The Ruthless Alpha’s Surrogate

CHAPTER FIVE:YOU CANNOT TOUCH ME

I was at the kitchen table at six in the morning when headlights came across the wall.

Too early for movers. Too early for lawyers. I stood up and looked through the gap in the curtain. A black car had parked across the street. The engine cut off.

Nobody got out.

He was early.

My bag was already by the door. I packed it on my bedroom floor the night before, working out what one year away from home looks like when you have to fit it in a bag. Two months of clothes. Toiletries. The paperback my father gave me when I turned sixteen that I never finished. A framed photo of my mother and my brother, wrapped up inside a sweater so the glass would not break.

Elias came down at six-fifteen in his school sweatshirt with his hair flat on one side, and stopped when he saw me.

"You're up early."

"Couldn't sleep."

He opened the fridge and stared into it. He is sixteen and just came through the kind of growth spurt that leaves a boy permanently looking for food. He took out last night's rice and ate it cold at the counter, standing up.

"Uncle Gideon called last night," he said.

I kept my face still. "What did he say?"

"That he wanted to talk to you and Mom. That there was a family matter." He looked at me sideways. "What family matter?"

"Nothing you need to worry about."

"You always say that."

"Because I always handle it."

He ate more rice and did not look at me. He was trying to be casual and not managing it. Elias has our mother's radar without any of her eye trouble. He feels a thing in a room before anybody says it out loud.

"Are you leaving today?"

I looked at him.

"I saw the bag by the door."

I put my coffee down. "Yes."

He set the container on the counter. He did not say anything.

Outside, a car door opened and shut. I heard footsteps on the path before I heard the knock.

Three hard raps. The knock of a man who is sure of his welcome.

Elias started for the door. I got there first.

I opened it.

Gideon stood on my porch in a dark coat. Behind him, a man with a leather bag, the kind lawyers carry. A third man waited at the bottom of the steps with his hands folded.

"Good morning, Naima." He smiled. "I'm glad you're dressed. Let's talk before your mother wakes up."

"She's awake. She's been awake since five."

Something moved behind his eyes.

"May I come in?"

"No."

The smile stayed. It got thinner. "Don't make this ugly. I came to fix the situation. We agreed to talk this morning."

"We agreed to nothing." I reached into my back pocket. "You told me to think carefully. I did."

The paper was six pages, heavy, with the Silver Ridge seal pressed into the top. Luna Margarethe put it in my hands at eleven o'clock the night before, standing on this same porch, having driven out to deliver it herself.

Not the final contract. That comes after the interview.

But it made me a registered candidate, and a registered candidate is under the Alpha's protection from the moment she signs.

I held it out.

Gideon did not take it. He looked at it.

"What is that."

"A letter of protection from Alpha Ronan Blackwood of Silver Ridge." My voice came out level and I have never been prouder of anything my body has ever done. "I'm a registered candidate for his contract, which puts me under the alliance agreement. Under alliance law, any legal action against me, against this household, or against anyone who depends on me goes to Alpha Ronan's office for review first." I looked right at him. "Your liquidation papers cross his desk before they touch this house."

The lawyer behind him cleared his throat.

Gideon read the page. Then he looked up at me, and for the first time in my life I watched my uncle work out that he had lost something.

"You don't even know if he'll pick you," he said.

"The interview is today."

"And if he doesn't pick you?"

"Then we'll talk again." I did not look away. "But today, right now, this house is protected. And you cannot touch me."

The morning was very quiet.

"You think you're clever," Gideon said softly.

"I think you drove to my house before sunrise with two men to lean on a twenty-one-year-old girl while her blind mother was still in bed." My hands were shaking and I let them shake. "I think that's everything we will ever need to say to each other."

His jaw moved.

"Get off my porch," I said. "And do not come back while I'm gone."

He stood there one more second. That second mattered. He was deciding whether to push.

I held his eyes. I did not look at the lawyer. I did not look at the other man. I looked at my uncle's face and I did not blink.

He stepped back.

He turned and went down the path without another word. The two men followed him. The car started and pulled away, and I watched it go until I could not hear it.

Then I stepped inside and closed the door and put my forehead against it.

Two years. Two years of locking my bedroom door in my own house.

"What was that?"

Elias was in the hallway. His face was doing something complicated.

"Nothing you need to—"

"Naima." His voice cracked on the second half of my name. He is still young enough that it cracks when he is frightened. "That was Uncle Gideon. What was that letter? Where are you going?"

I turned around to face my brother.

He looked so much like our father standing there that it cost me something physical to keep my face straight. The same jaw. The same way of standing when he is scared, feet too far apart, weight forward, like he thinks he can block a doorway.

"I'm going to Silver Ridge for a year," I said. "I signed a contract with Alpha Ronan. It pays enough to clear the debt and put this house in Mom's name. When I come home, Gideon can't threaten us again."

"What kind of contract?"

I looked at him steadily.

He is sixteen. He is not a child. I watched him put it together. I watched his face change as the pieces came in and locked.

"Naima," he said. It came out low and broken.

"It's my choice. I made it with a clear head. Nobody forced me into anything."

He looked at the floor. I watched his throat work.

"You could have told me," he said. "You didn't have to just decide."

"I know."

"I'm sixteen, not six. You could have told me."

"I know. I'm sorry. I'm telling you now."

He put his palm flat on the wall and breathed out slow. "When do you go?"

"Two hours."

He straightened up. He did not cry. He nodded once, the way boys nod when they are learning that sometimes dignity is only holding still.

"I'll wake Mom," he said.

My mother came down in her housecoat with Elias behind her, his hand light on her elbow. She had her glasses on. She found me across the room and her whole face fell apart and then pulled itself back into something hard.

"No," she said. "Naima. No. I told you no."

"Mom."

"You cannot give yourself to a stranger for money. You cannot." She crossed the room and took my hands and gripped them hard enough to hurt. "Your father would hate this. He would hate that I let it happen."

"Dad isn't here." I said it as gently as I have ever said anything. "And Gideon just walked off this porch without what he came for, because I found another way through. That's what Dad did. Every time. He found another way through."

She put her forehead against mine. I felt her breathing.

"One year," I said. "Twelve months. I'll call every day they let me. Elias will be right here. And when I come back, this house belongs to you. Not to the estate. Not to your brother-in-law. To you."

She cried without making any sound at all.

She learned to cry that way years ago, so Elias would not hear her through the wall at night. She thinks I never knew. I have known since I was fourteen.

That is the thing that nearly finished me. Standing in that hallway realizing my mother was still, even now, even today, crying quietly so her children would not hear.

I held her for a long time. Longer than two hours allowed.

Then I picked up my bag, kissed her cheek, nodded at my brother, and walked out my father's front door.

The morning air was cold. A Silver Ridge escort vehicle waited at the end of the street, dark and official. Somebody had been sitting in it since before my uncle arrived.

I walked toward it and I did not look back.

If I looked back, I would not go.

Which is why I never saw the black car ease out from the top of the hill behind us. Three lengths back at the junction. Three lengths back at the bridge. Three lengths back the whole way to the territory line, where it slowed, and stopped, and turned around, and went home to tell somebody I was gone.