HIS SURROGATE, HER ALPHA KING

"How did you get this number?"

It was the only thing I could think to say. My voice came out flat and steady, which was a small miracle, because every nerve in my body had just fired at once.

A soft sound on the other end. Not quite a laugh. "Ms. Crane, I have access to considerably more than your phone number. That's rather the point of this call."

Aldric Morse spoke the way some doctors did, the ones who delivered bad news with a pleasant expression, like the words themselves were not their responsibility.

"What do you want?" I asked.

To introduce myself. To assure you that whatever Cael has told you about me, my interest in you is not hostile. A pause, smooth and practiced. You're a nurse. Educated, practical, clearly intelligent. I'd like to think we can speak plainly.

"Then speak plainly."

You've been pulled into something that has nothing to do with you. A political campaign, a succession war, decades of pack history you had no part in building. You made a personal decision at a fertility clinic and someone else's war landed in your lap. Another pause. That isn't fair. And I'd like to offer you a way out of it.

I stood up from the bed and walked to the window. The security lights were still running their quiet lines across the back grounds below. One of Lena's people was visible at the tree line.

"What kind of way out?" I asked.

Leave the estate. Tonight, if you prefer. I have a property outside the city, entirely private, full medical staff, every resource you could need for a healthy pregnancy. No pack politics. No power games. Just safety and comfort and the freedom to make your own choices about your child's future.

The words were reasonable. Thoughtful, even. Carefully arranged, like furniture in a showroom, placed to make you feel at home before you noticed there were no windows.

"And in exchange?" I said.

The briefest hesitation. "Nothing unreasonable."

"That's not an answer."

"In exchange, you simply make yourself unavailable to Cael. You remove yourself as a variable in his campaign. No statements, no appearances, no cooperation. You live quietly and safely until the child is born, and then we discuss arrangements like adults."

I pressed my free hand flat against the cold glass of the window.

He was good. I would give him that. The offer was built to sound like freedom. But I had spent enough time sitting with patients in crisis to know that when someone told you they wanted nothing unreasonable, they had already decided what reasonable meant and it wasn't going to match your definition.

"Mr. Morse," I said, "I appreciate the call. I'm going to decline."

A beat of silence. The pleasant tone didn't shift, but something underneath it did, like a temperature drop you feel before you see your breath.

"I'd encourage you to think about it before deciding."

"I have thought about it. The answer is no."

I ended the call.

My hands were not shaking. I was genuinely surprised by that.

I was already moving toward the door when it opened from the other side. Cael stood in the frame, and behind him in the corridor Lena had a phone pressed to her ear. His eyes went to the phone in my hand immediately.

"You got a call," he said. It wasn't a question.

"Aldric Morse." I held up my phone. "He had this number. He offered me a safe house outside the city, full medical care, and my freedom, in exchange for making myself unavailable to you and your campaign."

Something moved through Cael's expression, there and gone in under a second, but I caught it. Fury, quiet and cold, the kind that didn't need volume.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"I said no." I walked past him into the corridor. "But you should know he has my number, which means either the clinic records had it or someone in your circle gave it to him, because I didn't hand it to anyone outside this house."

Lena lowered her phone. The look she exchanged with Cael lasted less than two seconds and communicated something I wasn't yet fluent enough in their dynamic to read.

"She's right," Lena said. "The clinic file had her primary contact number. We should have flagged that."

"We did flag it," Cael said. "We changed the clinic's access permissions three hours ago." His jaw was tight. "He already had it before we locked the file."

I leaned against the corridor wall and looked at both of them. "So he's been ahead of this since before you called me."

"Possibly since before the error was reported," Lena said.

That landed in the hallway like something heavy dropped from a height.

I thought about the clinic. The nurse with a kind face. The laminated poster. The procedure that was supposed to be simple and private and entirely mine.

"This wasn't an accident," I said. "The mix-up."

Neither of them answered immediately.

Which was an answer.

I looked at Cael directly. "You already suspected that."

"Yes," he said.

"Since when?"

"Since the notification came through and the timing matched three other incidents connected to Aldric in the last eighteen months." He held my gaze without apology. "I didn't tell you because I didn't have proof. I still don't."

I absorbed that.

I wanted to be angry about it. I was angry about it. But I also understood the calculation, and I had made enough hard calls in my own work to know that withholding uncertain information from someone already in shock was sometimes the only responsible option.

I straightened off the wall. "I want everything you have on him. Not a summary. Everything."

Cael studied me for a moment. "All right."

"Tonight," I said.

He nodded once. "Tonight."

I turned back toward my room to get my notes, and then stopped.

"One more thing," I said, without turning around. "He knew I was already here. He said the estate by name."

The silence behind me was the loudest thing in the house.

Someone had told Aldric Morse exactly where I was.

And that someone was inside these walls.