The Alpha King's Unclaimed Queen

Chapter 10: Arrival

Vivienne POV

The Ashcroft Estate came into view before I was ready for it.

I'd expected something large. Killian's wealth wasn't subtle. But nothing prepared me for the scale of the place itself, stone and glass rising out of the trees, gates taller than my old apartment building, a house that looked less like a home and more like a fortress.

"It's a lot," I said, mostly to myself.

Killian didn't look up from his phone. "You'll adjust."

He said it like adjusting to a billionaire Alpha's estate was no different from a new office. Maybe to him it wasn't.

The gates opened on their own as we approached. I counted the security cameras mounted along the walls until I lost track. So much for the privacy he'd promised.

I looked back once. The gates had already closed behind us.

My shoulders drew in toward my spine. It was ridiculous to feel trapped by a pair of gates when I'd agreed to come here. But had I really agreed? My accounts were frozen. The motel wasn't safe. Coming here had been the only practical choice left. That didn't make it feel like mine.

By the time the car stopped, a line of staff had already assembled, eight of them in dark, precise uniforms, hands folded, no one speaking.

Killian stepped out first. They straightened further.

"Alpha," they murmured, heads bowing.

No one said anything to me. I was suddenly aware of my coat; my bag, my shoes, all of it perfectly respectable at the motel, all of it suddenly wrong here.

Killian adjusted his coat. "This is Vivienne." A vague gesture in my direction. "She'll be staying with us."

Staying with us. Not my wife. Not the mother of my child. Just staying.

The word landed harder than I expected, and I didn't fully understand why. Maybe because being called his wife would have made this feel real. Maybe because anything else would have given me a place in this world. Instead I was just a woman who'd arrived with a bag and nowhere else to go.

An older woman stepped forward, silver-streaked hair pulled back severely. Her eyes moved over me, my clothes, my bag, then dropped briefly to my stomach. I resisted the urge to cover it.

"This way," she said. Not rude. That almost made it worse.

I glanced at Killian. He was already checking his phone.

"You'll be shown to your room," he said, and walked toward another entrance without a goodbye.

I followed the woman inside.

The entrance hall rose several stories overhead, paintings lining the walls, stern faces in clothing I didn't recognize. I slowed. "Family?"

She didn't stop. "Some of them."

My footsteps sounded too loud against the marble. I'd spent years building a life where I made my own decisions. Now I was walking through someone else's home carrying a stranger's child, following a woman who hadn't bothered to introduce herself.

We turned down a quieter corridor.

"Your room is in the east wing," she said.

"Do I have to stay there?"

"For your safety, it would be best."

"Is that a rule?"

"Some things are."

"Are there many rules?"

A brief silence. "You'll learn them."

Near a side hallway, two women were talking. Their voices dropped as we passed, but not fast enough.

"...can't believe he's actually letting a human..."

A man's voice followed. "...she won't be welcome for long, not with the council..."

Another, lower. "...poor thing has no idea what she's walked into..."

I kept my eyes forward and didn't slow down. I wasn't giving them the satisfaction of a reaction.

"Who are they?" I asked.

"Staff."

"I meant what they were talking about."

"They were expressing opinions."

"About me?"

"About the situation."

I almost laughed. "That's supposed to make me feel better?"

She finally looked at me. "I wasn't trying to."

At least she was honest.

We stopped in a narrower corridor. "This wing is yours," she said. "You'll take your meals separately unless the Alpha requests otherwise."

"Separately? Why?"

"It's the current arrangement." She kept walking. "You are not to enter the west wing or the lower levels without explicit permission."

"Why not?"

She looked at me. Her expression softened, just slightly, not hostility, closer to pity. "There are reasons for everything here." Her gaze held mine a moment longer than it needed to. "You'll learn them. Or you won't."

She opened a heavy wooden door at the end of the hall. "Your room."

I stepped inside. It was larger than my old apartment, elegant in a way that felt untouched rather than lived-in. None of it felt like mine.

"Someone will collect you for dinner," she said.

"When?"

"Seven."

"What's your name?"

A pause. "Mrs. Vale." Then she was gone.

I stood alone in the quiet. A few hours ago I'd been sitting in my car outside a pharmacy, staring at a bank account I couldn't touch. Now I was standing in a room that could have belonged to a princess, and none of it changed what had brought me here.

I set my bag on the bed and unzipped it. A sweater. A pair of jeans. A photograph, old and bent at one corner, one of the few things I'd kept through every move. I took each item out slowly and set the photograph carefully in the drawer beside the bed.

The room was beautiful. The estate was enormous. None of it changed what had brought me here, or made it feel like mine.

I sat on the edge of the bed and pressed my hand against my stomach. "Well," I whispered, though no one was there to hear it. "I guess this is home now."

I didn't believe it. Not yet.

Then Mrs. Vale's voice came back to me. There are reasons for everything here.

I looked toward the door, toward the corridor beyond it, toward whatever waited in the west wing she'd warned me away from.

Whatever Killian kept there, I had a feeling it wasn't something he meant for me to find.