Pregnant For The Alpha

Chapter 4

Sienna

Three days to go.

I have been counting down like it is the only thing keeping me sane. Three days until I go back to the clinic. Three days until I know if I am pregnant. Three days until I find out if any of this suffering was worth something.

I pull my coat tighter and step outside into the cold Silver Ridge morning with nowhere to be for the first time in two years. No job to walk to. No children waiting for me. Just empty hours stretching ahead of me like a punishment.

I have spent the last seven days applying for every nanny position I could find, calling in every favor I had, and eating the cheapest food I could manage. Nadia has been sending me money when I let her, which is not often because she has her own problems and I refuse to drown us both. The debt collectors have called four more times. I have stopped answering numbers I do not recognize.

And Brooke's words have not left me alone for a single second.

Everything you believe about where you came from has been a lie.

I have turned it over and over in my head every night until sleep finally takes me. I grew up knowing nothing about my biological parents. The orphanage gave me nothing. No names. No photographs. No explanation for why I was left. I made peace with that emptiness a long time ago because what choice did I have.

But what if someone made sure I never found out.

I shake myself and keep walking. I cannot afford to spiral today. I need to stay focused on what I can control.

The Silver Ridge morning market is two streets from my apartment and everything there is cheap and fresh and I have exactly forty dollars to last me until I find work. I am mentally calculating how far forty dollars can stretch when I turn the corner and walk directly into a wall.

Except walls do not breathe.

I stumble backward and two large hands catch me by the arms before I can fall, steadying me so quickly and so effortlessly that it takes me a second to process what just happened. I look up.

And up.

And up some more.

The man holding me is enormous. Six foot five at least, broad across the shoulders, dark skinned, with close cropped hair and a jaw that looks like it was carved from something hard. He is wearing a coat that probably costs more than my rent and he is surrounded by three other large men who appeared from nowhere and are now watching me with careful expressionless faces.

But it is his eyes that stop me completely.

Deep amber. Warm and strange and so intense that looking directly into them feels like standing too close to a fire. They are fixed on my face with an expression I cannot read at all. Not irritation at being walked into. Not the polite blankness of a wealthy man dealing with an inconvenience.

Something else entirely. Something that looks almost like recognition.

Which makes no sense because I have never seen this man before in my life.

"I'm so sorry," I say, stepping back out of his hands. "I wasn't looking where I was going."

He does not say anything immediately. He just looks at me. One of his men murmurs something quietly and he blinks and the strange expression disappears behind something much more composed.

"Are you hurt," he says. His voice is deep and even and lands somewhere in my chest in a way I do not know what to do with.

"No. I'm fine." I pull my coat straight. "Sorry again."

I step around him and keep walking.

I make it maybe ten steps before I realize my heart is hammering. I press my hand flat against my chest and frown. I am not a person who gets flustered by attractive men. I have never been that person. But something about those amber eyes and the way he looked at me like he already knew me is sitting under my skin in a way I cannot shake.

I do my shopping. I head home. I tell myself to forget about it.

I cannot forget about it.

I call Nadia that evening because I need to hear a friendly voice and also because I have been keeping Brooke's words from her for a week and the weight of it is becoming too much.

She picks up immediately. "How are you doing. Honestly."

"Honestly?" I sit down on my kitchen floor because sometimes the floor is the right place to be. "I am scared Nadia. I am really scared."

"About the results?"

"About everything." I pull my knees to my chest. "Nadia, Brooke said something to me before she hung up last week. She said Derek told her that my whole life, everything I think I know about where I came from, is a lie. That someone has been keeping a secret about me since before I was born."

Silence on the other end.

"Nadia."

"I heard you." Her voice is careful in a way that makes me sit up straighter.

"Do you know something," I say slowly. "Because you went very quiet very fast."

"Sienna I don't know anything for certain. I just." She stops. "The clinic keeps records that go back decades. Medical records, donor records, family histories. Sometimes things come through that are not meant to be seen and you see them anyway." Another pause. "I saw your name once. In a file that had nothing to do with your appointment."

My mouth goes dry. "What kind of file."

"I don't know. It was locked and I only saw your name for a second before the screen changed. I told myself it was a coincidence." She exhales slowly. "But Sienna if Derek knew something and he was scared, that means whoever is keeping this secret has real power."

I sit on my kitchen floor in the quiet and let that settle over me.

"Two more days," I say finally.

"Two more days," she agrees softly. "Then we will deal with everything else. One thing at a time okay?"

I nod even though she cannot see me. "Okay."

I hang up and sit there for a long time.

I think about the man with the amber eyes. I think about the way he looked at me on that street corner like he already knew my name. I think about Brooke's voice dropping to almost nothing saying the people keeping this secret are dangerous.

Then I think about something Nadia just said.

Whoever is keeping this secret has real power.

I pick my phone back up. I open the browser. I type in what I remember seeing on the side of the building the man with the amber eyes walked out of this morning.

Three letters. V.O.S.

The search results load immediately and the name at the top of every single one of them hits me like a bucket of cold water.

Alaric Voss. Billionaire. Most powerful man in Silver Ridge. And according to the third article on the page, the primary donor and founding benefactor of the Silverbrook Children's Home.

The orphanage where I grew up.