Too Late, Alpha: I Am Now Untouchable

He Said You Were The Nanny

Maeve’s POV

The silence of Kat’s guest room was supposed to be a sanctuary, but tonight, it felt like an empty concert hall after the audience had gone home. My sheet music lay scattered across the duvet—an intricate Bach partita I hadn't played in seven years.

My fingers hummed with the phantom weight of the bow, but my mind was stuck on the sharp, dark eyes of the Alpha I had met at Sable.

Maddox Vance.

He was a dangerous man to look at for too long, the kind of predator who didn't need to roar to let you know he could tear you apart. Yet, the way he had touched his son's face—with hands that could undoubtedly crush a man's windpipe—had lingered in my thoughts.

A sharp tapping at the front door shattered the quiet.

I checked the clock on the bedside table. 1:14 AM. Kat was staying at her boyfriend's place tonight, and she had her own key.

My hand instinctively dropped to the heavy brass candlestick on the dresser as I crept down the hallway, my heart striking a frantic tempo against my ribs.

I looked through the peephole.

A small, dark shadow stood on the porch, engulfed in an oversized sweater, shivering against the damp Texas night air.

"Ryan?"

I gasped, throwing the deadbolt back and pulling the door open.

The five-year-old stood there, his cheeks flushed crimson from the cold, his small fingers clutching a plastic savings tracker like a weapon. His lower lip trembled, but his eyes carried the fierce, unyielding pride I had recognized in his father.

"I walked," he whispered, his teeth chattering. "I took the bus first. Then I walked. The map on my tracker told me where the Ashford sign was."

"Oh my god, you're freezing." I dropped to my knees, pulling him into the warmth of the foyer and shutting the door against the wind. I stripped his damp jacket off, my hands moving with the practiced efficiency of a nurse checking for trauma. "Why are you out here alone, Ryan? Where is your dad? Where is Maddox?"

"Dad was angry," Ryan said, his voice cracking as he looked at the floor. "He told me I couldn't want you. He said you carry the mud of another pack on your heels. But I don't care about mud. I don't want to live in that big house with just the guards and the dead people. I wanted to see you."

A heavy, painful ache bloomed in my chest. He had run away from the most powerful Alpha in the city just to find a stranger who had shown him ten minutes of basic human decency.

Every maternal instinct I had spent seven years cultivating screamed at me to protect him, but the rational part of my brain knew the absolute danger of harboring the child of an Alpha.

"Ryan, your dad is going to tear this city apart looking for you," I said softly, chafing his cold hands between mine. "I have to call him."

"No!" He threw his small arms around my neck, clinging to me with a desperate, terrifying strength. "Please. Just for tonight. I'm small, Maeve. I don't take up much space. I won't even eat the green bits."

The raw desperation in his voice broke my resolve. I couldn't throw a shivering five-year-old back into the dark, regardless of who his father was.

"Just for tonight," I murmured reluctantly, lifting him into my arms. He felt lighter than Leo, his frame delicate but wired with a stubborn tension. "But tomorrow, we talk to your dad."

I carried him into the kitchen. His stomach let out a loud, hollow growl, breaking the heavy tension of the room.

"I guess the crisps didn't last," I said, a small, genuine smile tugging at my lips.

"They were very small crisps," he admitted, sitting on the barstool and tucking his legs under his chin.

I turned on the stove. I didn't have my specialized allergy-free pantry here, but I had Kat's organic stock. I chopped fresh garlic, boiled a handful of pasta, and tossed it in a light olive oil with a sprinkle of sea salt and parsley.

When I placed the bowl in front of him, he didn't hesitate. He ate quietly with a care that seemed far too advanced for a five-year-old.

"It's perfect," he said around a mouthful of pasta. "It doesn't taste like the chef's food at home. His food tastes like money. This tastes like... warmth and care."

A sharp pang struck my heart, the image of Leo flashing behind my eyes. Leo used to love my pasta before Elizabeth started feeding him imported chocolates and telling him my restrictions were a prison. I had turned my life into a sterile laboratory to keep my son alive, and he had thrown it back in my face.

