TEMPORARY MATES PERMANENT CRAVINGS novel Chapter 178

One hundred and seventy eight

Lisa POV

The surrogacy contract lay sprawled across the duvet. I hadn’t left this bed since last night. My eyes burned, dry from a total lack of sleep. Alpha Kieran’s words from yesterday played on a loop in my head.

I flipped through the pages, searching the fine print as if a secret exit would appear if I stared long enough. My mind raced through every disaster scenario. Every clause and bold line shouted what I owed them. It told me what I couldn’t do. It listed the punishments if I failed.

There wasn’t a single word about what they owed me. Not a sentence explaining what happened if they failed me.

I had signed this four months ago. Desperation for money had blinded me; I hadn’t even called a lawyer because the need to save my family was a fire at my heels.

I forced myself to read the same paragraph for the third time. My eyes tracked the black ink across the white paper, but the meaning slid right off my brain. I slammed the file shut.

Alpha Kieran’s voice echoed in the quiet.

He’s running out of time.

I shoved the thought away and flattened my palm against my stomach. It was instinct now, a movement my hand made before my brain could give the order. The baby kicked against my palm, a sharp, small jolt. It was a reminder that this wasn’t just a bad dream. This was a living reality.

I gripped fistfuls of my hair and pulled until my scalp stung.

I had signed a contract for a way out. I wanted to survive, but now it felt like I had walked straight into a furnace.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand, vibrating against the wood.

Franklin:

Do not leave the house today. Let me know whatever you need.

That was it.

The instructions just kept piling up, one on top of the other. The fear in my gut turned sharp and physical.

I stared at the glowing screen until it timed out and went black.

How long did they think they could keep me safe? This house was a fortress filled with guards, yet my body had been poisoned right under their noses. I had almost lost the baby.

A hot burn climbed up my throat.

I wondered what life would look like if I had never said yes. What if I had listened to Sasha? She told me I was making a mistake the moment I agreed to carry a child for strangers.

We would have been kicked out. We would have ended up on welfare. It would have been a hard, humiliating life.

But it would have been easier than this, where even taking a breath felt like a debt I had to pay.

This was supposed to be a simple deal. There was nothing in these pages about shadows, or people watching me, or a man being changed from the inside out.

1/3

Munzwa and sysinty night

+15 Bonus

There was nothing about my womb becoming a piece in a game I didn’t understand.

I stood up and shoved the chair back. The legs screeched against the floor. I needed to move before my thoughts pinned me to the bed forever.

I found my mother in the living room. She was hunched over on the sofa, her hands clamped together under her chin. She didn’t look up when I walked in. She didn’t even blink when I stopped right in front of her.

“Mom.”

Her head jerked up. She looked at me with wide, glassy eyes, like I had just shaken her awake from a nightmare.

“Hon… are you hungry?” she asked. Her voice was thin.

I let out a long sigh and sank into the chair opposite her.

“You’ve been thinking a lot.”

She looked at the wall instead of me.

The silence grew heavy again. I felt that familiar pressure building behind my eyes.

“Say something,” I said.

“I don’t know what there is to say.”

“There’s plenty. We’re holding it all in, but keeping quiet won’t make it disappear. I’m not asking you to blame yourself again, but we can’t act like everything is fine.”

“I’m not acting,” she said. Her voice gained a sharp edge. “I’m trying to find a way through this.”

“Then talk to me,” I said. “Because I’m lost too.”

Her shoulders slumped. She finally met my eyes, and the exhaustion there mirrored my own.

“What do you want us to do?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Do we run?”

“Where? Back to the creek keepers? Back to where Luna Catherine pulls the strings?”

“This place isn’t any better,” she whispered.

I had no answer for that.

She locked her fingers together so tight her knuckles turned white.

“If we stay, we’re blind to what’s happening. If we leave, we don’t know who is following us. We trust Kieran, but he just admitted he barely made it out of this alive himself.”

“He’s not the one doing this,” I said.

“I didn’t say he was!” she snapped. “I said he survived it. Look at the cost. What if they come for him again and we’re just collateral damage?”

Her voice cracked at the end. A cold chill settled under my skin.

2/3

andred and seventy eight

+15 Вели

The memory of the pain and the soul-crushing nausea flooded back. I remembered my body shutting down while the doctors insisted nothing was wrong.

They couldn’t find a cause, but I had felt it. Something had been reaching for us.

Her eyes were rimmed with red. My throat felt like it was closing up.

“I don’t want to lose you.”

The words hit me like a physical blow.

“I watched you go through something no one could explain. I watched you scream in pain while everyone told me to stay calm.”

I turned my head away, unable to look at her.

“I can’t do it again. Not if this is part of some bigger horror.”

The low rumble of a car engine in the driveway cut us off. She stood up, wiping her cheeks with the backs of her hands.

“Dr. Harry is here,” she said, peering through the gap in the curtains. “We have to look normal.”

I smoothed down my shirt and forced a deep, steady breath into my lungs.

“Okay,” I said. “We look normal. Even if everything about this is a lie.”

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