My Ex-Alpha Wants Me Back

3

Liora's POV

When I opened my eyes again, I was stretched across a row of ferry seats with a stranger's cardigan draped over my legs.

An older woman sat close by watching me carefully.

"You're awake," she said, relief washing over her face,

"You collapsed right there on the deck, pure exhaustion I think, maybe stress too," she added and I could see the worry on her face.

The first thing that came back to me was the strong arms that pulled me into the ship, that also caught me before I hit the ground.

"There was a man," I said, my voice rough,

"he caught me, do you know who he was?"

She glanced around like she might still spot him. "He left before we docked," she replied.

"He didn't say a word, just handed you off to me and walked off toward the front of the ...." She was not done when I felt a sharp ache in my stomach.

"Something's wrong," I gasped, both arms wrapping around myself.

Her face went white when she saw the blood soaking through my dress, and within seconds people were crowding around me, someone yelling for a doctor onboard while another radioed the captain.

The engines changed pitch beneath us as the ferry turned toward the nearest town.

"Please, not my baby," I whispered over and over, gripping the seat with both hands,

"Please, not my baby."

I could not remember much but I know I saw hands moving fast on me and a doctor telling me eventually,that the baby's heartbeat was strong, that I'd just pushed my body past what it could carry. He said it had finally caught up with me, and that I needed rest.

My aunt Rosalind came for me two days later.

She'd heard from Eleanor, my grandma before Eleanor herself went into hiding. She took me into her small apartment in the city without a single question about how I'd ended up on her doorstep pregnant and alone.

******

Aunt Rosa was very nice to me and even helped me adjust to the city that was very much different from what my pack back at Moonridge felt like.

I helped Rosalind in her little shop during the day, learned to sew curtains and mend hems, and at night I'd go back to my pregnancy problems that's either backache, weird cravings, or intense pain in my stomach.

Until one evening that week, past my due date.

"Urgh!" I had cried out in the toilet when I felt an intense pull.

Aunt Rosalind rushed to the toilet to meet me lying down naked, took one look at my face, and grabbed her keys without a word.

I got to the hospital with my naked body as I was too tired to wear any of the clothes Aunt Rosa was trying to put on me.

"We're losing her," someone yelled, and I didn't know anymore if they meant him or me, and I clutched my stomach with whatever strength I had left.

"No, please, save my baby," I begged, as they put something that seemed like a nose mask over my nose.

I didn't have any strength to push out the baby so they said I was going to go through C. Section where they said they'd bring out the baby by making a cut in my stomach.

As scary as that sounds, I didn't even consider that and asked them to just do anything.

Hours must have passed because when I opened my eyes the room was dim and the first thing I heard was a cry.

I took a breath of relief immediately.

A nurse placed a tiny boy in my arms and I broke down completely. I was crying alongside the baby.

"I'll protect you," I whispered to his head, "even if I have to fight the whole world for you."

I was still crying when the doctor's face changed, his eyes going wide as a nurse near the door screamed.

My heartbeat started racing so fast I could hear it in my own ears, and I noticed something was wrong with me.

They quickly took the baby off my hands as silver light started pooling around my body like it was pouring straight out of my skin, and everyone backed toward the walls.

"What... is she?" the doctor whispered, hand pressed over his mouth.

I heard a loud howl that was coming from inside my own chest. It was then that it dawned on me what was awakening in me after twenty-five years of silence.

My wolf is alive!

The door burst open and Rosalind had immediately called my grandma already.

Eleanor rushed in seconds later, and when her eyes landed on mine, she wasn't really surprised like I expected her to be

"I'm not wolfless?" I asked her, my voice barely holding together.

"You never were," she said quietly.

I opened my mouth to ask her everything, but she was already moving and gathering my things with shaking hands.

"Not now," she said, glancing at the door like

"We need to leave immediately." She added as they managed to get me back to Aunt Rosa's apartment

***

The first year alone with Liam was terrible because I had just started up my designing firm.

I just packed out of Aunt Rosa's apartment to a studio house I rented with the money I got from working multiple part-time jobs and paying rent was still very hard for me.

I carried him on my hip through client meetings because I couldn't afford daycare, skipped dinner most times, and would even fall asleep more than once with my head on my drafting table with my pencil still in my hand and the blueprints smudged with drool by morning.

Even with all I was going through, I kept getting rejections because the second people heard I was divorced with a baby they stopped listening to anything I said after that.

Then one afternoon I stood in front of a room of investors pitching a mixed-use development I'd designed from nothing, and one by one they shook their heads and thanked me for my time.

I was already gathering my boards to leave when a man near the back spoke up.

"Your designs are brilliant," he said, standing, and the whole room turned toward him at once,

"I'd like to invest."

I recognized him from the papers before he even introduced himself. He is Ethan Cross. A billionaire with the fastest-rising technology company.

What surprised me more than the investment was everything he didn't ask, about my divorce, my baby, or anything at all.

He just opened doors for me. The meetings I couldn't get into on my own, investors who wouldn't take my calls before, and before I knew it, things started getting better for me.

Liam liked him instantly too and he would even carry him around and play with him while I worked.

Before I knew it, one building became five, five became twenty, and Ashwood Designs started showing up in places I used to only dream about.

Magazine features, industry awards, and executives were coming around all the time for my designs.

The afternoon I hung our company sign outside our new office. I stood on the sidewalk staring up at it until my eyes blurred.

ASHWOOD DESIGNS. I read it again and cried.

"Well done, Liora" I told myself.

Then, years into building that life, my grandmother collapsed in her kitchen.

I got the call while I was in a client meeting and I rushed out like a mad woman with everyone wondering what suddenly went wrong with me.

When I got to the hospital, the doctors told me there was nothing more they could do.

I sat beside her bed holding her hand, and her breathing had gone thin and slow, but she still managed to smile when she looked at me.

"You've become exactly the woman I prayed you'd become," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

"I still need you," I said, my voice cracking apart, "please, Grandma, I still need you here." I was already crying now.

She shook her head slowly.

"No," she said,

"you don't, not anymore." She added.

Her hand trembled as she reached beneath the blanket and pulled out a small bundle of leather journals tied together with faded ribbon, and she pressed them into my hands with whatever strength she had left.

"Protect these," she said, "they have answers..."

"Answers to what?" I asked, my whole body going still.

"To your entire life," she said,

Before I could ask anything else her grip on my wrist tightened, surprising for how weak she'd looked seconds ago, then her face changed,

"Promise me one thing," she whispered.

"Anything," I said through tears, nodding fast, "anything, I promise."

Her voice dropped even lower, barely a breath now.

"Never tell Alexander about these journals."

"What do they have to do with Alexander?" I asked, my heart pounding, but she didn't answer.

Her hand slowly slipped out of mine and the monitor beside her bed let out one long, flat tone.

"No, no. Grandma! Grandma, please..." I called as I shook her body gently.

"Grandma..."

I just sat there again, staring into space as I bawled my eyes out.