Chapter 1 White Roses
Serena's POV
"Ah—"
The sound left my throat before I could stop it.
The dining room was still set behind us — ivory candles burning low somewhere down the hall, white roses dropping petals onto the linen, the good china sitting unwashed where we'd left it. We hadn't made it back to clear any of it. We'd barely made it out of the hallway before his jacket hit the hardwood floor.
Mine landed beside it a second later.
His scent hit me the moment he stepped close — cold fir and leather, sharp and clean, the kind of scent that didn't ask for attention because it didn't need to.
Elliot Ashford. Third-generation core of the Ashford family, managing partner of Ashford Capital, the most dominant Alpha in Valmont City by a margin that wasn't close. I'd known what he was from the first time I stood within ten feet of him. Every instinct I had gone haywire on the spot and never fully recovered.
One year of marriage, and his scent still did something to my pulse that I couldn't logic my way out of.
He walked me backward through the bedroom door with one hand flat against the small of my back and I went without resistance. In the low light from the grounds outside I caught the details I always tried not to stare at: the sharp line of his jaw, the dark blue of his eyes gone almost black in the dark, his usually-immaculate linen-blond hair disheveled for once. He looked less like the man who ran board meetings and closed nine-figure deals without raising his voice. More like something I wasn't supposed to want this badly.
The bedroom was dark except for the garden lights pressing softly through the tall windows. Quiet out there. Just the occasional shift of wind through the old oaks.
In here, nothing was quiet.
He laid me down and took his time about it. His mouth dragged slow down the side of my neck and I tipped my head back against the pillow, my deep red-brown curls fanning out across the white linen, fingers curling into the front of his shirt. My senses were already running sharp: the warmth radiating off his skin, the slight roughness of his jaw, the way his breathing changed when he pulled back and looked at me — amber eyes meeting dark blue.
The Alpha presence rolled off him in waves. Not aggressive. Just there — undeniable, inescapable. My wolf knew. She'd known from the beginning.
"Elliot—"
"Shh." His hand slid up the inside of my thigh, deliberate and unhurried, and my breath caught hard in my chest.
The blazer was somewhere near the door. The report was folded in the inside pocket — Holy Cross Hospital, Patient: Serena Voss — two days old, read so many times the crease had gone soft. I'd planned to tell him after dinner.
I'll tell him after, I thought, and then his fingers found their mark and I stopped thinking entirely.
He worked me open slowly, watching my face while he did it. I tried to keep quiet and failed inside the first minute. My hips moved against his hand without permission and he let me, two fingers curling until I was gripping the sheets and breathing in short, broken pulls.
"Please—"
He didn't make me ask twice.
When he finally pushed inside me I exhaled like something had been wrung out of my chest — a long, shaking breath pressed into the curve of his shoulder.
Deep and slow at first, one hand braced beside my head, the other gripping my hip hard enough to anchor us both. Then harder — the headboard finding the wall in a low, rhythmic knock. My fingers found his back and held on, nails dragging down when he changed the angle and hit somewhere that made my whole body seize.
His mouth dropped to my ear. The low sound he made there bypassed every rational thought I had left.
My senses caught everything. The heat of his skin pressed the full length of mine. The cold fir of his scent thickening in the warm air, going darker the way an Alpha's scent did when he was close to the edge. The way his heartbeat kicked up against my sternum when he drove deeper and my back left the mattress entirely.
When I finally broke it was hard and loud — my whole body locking tight around him, his name wrecked somewhere in my throat. He followed not long after with his face pressed into my hair and both hands gripping my hips.
Afterward, the room went soft and still.
The lamp on his side threw amber light low across the ceiling. The sheets were a wreck. Our clothes were scattered from the doorway to the foot of the bed.
I was lying with my cheek against his chest, and I was happy.
Genuinely, stupidly happy. His heartbeat was slowing back down under my ear, and his arm was loose around my shoulders, and I could smell his scent close and warm — cold fir and leather softened now, layered with something that was just us.
Right now, I'm the happiest woman alive, I thought, and the idea of telling him — of watching his face when I said the words — sent something so warm rushing through my chest that I felt almost drunk on it. Like the happiness was too big to fit inside my body.
But underneath that warmth, something else stirred.
My wolf.
She was restless — not anxious, but wanting. The base of my neck tingled faintly, the spot where a mate's mark would go. One year of marriage, and Elliot had never marked me. Not once.
My wolf didn't care about contracts. She wanted what she wanted, and right now — lying in his arms, his child growing inside me whether he knew it yet or not — she wanted him. Wanted the mark. Wanted the claim.
Maybe tonight, I thought. Maybe when I tell him about the baby—
The report was a few feet away in my blazer pocket. I was going to tell him, and it was going to be okay. Because he'd ordered white roses and remembered the date and he'd held me like I was something worth keeping.
Tell him now.
I pushed myself up onto one elbow, my curls falling forward. My wolf was still there, still wanting.
He was already reaching past me toward the nightstand.
The lighter clicked once. Smoke unraveled in the amber light, rising toward the ceiling. He didn't look at me. He was looking up, cigarette between two fingers, his chest rising and falling like nothing had shifted at all.
"Elliot, I—"
He exhaled.
"Let's get a divorce."
