HIS SURROGATE, HER ALPHA KING

"You're going to be okay, little one."

I said it to my own stomach, sitting in a paper gown in a clinic room that smelled like antiseptic and forced optimism. The table crinkled every time I moved. A laminated poster on the wall showed a cartoon sun with the words *You've Got This!* printed underneath in Comic Sans.

I hated that poster. I also needed it to be true.

The procedure was done. Ten minutes, maybe less. Now I just had to sit for a little while and then drive home and pretend the next two weeks weren't going to be the longest of my life.

I looked down at my hands in my lap and thought about Nate for exactly three seconds before I stopped myself. I'd given him enough of my brain space. I wasn't giving him this moment either.

This was mine.

The nurse came back in, kind-faced, early fifties, the kind of woman who probably made soup when people were sick. She handed me a small printed sheet with aftercare instructions and smiled like she meant it.

"All done, hon. Any questions?"

"About a hundred," I said. "But none of you can answer."

She laughed softly. "That's the most honest thing anyone's said to me all week."

I got dressed, folded the instruction sheet into my coat pocket, and walked out into a gray Portland afternoon. The cold hit me in the face immediately. October in the Pacific Northwest had no interest in being gentle about it.

I sat in my car for a minute before I started the engine.

Twenty-seven years old. A nurse with a two-bedroom apartment, a brother in med school I was still helping pay for, and a mother three years gone who would have either supported this plan completely or staged an intervention. I genuinely did not know which.

But the plan was done. The waiting had started.

I drove home with the radio on loud enough that I couldn't think, which was exactly the point.

My apartment was quiet in the way it always was, a little too quiet, the kind of quiet that felt less like peace and more like absence. I dropped my keys on the counter, kicked off my shoes, and made myself a cup of tea I only drank half of.

Then I sat down at my laptop to check emails.

The one at the top of my inbox stopped me cold.

The sender name was Sinclair Industries Legal Division. The subject line read: Urgent Notice Regarding Sample Contamination Incident, Reference Number SC-2024-1147. Your Immediate Attention Required.

I read it once. Then again.

The words weren't complicated. The clinic had made an error during processing. The sample used in my procedure had been incorrectly catalogued. The biological material used did not belong to my selected anonymous donor.

I sat there with my hands on the keyboard and my tea going cold and something very calm and very wrong settling over me.

They were telling me I had just been inseminated with a stranger's sample.

I read it a third time to make sure I hadn't misunderstood. I hadn't.

I typed the name from the legal notice into the search bar with fingers that were not entirely steady.

Cael Sinclair.

The results loaded instantly. Pages of them.

Sinclair Industries. Billionaire. Portland-based. Thirty-four years old. Private, notoriously private, barely a personal photograph anywhere, mostly press shots from corporate events where he stood at the edge of the frame like he'd agreed to be photographed the way other people agree to root canals.

The one clear photo I found showed him at some kind of charity event. Dark suit. Dark hair. Eyes that looked light even in print, gray maybe, the kind of gray that made you feel like you were being assessed.

He looked like someone who had never once in his life been handed a problem he couldn't solve in the next twenty minutes.

I stared at that photo for a long moment.

Then my phone rang.

Unknown number. Portland area code.

I answered it because I answer unknown calls. I'm a nurse. Unknown calls are sometimes emergencies.

"Ms. Crane." The voice was low and even, the kind of voice that came from a person who never had to raise it to be heard. "My name is Cael Sinclair. I believe you've just read the notification my legal team sent."

My throat tightened. I kept my voice flat. "I have."

"Then you understand what it means."

"I understand what they said it means. What I don't understand is how it happened."

A brief pause. Not the kind where someone was flustered. The kind where someone was choosing their words.

"That's part of what I'd like to discuss," he said. "In person. Tonight, if possible."

I almost laughed. "You want to come to my apartment."

"I think that would be more comfortable for you than my office."

"That's an interesting assumption."

"It's a practical one." Another pause, shorter this time. "Ms. Crane, I understand this is a shock. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But there are things about this situation you need to know, and some of them are not the kind of things I'm willing to explain over the phone."

The calm I'd been holding onto since reading that email started to develop a crack right down the center.

"What kind of things?" I asked.

He didn't answer that directly. "I'll be there in an hour. If that doesn't work, tell me a better time."

He wasn't asking. He was being polite about not asking, which was somehow more unsettling than if he'd just been blunt.

I looked around my apartment. At the quiet I'd built piece by piece. At the two-bedroom space I'd picked because someday there would be a person small enough to need that second room.

"Fine," I said. "One hour."

"Thank you."

He hung up before I could change my mind.

I set my phone down on the table and pressed my hands flat against the surface until they stopped shaking.

Sixty minutes. I had sixty minutes before a billionaire whose name I didn't know showed up at my door to tell me things he wouldn't say over the phone, about a situation that had already upended the most important decision I'd ever made for myself.

I picked up my phone again and looked at his photo one more time.

Those light eyes stared back at me from the screen, still and unreadable.

I had no idea why, but something in my chest said that whatever he was about to tell me, I was nowhere near ready for it.