THE BLACKWOOD HEIR

Episode 4-The Test

Lena

The reception dragged on for three hours.

I spent most of it hiding in corners, deflecting questions I didn't want to answer, and keeping Jonah distracted with coloring books Mrs. Holloway had miraculously produced from somewhere. The guests whispered behind their hands, their eyes following me across the room like I was a ghost who had forgotten to stay dead.

There she is. The step-daughter who ran away.

Did you hear what happened? Her own mother threw her out.

And now she shows up with a bastard child? The audacity.

I heard every word.

I smiled through every word.

And I clutched Jonah's hand so tightly my knuckles went white.

"Mama, you're squishing me."

"Sorry, baby."

Across the ballroom, Caleb was doing his duty. Shaking hands. Accepting condolences. Playing the grieving son for a crowd that didn't deserve his grief. Every few minutes, his eyes would find mine across the room, and something hot and electric would pass between us.

The test.

He hadn't mentioned it again. But the swab kit was in his pocket—I had seen the outline of it through his suit jacket—and I knew he was waiting.

Waiting for me to be ready.

Waiting for me to stop being a coward.

After the funeral, I had said.

The funeral was over.

---

Caleb

The last guest left at four o'clock.

Caleb closed the front door and leaned against it, exhaling slowly. The silence was deafening after hours of meaningless chatter. Somewhere upstairs, Mrs. Holloway was putting Jonah down for a nap. Somewhere in the east wing, Celeste was no doubt plotting.

And Lena was in the library.

He had seen her slip through the side door ten minutes ago, Jonah-free for the first time all day. This was his chance.

He found her standing by the fireplace, staring at the portrait above the mantel. Harold Blackwood in his prime, standing beside a horse he had never ridden, looking exactly like the stern, distant father Caleb remembered.

"I hated this painting," Lena said without turning around. "He looks so... untouchable. Like he never made mistakes."

"He made plenty."

"Did he?" She finally turned, and Caleb's breath caught. Her eyes were red-rimmed, though her cheeks were dry. "He was the only one who was ever kind to me in this house. The only one who made me feel like I belonged."

"And I destroyed it."

She didn't deny it.

Caleb crossed the room slowly, giving her time to retreat. She didn't. She stood her ground, her hands clasped in front of her, her shoulders squared.

"I'm not going to apologize for Jonah," she said quietly. "He's the best thing that ever happened to me. Keeping him from you was... a choice. A desperate, frightened choice made by a desperate, frightened girl. I'm not that girl anymore."

"I know."

"But I'm still scared." Her voice cracked. "I'm scared of you, Caleb. Not of what you'll do—I know you wouldn't hurt us. I'm scared of what you'll mean. To me. To Jonah. I spent seven years building a life without you. I don't know how to let you back in."

"Then don't." He stopped a few feet away, close enough to touch but not touching. "Don't let me in. Just... let me prove myself. Give me time. Give me a chance to show you I'm not the man I was."

Lena searched his face. For what, he didn't know. Lies, maybe. Hidden motives. The cruelty he had shown her seven years ago.

She wouldn't find any of it.

He was stripped bare in front of her. Raw and aching and desperate for a grace he didn't deserve.

"Okay," she whispered.

"Okay?"

"Okay, do the test. But not here. Not in this house." She glanced toward the door, toward the rest of the manor where Celeste and Serena were no doubt lurking. "Somewhere private. Just us."

"The boathouse," Caleb said immediately. "No one goes there anymore. We can be alone."

Lena hesitated. Then she nodded.

"Lead the way."

---

Lena

The boathouse was frozen.

Winter had turned the lake into a sheet of gray ice, and the small wooden building at the water's edge was dusted with snow. Caleb unlocked the door with a key he seemed to keep on him at all times, and we stepped inside.

It was cold, but not freezing. Someone had been here recently—a space heater hummed in the corner, and the couch by the window was free of dust.

"I come here sometimes," Caleb admitted, closing the door behind us. "When the house feels too big. When I need to think."

I looked around. Fishing rods on the walls. A small kitchenette. A loft above with a mattress and blankets. It was simple. Honest. Nothing like the opulent nightmare of Blackwood Manor.

"It's nice," I said, surprised.

Caleb pulled the swab kit from his pocket and set it on the small table between us.

"Are you sure?" he asked. "Once we do this, we can't go back. If he's mine—"

"He's yours."

The words fell out before I could stop them.

Caleb went very still.

