
Hudson stood straighter. Lincoln’s hand settled at my back.
Damien looked at them first, then at me. “I know I’m late,” he said.
“You are,” Hudson said.
The waiter behind him looked deeply interested in being elsewhere.
Damien cleared his throat. “Can I sit down?”
I looked at Hudson, then Lincoln, then I realized I was the one he was really asking. “Yes,” I said.
Damien took the empty seat near the end of the table. There was a beat when no one spoke. Then Damien looked at my hand. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
His throat moved. “Are you all right? All three of you, I mean. The babies.”
“We’re fine,” I said.
“Good.” He looked down at the tablecloth. “Good.”
“I honestly didn’t try to hurt you,” I said before he could say anything else. “I swear that I never knew.”
He nodded. “I know, I was just angry when I had no right to be.” Damien stared down at the tablecloth. “I did what I always do. Took the worst thing I could think of and threw it before anyone could throw something at me first.”
“That’s very self-aware for a man who once accused a road of being badly positioned,” I said.
His mouth lifted on one side. “The bend was not necessary.”
“I agree.”
His throat moved as he swallowed. “I take after my biological dad,” he said. “I wish these two were my real dads. Maybe I’d have better genes.”
Hudson’s face changed. Lincoln’s hand flexed against my back.
I leaned forward. “You have perfect genes, Damien.”
He looked at me like I had said something absurd.
“You do,” I said. “You just need to read the room a little more and respect people, and then you’ll be fine.”
Ivan coughed into his napkin.
Damien nodded slowly. “I really am sorry.”
I studied him. “You came here and said this in front of everyone, so I believe you.”
“Thank you.” He looked embarrassed but he was trying. “Friends?”
“Friends.” I nodded.
His shoulders dropped. Then he frowned. “So you’re really called Mary and not Marli?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
I stared at him.
“Damien, if my father knew I was in Boston and dating you, he would probably have killed you. Is that a good enough reason?”
His eyes widened. “Shit. No way.”
“Yep.”
He looked at Hudson and Lincoln, then at Artem, then at Ivan, then at Gregor, who was buttering bread with the calm of a man who knew exactly how many ways a person could disappear.
Damien swallowed as he looked back at his dads. “Sucks to be you two.”
“Damien,” Hudson said.
“Kidding.”
“Poorly,” Lincoln said.
Mac, who had been listening with the focused attention of a child collecting adult nonsense for later use, leaned forward. “Apparently my bad Irish grandpa is mafia and my bad Russian grandpa is Bratva. But he’s dead now.”
Damien went pale. “Your what?”
Mac looked at Maeve. “Am I allowed to say dead?”
Maeve closed her eyes. “Not at dinner.”
“But he is.”
Artem took a sip of wine.
“We have rules,” Ivan said.
Damien picked up the dessert menu. “Have you ordered yet?”
“No,” Mac said with disgust. “We’re waiting but Mary is taking too long. And then you came and stopped it again.”
“Sorry buddy,” Damien said, then looked at me and then his dads. “I wanted to say sorry before leaving because I think it’s safe to say I’m going back to Boston.”
“Good choice,” I said.
He smiled, and for the first time since he arrived in England, he didn’t look like a boy trying to win a war no one else had declared.
The night became easier after that. Not perfect, because perfect would have been suspicious.
Damien avoided looking at my rings for too long. Hudson watched him with the tenderness of a father trying not to crowd a wounded son. Lincoln relaxed by degrees, his hand coming back to my shoulder whenever conversation moved too close to old pain.
But Damien laughed when Mac explained Duchess’s legal name change. He apologized to Lincoln with his eyes when Presley made a joke about men needing emotional subtitles. He asked Hudson if he could still come by tomorrow before his flight.
Hudson said yes, and I breathed.
Later that night, back at the penthouse, I stood in the private lift between my two alphas with two rings on my finger and absolutely no idea what my face was doing.
“You look halfway between happy and suspicious,” Lincoln said.
I grinned. “That’s because happiness has been behaving strangely.”
Hudson took my hand and kissed the rings. “We have one more thing.”
“No.”
“You don’t know what it is.”
“That’s never stopped me from objecting before.”
Lincoln smiled. “Come upstairs.”
“We are upstairs.”
“More upstairs.”
I looked between them. “This penthouse has more upstairs?”
“It has an upper floor,” Hudson said.
“Of course it does. How gauche of me to assume the sky was enough.”
They took me up a private staircase behind a locked door. At the top was a short hall with soft lights set low in the walls.
Hudson opened the door at the end.
A room opened in front of me, enormous in a way that didn’t feel empty. It felt made for me.
A massive nest filled one side, built low and wide beneath a skylight where the London night looked close enough to touch.
Blankets in deep green, storm gray, violet, and cream were layered with pillows, throws, and pieces of fabric I recognized by scent before sight.
Lincoln’s shirts. Hudson’s T-shirts. My own soft things from the room downstairs.
Beside the nest stood two white wooden cribs, simple and waiting.
On the shelf above them, positioned with obvious care and no shame whatsoever, stood the cursed giraffe.
My hand went to my mouth.
On the other side of the room, near the windows, stood an easel.
Not just an easel, but a proper one, beautiful, heavy, and adjustable.
Beside it were shelves of paints, brushes, canvases, charcoals, inks, paper, jars, cloths, all arranged with Hudson-level precision and Lincoln-level abundance.
The window beyond looked over London, the river cutting through the city in moon-lit silver and black curves.
The perfect London landscape. Not Surrey, where I’d learned to paint because I had nowhere else to put my feelings. This was home.
“I don’t...” My voice broke. “I don’t understand.”
Lincoln came up behind me. “This is our pack room. A safe room. A place for you and the babies.”
Hudson stood at my side. “And us.”
“A place to paint sometimes,” Lincoln said.
“Without feeling like you should be doing something more useful,” Hudson finished.
I turned to them.
They had heard me. Not only the dramatic parts, the pregnancy and danger and sex and scent, but the quiet little wish I had barely dared to say in Maeve’s study while Fergus committed luxury theft under a desk.
“This is mine?”
“Yes,” Hudson said.
Lincoln’s voice warmed. “Ours when we’re invited. Yours always.”
I pressed my hand to my stomach as the rings caught the light.
Two alphas who loved me. Two babies coming in months. A room where I could paint. A nest big enough for all of us.
It was everything I wanted and had somehow been placed under a skylight and left there, waiting for me to believe I was allowed to keep it.
I walked to the nest, my knees a little wobbly.
I crawled onto the blankets and sank into the scents of them.
Whiskey, rain, violet, blackberry, and the faint clean smell of new cotton.
The dark night made the skylight above reflect two men standing in the doorway, watching me as if they had handed me something fragile and were afraid to breathe until they knew I wanted it.
I patted the top of the nest. “I want my alphas.”
They came to me together. Just how I wanted.