Chapter 3 — My Choice

POV: Aria

I call for the doctor.

By the time Doctor Revan arrives, Ronan's hand has fallen back onto the bed. I show him where the fingers gripped me and insist it was not a random twitch. Ronan held on with intention.

After checking his reflexes and reviewing the monitor, Revan agrees that this is the second purposeful response. They will increase neurological monitoring.

Cole Bennett, Ronan's Beta, watches from the doorway. His attention settles on the bruises circling my wrist. “Did Alpha Ronan cause those?” Cole asks.

“No. Adrian did,” I tell him.

Cole's jaw tightens. “I'll review today's visitor records and find out who allowed him inside.” His voice remains flat, but something violent passes through his eyes. The reaction is not personal. In his mind, the provisional marriage has placed me inside Ronan's territory, and threats to the Alpha's wife fall under his authority.

The thought does not comfort me as much as it should. In Blackridge, safety often seems to be another extension of someone else's power.

That evening, I call three banks. The last loan officer is polite but firm: without new collateral or Vale backing, Quinn Tech does not qualify for an extension. Selling my personal shares would not cover both the company's immediate debt and my father's long-term treatment.

After the call ends, I stare at my reflection in the dark window. Six months ago, I believed I could save the company by working harder. Now the numbers have become a wall with no visible exit. Banks do not care whether my father lives. The Vales do not care whether I am willing. Everyone cares about risk and return.

My father's last clear conversation with me returns without warning. He had been furious when he learned how much of my personal money I had put into the company. Quinn Tech was supposed to be his legacy to me, not the weight that dragged me under with him. I promised I knew where to draw the line. Sitting in the Vale library with a conception contract on the desk, I can no longer tell whether I crossed that line weeks ago or whether it was moved while I was not looking.

Eleanor enters without knocking and lays a new contract on the desk.

“Now do you understand?” she asks. “You have no other option.”

I do. Every option is simply cruel.

So I negotiate.

Ronan's authorization has not legally been triggered. The medical procedure requires my voluntary consent. And Eleanor has far more to lose than I do if the Council learns exactly how aggressively she has pushed this plan.

She finally asks what I want.

I have already rehearsed the answer. The investment in Quinn Tech must go into an independently supervised account and cannot be withdrawn after one failed transfer. My father's treatment must be guaranteed. Every medical stage requires renewed consent. If a pregnancy is established, the decision to continue it belongs to me and my doctors—not to the Vale family.

I also require full disclosure the moment Ronan can communicate. He must be told about the marriage, the sample, and the procedure.

Eleanor thinks I am asking too much.

I push the papers back across the desk. My body is the one thing I will not bargain away.

We settle on ten months of guaranteed treatment for my father. It is not fair, and it is not freedom. It only moves the blade hanging over him a little farther away. But he cannot wait while Eleanor and I fight over two additional months.

Before Eleanor signs, I add one final protection. If the marriage ends before Ronan recovers, no child resulting from the procedure can be removed from my care or used to support an Alpha challenge. The clause makes her mouth flatten. She dislikes any language that places a future heir beyond immediate Vale control, but refusing it would expose how little her plan has to do with preserving a family and how much it has to do with preserving power.

When she finally writes her initials beside the amendment, I feel no triumph. I have negotiated rules for a child who does not exist with a woman whose son may wake and despise us both.

When I meet Doctor Revan again, he closes the door before showing me the consent forms. “A financial agreement is not a medical obligation,” he reminds me. “Whatever you signed with Eleanor does not replace your consent here.”

I agree to begin testing and ovarian stimulation, but every stage must be confirmed separately. If I say stop, everything stops.

He writes down the condition without dismissing it as fear.

The next twelve days disappear into blood tests, injections, and ultrasounds. Hormones turn my emotions unpredictable. Sometimes a dropped glass is enough to bring tears to my eyes. My abdomen becomes swollen and tender. I wait until the servants leave before I sit on the bedroom floor and breathe through the cramping.

Life outside the estate continues in fragments. I answer Quinn Tech emails between appointments and approve treatment forms for my father from the back seat of Vale cars. Employees write to thank me for securing the new investment, unaware of what it cost. I type reassuring replies and delete them because every version sounds like a lie. In the end, I send only practical instructions. It is easier to discuss payroll forecasts than the possibility that I am trading one future to rescue another.

The strangest part is that I continue talking to Ronan.

“The scan was normal, but the injections are making me miserable,” I tell Ronan one evening. On other nights, I talk about small problems at Quinn Tech that no one else wants to hear. Speaking to an unconscious man should feel ridiculous, but he is the only person in the estate who does not interrupt me, manipulate me, or demand an immediate decision.

On the eighth night, a nurse offers to administer the injection. I do it myself.

At least the needle is a pain I choose.

Doctor Revan retrieves the eggs on day twelve. Before the anesthetic takes effect, he checks the chart once more. “We will combine the mature eggs with Ronan's sample and culture them for five days,” he explains. “You may wake with considerable discomfort.”

Pain has become familiar lately, but his earlier words return to me: being used to something does not mean I should have to endure it.

When I wake, Cole is waiting outside recovery. Ronan's monitoring data changed during the procedure. The doctors believe he may be closer to consciousness.

My abdomen aches when I stand, but I make Cole help me back to the estate.

I sit beside Ronan and tell him the eggs were retrieved. I have not agreed to an entire future, only the next step. If viable blastocysts develop in five days, I will have to choose again.

“If you don't want this,” I say, “wake up and tell me yourself.”

His fingers move beneath mine.

Heat rises through my palm and spreads across my chest. It is not my emotion. It carries possession, protection, and the frustration of something that has been trapped in darkness for far too long.

I try to pull away, yet some part of me cannot bear to sever the connection.

My wolf never awakened. At sixteen, I learned to pretend I did not care when everyone else described the first voice in their mind. For years, wolfless followed my name like a stain.

Now a deep, rough voice reaches me from the dark.

Mine.

Every muscle in my body locks.

Then the presence turns toward the hollow ache low in my abdomen.

Ours.