Reclaimed by the Alpha: His Secret Twins

Chapter 4 — Terms and Conditions

Mara:

Ethan never asked questions.

That was the thing about him, he had never once asked questions at the wrong moment.

When I knocked on his door with Rowan on my hip and Ava's hand in mine and our broken front door down the hall Ethan looked at all three of us for a second. Then he opened the door wider.

“I bought the wrong cereal. I need your help to pick one." He said to the twins.

Rowan went inside. Ava looked up at me first.

"I will come get you." I said to her.

She studied my face, found whatever she was looking for, and followed her brother inside.

I stood in the corridor for a moment after Ethan's door closed. Then I went back to my apartment, and to the man was still sitting at my kitchen table acting like he owned the place.

- - -

I made coffee.

Not because I was craving it. Not because I thought he deserved it. I made it because I needed to keep my hands busy while my brain figured out how this conversation was going to go.

I put a cup in front of him without asking if he wanted it. Then I sat down across from him, wrapped my hands around my cup and looked at him.

He looked back.

The pitch black was gone from his eyes. What remained was something quieter and considerably harder to read, the expression of a man running calculations behind a face that had been trained since birth not to show it.

“I'm going to say some things, " I said. "You're going to listen to all of them before you talk."

His jaw moved a little. He picked up the cup.

“The relationship between us is professional," I said. "You are here because my children may be in danger and you have resources I don't. That is the beginning and the end of it. Are we clear?"

He didn't say anything. I took that as a yes.

"You have no parental authority.”

Not yet.

“Not until I decide otherwise. You don't make decisions about them, you don't make promises to them, you don't introduce pack protocol into this apartment without my agreement."

I watched his hands tighten slightly around the cup.

"You don't move in. Your security team can be in the building but they report to me on anything that concerns my children directly. And you do not use pack resources to monitor my movements."

I paused.

"I am not a Luna anymore. I am not pack. I am a woman who lives in this city and works at that hospital and I don't want anyone watching me."

I stopped talking.

Rhys looked at me across the table for a time.

"Alright " he said.

I waited for him to try to negotiate. For him to make a counter-offer. Add something to it. Three years ago he controlled everything. Pack events, my schedule, what I said to people. Rhys Calloway doesn't agree to things without getting something in return.

He picked up his coffee and said nothing else.

That made me more uneasy than if we'd argued.

I reached across the table for the notepad I kept by the fruit bowl planning to write down the conditions so there was no confusion later. My hand crossed the table at the time he put down his cup and reached for the notepad from his side.

Not grabbing. Not intentional. Just two people reaching for the same thing at the same moment and his hand landing over my hand and neither of us moving for one beat too long.

I looked up.

He was already looking at me. Not with the calculation from earlier, not with anger. Something quieter and more dangerous.

Lyra pressed hard against my ribs.

I pulled my hand back, picked up the pen and kept my eyes on the notepad.

"I'll write them down, " I said. "So there's no confusion later."

He didn't say anything.. I felt his eyes on my face for a moment before he leaned back in his chair.

I wrote down the conditions in my handwriting and didn't look up until I was done.

- - -

He left twenty minutes later. I walked with him to the broken doorframe. His security lead was already in the corridor with someone who looked like they were there about the door. I stood with my arms crossed and watched him go without saying a word.

When the corridor was empty I went inside and stood in the kitchen.

The coffee cups were still on the table. His was almost empty. I stood there looking at them and then I went to the window and opened it and leaned on the sill and let the cold air from the street below move across my face.

Three years of distance. Three years of building something solid and quiet and entirely mine.

He had been in my kitchen for forty minutes. The air in my kitchen still felt different because he had been there.

I pushed off the window sill collected the coffee cups and went to get my children.

- - -

My phone rang at half past two.

I was back from Ethan's, twins down for their afternoon rest, sitting at the kitchen table with a patient file open in front of me that I had been reading the same paragraph for twenty minutes.

I looked at the screen.

“Your building was sold this morning, " he said when I answered. He didn't waste any time. He sounded like he was telling me something that was both surprising and impressive. "Someone bought the building with cash. The sale was finished an hour ago."

I put the file down.

"Who bought it? " I asked. I already had an idea who it might be.

"The owner's representative just came to my door to introduce himself, " Ethan said.

He paused for a moment. "He was wearing a Calloway pack insignia on his jacket, Mara."

I thanked Ethan, ended the call, and sat very still for approximately four seconds.

Then I called Rhys.

He answered on the second ring.

"That was not what we agreed on, " I said.

"You said I couldn't move in, " he replied. His voice was very calm. "I didn't move in."

"You bought my building, " I said.

"I bought a building," he said. "It happens to be the one you live in. I didn't move into your apartment. Every condition you stated this morning remains intact."

I was surprised by how calm he was. He had found a way to do what he wanted without breaking our agreement.

"Rhys, " I said.

"Mara, " he replied.

"I will add another condition, " I said.

"You can add as many conditions as you want, " he said. "Good afternoon."

The call ended.

I sat at the kitchen table and looked at my phone for a long moment.

I could hear Rowan talking in his sleep from down the hall. He was saying a sentence and sounded upset.

I was still looking at the phone when someone knocked at the door.

I crossed the apartment, stepped over the threshold of the repaired doorframe, his security team had been efficient, I would give them that, and opened it.

A woman stood in the hallway.

Platinum blonde hair, perfectly placed. A coat that cost more than my monthly grocery bill. Emerald eyes that moved over my face with the particular attention of someone who had been thinking about this meeting for considerably longer than I had.

Her smile arrived after the assessment. Warm and calibrated and not even slightly reaching her eyes.

"You must be Mara," she said. "I'm Selena." A small pause, perfectly timed. "I think it's time we talked."

The corridor was very quiet.

I looked at her and felt something strange in my chest. It was not fear or anger. It was something colder.

"Do you? " I said.