The townhouse sat in Edinburgh's New Town like a monument to acquisition—Georgian proportions, white stone gleaming under the September haze, windows that caught the morning light and threw it back as if the building itself resented the sun's attention. Inside, the rooms stretched wide and high, furnished with pieces that cost more than most people earned in a year, arranged with the careful indifference of a decorator who understood that taste was merely wealth made visible.
Gareth Bennett stood at the window of his study, a glass of whiskey in his hand despite the early hour. Through the curtain's gap, he watched the street below—mothers with prams, a postman on his route, a dog walker untangling a lead. Ordinary life. The life he had chosen to abandon.
Behind him, on the antique mahogany desk, a photograph faced downward. He turned it over with familiar, guilty fingers.
Maggie.
Her hair was shorter in the picture, caught mid-laugh, her hand shielding her eyes from a sun that no longer seemed to shine on Gareth's world. Beside her, a younger Gareth grinned with an ease he had since forgotten how to fake. They had been camping, of all things. A tent in the Highlands, cheap wine in plastic cups, and the first real conversation they'd ever had about forever.
He had ruined it.
Not with violence. Not with cruelty. He had sabotaged his marriage out of something far more pathetic: insecurity. He had been so afraid that Maggie would leave him for someone stronger, someone more worthy of her, that he had pushed her away before she could make the choice herself. Small cruelties. Absences stretched into weeks. A coldness that crept into their bed like fog.
And then Simone had arrived—warm, undemanding, offering admiration instead of challenge. She had seen a powerful man and had wanted him. Gareth, desperate to feel wanted, had let himself be taken.
The study door opened with a soft click.
"Darling."
Simone's voice was honeyed, precise, the accent a careful blend of French finishing school and London polish. She crossed the room in a silk robe, her dark hair still damp from a shower, and placed a hand on his shoulder. Her fingers pressed lightly, rehearsed.
"You're brooding again," she said. "The whiskey before noon is a dead giveaway."
Gareth didn't turn. "I was thinking."
"About work?"
"About choices."
Simone's hand tightened fractionally on his shoulder. "You made your choices, Gareth. We both did. And we're happy, aren't we?"
He turned then, forcing a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Of course we are."
She kissed his cheek—a brush of lips that carried no warmth—and moved to the desk. Her gaze flickered to the photograph, then away, her expression unchanged. If she felt anything seeing Maggie's face in her husband's study, she didn't show it.
"The obstetrician called," Simone said, smoothing her robe as she sat on the chaise. "The pregnancy is progressing normally. Ahead of schedule, apparently. She said something about 'accelerated development' but assured me it's nothing to worry about."
Gareth's jaw tightened. The pregnancy. The miracle that had sealed their marriage in amber, freezing his exit before he could find the door.
"And you're feeling well?"
"Perfectly." Simone smiled. "I've never felt better."
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In the kitchen, Chloe Bennett stood at the counter, her hands deep in dishwater, her ears tuned to the floor above.
She had been with Simone for eighteen months now, a arrangement that everyone politely called "personal assistant" but that Chloe knew was something closer to indentured servitude. She was Simone's sister-in-law by marriage—Gareth's youngest sibling—and she had accepted the position out of loyalty to her brother, who had insisted it was temporary, just until she found her feet after university.
Eighteen months later, her feet were firmly planted in Simone's shadow.
The house was immaculate because Chloe kept it that way. The schedules were organized because Chloe managed them. The secrets were hidden because Chloe buried them.
And there were secrets.
Last night, Simone had asked Chloe to dispose of a small cardboard box containing a pregnancy test, a receipt from a pharmacy on Lothian Road, and an empty glass vial with a handwritten label: Silphium. Chloe had done as she was told, dropping the items into the outside bin without question. That was her role. To serve. Not to think.
But after Simone had gone to bed, Chloe had retrieved the box from the bin.
The receipt caught her attention first. The date stamped on it was for six weeks ago. But Simone had only told Gareth about the pregnancy three weeks ago. She had claimed she'd just taken the test that morning, that her period was only a day late.
Six weeks. That meant Simone had known she was—or thought she was—pregnant for three weeks before she told her husband.
Why wait?
The vial troubled her more. Silphium. Chloe had studied classics at university before her life had narrowed to dusting and dishwater. She remembered the word. Silphium was an ancient plant, prized by the Greeks and Romans. Used for everything from seasoning to contraception. And, according to some sources, for inducing abortions.
The combination of pregnancy test, ancient botanical, and secret timeline formed a knot in Chloe's chest that she couldn't untie.