Right on cue, the phone in my pocket began to vibrate.

My heart skipped. I pulled it out, expecting Maddox’s dark baritone to demand his son back. Instead, the screen read. Leo.

I hesitated before sliding the bar across the screen. "Leo?"

"Mom?" My son’s voice came through the receiver, high-pitched and whining, laced with an irritation that felt entirely coached. "Where are you? It's past two, and you haven't come to tuck me in. Elizabeth tried to read the story, but she doesn't do the voices right. Come home and fix it."

Six months ago, I would have dropped everything, ignored the cold weather, and driven across the city just to smooth the hair from his forehead. Tonight, I looked at the empty spaces on my fingers where my rings used to be.

"I'm not coming home, Leo," I said, my voice flat, devoid of the desperate affection I used to offer him. "I don't live there anymore. You told me to go, remember?"

"But who's going to do my breathing exercises with me?" he demanded, his tone turning into a petulant stomp. "Dad is at the hospital with Elizabeth because she had another attack. I'm alone with the nanny, and I don't like her. Just come back."

"Call Elizabeth, Leo," I said quietly. "She's the gentle one. She's the one who doesn't have rules. Let her do your exercises."

"But she doesn't know how!" he cried out, but before he could say another word, I pressed the red button.

I disconnected the call. I laid the phone face down on the counter. My hand trembled slightly, but the tears didn't come.

The umbilical cord hadn't just been cut; it had been severed by the child himself.

"Is that Leo?" Ryan asked, his dark eyes watching me over the rim of his bowl.

I wiped my palms against my jeans. "Yes. How do you know Leo, Ryan?"

"We go to the same kindergarten," Ryan said, setting his fork down with a quiet clink. He looked at me with a profound, heavy sadness that no five-year-old should carry. "I see you at the pickup line sometimes. You always stand by the gate with his medicine bag. But Leo told the older boys that you weren't his mom."

The kitchen seemed to drop ten degrees. "What?"

"He said you were just the nanny his grandma hired because he was sick," Ryan whispered, his voice careful, as if he knew the words were bullets. "He told everyone that Elizabeth was his real mom—the pretty one from the papers. He said you just liked to control him."

The revelation didn't just hurt; it hollowed me out. The nanny. Seven years of giving up my seat in the symphony, seven years of sleepless nights monitoring his mitral valve, seven years of being his shadow—and to my own son, I was merely hired help to be replaced when a prettier model came along.

Elizabeth's ninety days of whispers had been lethal.

Ryan must have seen the light go out in my eyes, because his own face crumpled into a mask of pure distress. He dropped from the stool, his small hands reaching for mine across the counter.

"Don't be sad, Maeve," he begged, his voice rising in panic. "Leo is stupid. He doesn't know anything. I don't have a mom at all. My real mom and dad died in a bad car with fire. Uncle Maddox took me, but he's always fighting the bad wolves or sitting in the dark room listening to the music that makes him look like he's hurting. I don't have anyone to stand by the gate for me."

He squeezed my fingers, his dark eyes burning with an earnest, desperate plea that struck the deepest chord of my soul.

"Next Friday is the school's parent-child music concert," Ryan said, the words rushing out of him in a frantic torrent. "Everyone's mom is going to play the piano or the flute. Leo said Elizabeth is going to play for him. Please, Maeve. Please come play the violin with me. I don't want to sit on the bench alone."

I looked at his small desperate face, and then my gaze drifted to the corner of the living room, where the leather case of the Ashford Stradivarius sat in the shadows.

To go to the school would mean facing Kael. It would mean facing Elizabeth, the woman who had tried to steal my mother's legacy. It would mean exposing myself to the entire Frost Rainbow pack that had dismissed me as an Omega incubator.

But looking down at Ryan, a boy who had walked through the dark just to find a safe harbor, I knew the answer before I could even voice the refusal.

It was an invitation I found entirely impossible to deny.