"I know he's yours," I continued, my voice steadier than I felt. "I've always known. I just... I needed to protect him. From your family. From the scandal. From the way they destroyed me."

"They destroyed us."

I flinched. "Us? There was no us, Caleb. You made sure of that."

"I know." He ran a hand through his dark hair, a gesture of frustration I remembered from years ago. "I know I failed you. I will spend the rest of my life regretting it. But right now—" He tapped the swab kit. "—right now, I just need to know. Officially. Legally. So I can fight for him. For you. So I can prove to the world that you were never the villain they painted you to be."

I stared at him.

Fight for me.

No one had ever fought for me. Not my mother, who had sold me to the Blackwoods for status and security. Not Serena, who had pretended to be my friend while plotting my ruin. Not Caleb, who had stood silent and watched it all burn.

But he was here now.

And he was asking.

One step, I told myself. One step toward something terrifying and new.

"Show me how it works."

---

Caleb

His hands shook as he opened the kit.

Inside were two long cotton swabs, two sterile tubes, and an instruction manual he had read so many times he had it memorized. He handed one swab to Lena.

"Inside the cheek. Rub it against the skin for thirty seconds. That's all."

Lena took the swab. Their fingers brushed, and the contact sent a jolt through him—sharp as lightning, warm as fire.

Soon, the wolf promised. Soon she'll be ours again.

"Together?" Lena asked.

"Together."

They swabbed their cheeks in silence. Caleb watched her, watched the concentration on her face, the way her brow furrowed slightly as she counted to thirty in her head. She was so beautiful it hurt.

"Done." She placed her swab in one of the tubes and capped it.

Caleb did the same with his.

"That's it," he said, sealing both tubes in the biohazard bag provided. "I'll send these to a private lab tomorrow. We'll have results in forty-eight hours."

"Forty-eight hours." Lena wrapped her arms around herself. "And then everything changes."

"Or nothing changes." He stepped closer, close enough to see the flecks of gold in her brown eyes. "Either way, Lena, I'm not going anywhere. He's my son. And you—" He stopped, swallowed, dared to say the words he had been holding back for seven years. "You're still the only woman I've ever loved."

Her breath caught.

"Caleb—"

"I know. Too much. Too late." He stepped back, giving her space, even though every instinct screamed at him to pull her close. "But it's the truth. And I'm done hiding from the truth."

Lena looked at him for a long, aching moment.

Then she walked to the door, paused with her hand on the knob, and looked back.

"Forty-eight hours," she said quietly. "And then we talk. Really talk. About everything."

"I'll be here."

She nodded once, almost to herself, and slipped out into the snow.

Caleb stood alone in the boathouse, the DNA kit clutched in his hands, and let himself feel something he hadn't felt in seven years.

Hope.

---

Celeste

From her bedroom window, Celeste watched Lena cross the frozen lawn toward the manor.

The girl was alone. Caleb was nowhere in sight.

But they had been in the boathouse together for nearly twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of privacy. Twenty minutes of whispered conversations and God only knew what else.

Celeste's jaw tightened.

She had worked too hard to let Lena Marshall destroy everything. Years of scheming. Years of positioning herself as the perfect wife, the perfect stepmother, the perfect socialite. She had driven Lena out once. She could do it again.

But the boy complicated things.

If Caleb was the father—

No. Celeste refused to consider it.

She picked up her phone and dialed a familiar number.

"Serena. We have a problem."

---

Serena

Across the manor, in the guest suite she had occupied for three years, Serena Vane stood in front of the mirror and applied her lipstick.

Red. Blood red. The color of warning.

"I know," she said into the phone, watching her reflection smile. "I saw them too."

"What are we going to do?"

Serena thought of Lena—soft, sweet, pathetic Lena—and felt nothing but contempt. The girl had been easy to destroy the first time. A few whispered rumors. A staged photograph. A well-timed tearful confession from a hired actor claiming to be her lover.

Framed for an affair.

So simple. So effective.

But this time, Lena had a son. And if that son belonged to Caleb—

No.

Serena would not lose him. Not again. She had spent seven years waiting for Caleb to come to his senses, to see that she was the better choice, the right choice. She had endured his coldness, his distance, his refusal to marry her. She had smiled through every public humiliation.

She was done waiting.

"We do what we always do," Serena said softly. "We find her weakness. And we exploit it."

"The boy?"

"The boy." Serena smiled at her reflection. "Everyone has a pressure point, Celeste. Lena's just happens to have her eyes and Caleb's last name."

She hung up the phone and finished her lipstick.

The game was far from over.