TEMPORARY MATES PERMANENT CRAVINGS novel Chapter 209

whanded and night

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Then I looked toward Kieran and Harry.

“I’m keeping the baby.”

Harry’s mouth fell open. Only my mother stayed calm because she already knew. My gaze remained on Alpha Kieran.

“Well,” he said finally, “I was hoping you’d eventually decide that for yourself.”

I frowned at him.

“You think I should keep the child?”

“I think nobody connected to Meridian deserves authority over that baby anymore,” he replied. “Not until Cameron is completely free from them.”

“But the contract still exists,” Harry pointed out.

“They violated it first,” Kieran said. “Repeatedly.”

The room dissolved into smaller conversations after that.

My mother and Kieran headed upstairs. Harry remained at the dining table, explaining details about interrupted bonds. My father and James moved closer to the terrace windows, their voices low and tense.

Then the front door opened. One of the estate guards stepped in.

“Alpha Kieran,” he said. “There’s a vehicle at the front gate asking for clearance.”

Something in his tone made Kieran come back down the staircase.

1 stood up. At first, I thought Cameron had returned, but when the oak doors finally opened, an older man with graying hair entered first. Behind him walked a woman with dark hair pinned away from her face, her sharp green eyes sweeping across the mansion.

Kieran stopped walking.

Actual surprise crossed his face for the first time since I met him.

“Cassidy,” he said.

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Two hundred and nine

Cassidy POV

George watched my hands through the rearview mirror as I kept them pinned flat against my knees. He had just cleared us through the checkpoint at the outer perimeter.

The heavy gates took their time grinding along the track, and the delay made the air inside the sedan feel thick. I pushed the passenger door open, my boots hitting the gravel, and stood under the afternoon sun to look at

Kieran’s mansion.

The building was massive, white stone pillars rising three stories to meet a flat tiled roof. Four armed guards in identical dark jackets stood by the main archway.

“All clear,” a voice rasped from the radio on the lead guard’s hip.

George leaned across the console, motioning with a jerk of his chin for me to get back inside. I stayed on the gravel a little longer. My cousin knew as well as I did that this drive would either end with a clean conversation or a complete mess.

Ever since Kieran had turned up on my porch, his presence had felt like an insult. It sat in my chest like a cold weight that hadn’t let me sleep.

His face, and the mention of a pregnant girl had kept my eyes wide open in the dark for three days.

Some stubborn part of my conscience insisted I at least look at the situation before refusing, but the truth remained that Kieran didn’t deserve my help. Neither did the people he had dragged into his orbit.

“We’re already here,” George said through the open window, his knuckles tapping the steering wheel. “And you promised you’d at least hear them out.”

“Doesn’t mean I want to do it,” I said dryly.

He let out a groan. “So what do we do? Turn back and leave?”

I didn’t answer. I pulled my skirt over my knees and slid back into the car, pulling the door shut until the latch clicked.

George shifted into drive, the tires crunching over the limestone chips as we moved down the long approach. It was the sort of lane Vanessa would have spent months planning. Palms and wide trees that could catch the breeze from the valley. The lawns on either side were perfectly green, the soil dark around rows of red and white shrubs.

Vanessa would have spent every afternoon out here with a pair of shears.

I swallowed, forcing the knot down my throat. There was no sense carrying a grudge against a dead woman, but the sight of her preferences in the hedges made my head spin.

The car rounded a circular island where a stone fountain shaped like a wolf’s head spilled water into a gray basin. A few small brown birds splashed along the rim.

“I can’t wait to see his face when he sees you,” George said, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he tried to loosen the tension crawling through the car.

I reached into the footwell, grabbed the woven strap of my tote bag, and ignored him.

The car hadn’t even come to a full stop before the front doors swung inward. Kieran stepped onto the porch before we reached the bottom step. 1

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Two hundred and nine

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I kept my eyes on the brass buttons of his vest, refusing to look at his face.

The silver at his temples should have softened him or made him look like the old men in the pack. Instead, it only made his nose and jaw look sharper. He had grown out of the thin, boyish build from thirty years ago, his shoulders filling out the wool of his shirt until he looked twice the size of George. He still had those dark eyes that made you feel like you were standing too close to a fire.

My pulse picked up in my throat, and the familiarity of that reaction made me want to hit something.

He reached George first, his palm landing on my cousin’s shoulder blade.