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Simone's voice drifted down the hallway, muffled by walls but audible enough. Chloe moved closer, a damp cloth still in her hand, her footsteps silent on the marble floors.
"—don't care what it costs, Oliver. Just make it go away."
A pause. Simone's voice dropped lower, but Chloe pressed her ear to the doorframe.
"He can't know about the clinic. If Gareth finds out, everything falls apart. You understand? Everything."
Another pause, longer this time. When Simone spoke again, her voice had hardened into something sharp and cold.
"Then you should have thought about that before you got involved. This isn't my problem, Oliver. It's yours. Clean it up."
The call ended. Chloe heard Simone exhale, a long, shaking breath that sounded nothing like the composed woman who had kissed her husband's cheek an hour ago.
Chloe retreated to the kitchen, her heart hammering.
Oliver.
She knew the name. Oliver Khan. Simone's ex-boyfriend from university, a shadow figure who occasionally appeared at parties, always uninvited, always slightly drunk, his eyes lingering on Simone with a hunger that Gareth pretended not to notice. He was immature, reckless, and volatile—the kind of man who made threats he couldn't back up but might try anyway.
What did Oliver know about the clinic?
What did the clinic have to do with the pregnancy?
And what was Silphium?
---------------------
That night, while Simone and Gareth attended a pack function in the city, Chloe remained behind. She had claimed a headache, and Simone had waved her off with feigned concern and genuine relief—Chloe's presence at events always reminded Gareth of where she had come from, of the family he had left behind.
Alone in the townhouse, Chloe went to work.
She started with Simone's study, a room her sister-in-law kept locked but whose key Chloe had discreetly copied months ago. The desk yielded nothing obvious—bills, correspondence, a diary filled with social engagements. But the filing cabinet, pushed against the far wall and hidden behind a potted palm, told a different story.
The third drawer was locked with a key different from the others. Chloe picked it with a hairpin and a prayer.
Inside, she found a manila folder thicker than her wrist. Medical records. Laboratory results. And photographs.
The photographs made her stomach turn.
They showed Simone in what appeared to be a private clinic, wearing a hospital gown, her face slack with sedation. In one image, a doctor in scrubs stood beside her, holding up an ultrasound image. In another, Simone was seated in a recovery room, a cup of water in her trembling hands, her eyes empty.
Chloe flipped through the papers, her hands shaking.
Blood work. Genetic screening. A consent form for something called "Experimental Gene-Sequence Therapy."
And then, buried at the bottom of the folder, a receipt.
Not for the pregnancy test. Something else.
A receipt from a private clinic in Zurich, dated eight months ago. The procedure listed was coded, but the cost—forty thousand Swiss francs—suggested something significant. The patient's name was Simone Bennett. The referring physician was listed as Dr. Helena Vance.
Chloe had heard that name before.
Dr. Helena Vance was a geneticist. A controversial one. She had been linked to experiments involving latent genetic markers, the activation of dormant traits, the manipulation of what some called "junk DNA" to produce targeted physical changes.
Changes that might, for example, allow someone to pass as something they were not.
Chloe sat back on her heels, the receipt trembling in her fingers.
Simone wasn't a werewolf. She had never been one. The Bennett pack had accepted her because Gareth vouched for her, because the mating bond—such as it was—seemed genuine, because no one had thought to question the woman who had captured their Alpha's son.
But what if Simone had captured him deliberately?
What if the pregnancy wasn't an accident, but a cover?
Chloe thought of the empty vial. Silphium. An ancient abortifacient. If Simone had been pregnant—really pregnant—and had ended it, the vial would explain how. But the pregnancy test suggested she had believed herself pregnant six weeks ago. The clinic receipt was eight months old.
The timeline didn't fit.
Unless the pregnancy wasn't real at all. Unless something else was growing inside Simone. Something that required accelerated development, experimental gene therapy, and a husband too miserable to ask questions.
Chloe stared at the photograph of Simone in the recovery room, her empty eyes staring at nothing.
What are you?
The front door opened downstairs, and Chloe scrambled to her feet, shoving the folder back into the drawer, locking it, replacing the palm. She slipped out of the study, down the hallway, and into her own room just as Simone's voice called up the stairs.
"Chloe? We're back. Could you bring up some tea?"
Chloe pressed her back against her door, her breath shallow.
She knew too much now. And in Simone's world, that made her dangerous.
Not to Simone.
To herself.
She needed help. Someone outside the pack. Someone Simone couldn't touch.
She needed Margaret Hughes.
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To be continued...