SURROGATE FOR THE ALPHA

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Ashley POV

I'm on my feet before I've fully decided to move, yanking the door open and running toward the stairs barefoot, heart slamming against my ribs. Smoke curls up from the ground floor, sharp and acrid, and somewhere below Liam is shouting orders in a voice I've never heard him use, raw and unsteady in a way that sounds like real fear.

"Ashley, stay back!" A guard catches me at the top of the stairs, arm barring my way before I can reach the first step, his other hand already reaching for the radio clipped to his shoulder.

"What's happening? Someone screamed, I heard it from my room."

"Perimeter breach. Someone got past the east gate." His eyes are wide, scanning the smoke below us like he's expecting something to come charging up the stairs any second. "Mr. Ashworth is handling it, you need to get to the safe room, now."

I don't move fast enough. Down the hall, another guard is dragging a limp figure away from the smoke, and somewhere out of sight I can hear Marta shouting for someone to seal the east corridor. A shape bursts through the smoke at the bottom of the stairs, moving too fast to be human, and I catch one horrifying glimpse of teeth and fury before Liam collides with it midair, both of them crashing through a side table in a blur of claws and snarling that doesn't sound like anything I've ever heard come out of a person before.

It's over in seconds, though it feels like an eternity while I watch it happen. Liam stands over the intruder, chest heaving, and even from here I can see the blood on his shoulder, dark and spreading fast across the white of his shirt.

"Liam!"

He looks up at the sound of my voice, and whatever fight was still left in him seems to drain out all at once. He crosses the distance between us before I've even reached the bottom step, hands framing my face like he needs to confirm I'm real, that I'm actually standing here in front of him unharmed.

"You're not hurt," he says, more question than statement, his eyes searching my face frantically. "Tell me you're not hurt, Ashley."

"I'm fine. You're bleeding, you need someone to look at that."

"It doesn't matter." His thumb brushes my cheek, and up close I can see how badly his hands are shaking despite the steel in his voice only moments ago. "When I heard that scream I thought." He stops, jaw working, like he can't finish the sentence out loud even now that the danger has passed.

"Liam, you're scaring me."

"Good." His hands stay framing my face a moment longer than necessary, his gaze dropping briefly to my mouth before he catches himself and steps back, jaw tight, putting careful distance between us like he doesn't trust what he'd do otherwise. "You should be scared. I put you in danger the moment I brought you here, and I am done pretending that isn't true."

Before I can answer, the pack physician arrives with a colleague in tow, a doctor from the estate's private wing who insists on checking me over despite my protests that I feel fine. She runs a scanner over my stomach that looks nothing like the ultrasound machines from the clinic, something sleeker, humming faintly as it works through readings I don't understand.

Her expression changes almost immediately, the professional calm slipping into something closer to alarm.

"Mr. Ashworth," she says carefully, not looking away from the screen, "you should see this."

Liam is at my side in an instant, staring at the screen over the doctor's shoulder, his wounded arm forgotten entirely. Whatever he sees there makes every trace of color leave his face.

"That's not possible," he says. "Not this early. Run it again."

"What?" I push myself up on my elbows, panic clawing up my throat at the look on both their faces. "What's wrong with the baby, someone please tell me what's happening."

The doctor exchanges a look with Liam that I don't like at all, the kind of look people share when they're deciding how much to tell you.

"Nothing is wrong," she says slowly, choosing her words with obvious care. "But the growth rate and the bone density are both advanced weeks beyond where they should be for this stage of the pregnancy. I have never seen anything like it in a mixed pregnancy before, not in fifteen years of practice."

Liam's hand finds mine, gripping tight enough to hurt, his eyes never leaving the screen even as I try to read his expression for some kind of answer.

"What does that mean?" I whisper. "Liam, please, just tell me what that means."

He doesn't answer right away. When he finally looks at me, there's something in his expression I haven't seen from him before, not anger, not hunger, but something closer to awe laced with real dread.

"It means," he says quietly, "that this child was never meant to be ordinary. And it means every enemy I have is about to want it far more than they already do, which after tonight, is a very long list."

Outside the exam room, I can hear his men still moving through the house, checking rooms, sealing doors, and somewhere beneath the fear settling into my chest I understand that whatever normal life I thought I might return to after the birth is gone now, burned away along with the calm I had left an hour ago.

The doctor clears her throat, still staring at the screen like she can't quite trust what she's seeing. "There's something else," she says carefully. "The intruder downstairs. My team checked his registration chip before your guards removed the body." She glances at Liam, hesitating. "He wasn't a lone wolf, and he wasn't working for a rival pack either."

Liam's grip on my hand tightens. "Then who sent him?"

The doctor's eyes flick to me, then back to him, and whatever she says next dies in her throat as the door bangs open a second time, and Sienna storms in, face white, phone still clutched in her hand.

"Liam," she says, breathless, all her earlier venom gone completely. "You need to see this. Now."