“You’ll pay me,” George muttered, lifting his hand to shake Kieran’s. “I’ve never begged anyone the way I begged her to get into the front seat.”

Kieran’s shadow fell over my bag.

“Thank you for coming,” he said.

The gravelly tone of his voice had deepened over the years, losing the quick rhythm he used to have when we were young. It made my fingers tighten around my bag strap.

“Did I really have a choice?” I asked, looking past his ear at the white molding around the entryway. “George couldn’t stop talking about how I’d regret it if I refused to come.”

Kieran didn’t move away. “Thank you, Cassidy.”

I pushed past him into the cooler air of the foyer.

A woman stood near the bottom of the wide staircase. Her hair was dark auburn, pinned back loosely, with a pair of reading glasses resting on her head. She wore a cream cardigan over dark trousers, her fingers resting on the wooden banister. When Kieran tipped his head toward her, I knew without a word that this was the mate he had found to replace what he lost.

A hot sensation flared behind my ribs as I watched her walk toward him.

She stopped at his side, her head barely reaching his armpit. He adjusted his stance so their arms could touch as they stood together.

I turned my head toward the tall grandfather clock in the corner before the look on my face could give me away.

Kieran introduced her as Susan, first to George, then to me.

She stepped forward, her hand open. “It’s good to finally meet you.”

I let her hand hang in the air before I reached out and gave it a brief shake. I wondered if Kieran had been stupid enough to tell her about his past.

“You as well,” I said.

Susan’s smile faded, her fingers retreating into the pockets of her cardigan. She understood immediately that I hadn’t come here looking for friendship.

“She’s Lisa’s mother,” Kieran explained, his hand brushing against Susan’s lower back as he led us toward the arched opening to the living room. “Lisa is the pregnant girl.”

Susan excused herself toward the back corridor. When she returned, she wasn’t alone. A girl followed her into the room, her fingers hooked into the hem of a yellow linen sundress. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three, her face still carrying the round softness of childhood.

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nered and in

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The surrogate.

She had her mother’s auburn hair and full lips, but she was taller. She walked with her weight shifted back, one hand automatically cupping the bottom of her belly.

My eyes dropped to the curve, then back to her face.

There was vulnerability in the way she held her mouth, a complete lack of armor that made my stomach turn. It was the kind of softness the world punished first.

Young women who carried that sort of openness usually ended up becoming monsters to survive or getting broken apart by the people who claimed to love them. Sometimes both.

She didn’t know who I was, but her shoulders were already drawing inward like she expected something sharp

from me.

At least she still had enough instinct left to recognize danger.

“Lisa, this is Cassidy,” Kieran said.

He didn’t say, this is the woman I once planned a future with. He didn’t say, this is the woman who bled out our child. He didn’t say, this is the person who helped drag me out of Dominion years later while Vanessa died screaming on a ritual floor.

He just said my name.

The girl gave an uncertain nod. “Hello.”

The heat in my throat rose again, so I answered with a curt nod instead of words.

“It’s nice to meet you,” George said from behind me. He stepped around my shoulder with the easy grin he used on strangers and reached out to shake Lisa’s hand.

I let my eyes drift away from them, scanning the walnut paneling until they landed on the corner near the window. A heavy gilt frame hung there, holding an oil portrait of Vanessa in a blue silk dress. Three smaller frames surrounded it, all showing her face from different angles.

Kieran was an idiot for keeping her on the walls.

Vanessa had nearly rotted his mind from the inside out, and he still framed her like some tragic saint while another woman stood in his kitchen wearing his scent.

George sat on the leather sofa, immediately asking about the drive and the weather in the valley, his voice filling the large room while Susan perched on the arm of Kieran’s chair, Every few minutes, her hand drifted toward Kieran’s forearm while she spoke, and he tilted his head slightly to catch her words without interrupting her.

The domestic ease of it scraped against my ribs.

“You must be hungry after the journey,” Susan said, looking toward George. “I was preparing something in the kitchen. I can bring it out now.”

“I didn’t drive three hours to eat in Kieran’s house,” I mumbled.

George closed his eyes briefly like he was already regretting bringing me.

“Cass…”

“No,” I cut in, my eyes still fixed on Kieran. “You begged me to come here because Meridian is circling Kieran’s

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hahid id and new

house again. Fine. I’m here. But let’s not pretend this is some friendly chitchat.”

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