I sat on the edge of the sprawling bed, my hand trembling as I looked at the plastic stick in my lap.
Two pink lines.
They were bold and undeniable, bright against the white background. It should have been a celebration.
Hastings had left the test kit by my nest this morning, placing it carefully on the nightstand while I pretended to sleep. He'd kissed my forehead, his lips warm against my skin, his scent wrapping around me like a blanket.
"We'll celebrate tonight, Presley," he'd whispered, his voice thick with a certainty that unnerved me.
It was like he already knew. Like his internal logic had already calculated the exact day the hormone levels would shift, the precise moment the embryo would implant, the optimal time to run a pregnancy test for maximum accuracy.
I should have been ecstatic. I wanted this. I wanted them. I wanted the family and the security and the chance to give a child everything I'd never had.
But staring at the test, I didn't feel like a woman starting a family.
I felt numb because Etienne wasn’t here.
My phone rang, the vibration rattling against the glass top of the side table. The sound was too loud in the quiet room, jarring and insistent.
I picked it up without checking the screen.
"Hello?"
"It's me. I'm in London." Maeve's voice was small, thin, competing with the roar of city traffic in the background. Car horns. The rumble of a bus. The mechanical voice of a crossing signal.
My chest tightened. "I thought you got anxiety here."
"I do. My chest feels like a squeezed lemon and my hands won't stop shaking, but I need to speak to you. I'm in a cab." A pause, the sound of her breathing fast and shallow. "Now what's the address?"
"I'm in Kensington."
"Iknow, Presley. Don't be dense." Her voice went sharp, edged with panic she was trying to hide. "Tell me the address. The meter is clicking and the cost is getting ridiculous. I don't have rich alphas to pay my bills."
The words hit like a slap.
I felt a sharp prick of insult, my thumb brushing over the two pink lines on the stick. The plastic was smooth, clinical, impersonal.
"I'll text it to you."
I hung up before she could say anything else, my heart doing a messy, frantic stagger in my chest.
Maeve didn't leave the moors for nothing. She didn't get on a train to London—a city that made her hands shake and her breath come too fast—unless something was wrong.
Maeve didn't look like she belonged in the drawing room.
She looked like a ghost haunting a palace. Her black hair was disheveled, strands escaping from the hasty ponytail at her nape. Her green dress was buttoned wrong, the hem uneven. Her eyes tracked the room.
“This is nice.”
“It is. I’ll show you my nest in a minute.”
“Your nest.” She inhaled a deep breath, and stood and paced the length of the room, her movements jerky and anxious.
Her eyes darted to the gilded moldings, the tall windows, the chandelier.
Then she looked at me, her gaze hollow.
"Maeve, talk to me." I stepped toward her, my bare feet silent on the plush rug. "What's happened? Why are you in London?"
