My Alpha Boss Gave Me Triplets – Episode 17
The Stonehearth mansion offered safety, but not peace. Evie woke throughout the night expecting to hear claws against the door. The attack returned in fragments whenever she closed her eyes: splintering wood, Francesca’s threats, and blood staining the office floor. Each time she checked the lock, she found only a silent hallway and a guard stationed far enough away to offer privacy while remaining close enough to stop anyone who approached. Security could protect her body, but it could not convince her frightened mind that the danger had ended.
Leopold had kept his promise. Francesca could not reach her, and no hostile she-wolf could enter the estate without passing pack security. Yet Evie’s greatest fear now lived under the same roof: the Alpha who suspected exactly what she was hiding.
Doctor Lara arrived the next morning to examine her. She confirmed that the bleeding had stopped but repeated the need for rest, proper meals, and reduced stress. The examination required special pack instruments because ordinary human measurements could not capture the pups’ faster development. “The triplets are holding on,” she said quietly. “Do not mistake survival for the absence of risk.” Another serious injury could have consequences neither medicine nor an Alpha’s power could reverse.
Evie promised to be careful. When Lara left, she carried the medical supplies back toward her room, eager to hide every piece of medical evidence before Leopold returned from his meeting with Max.
A small polished stone slipped from the supplies and rolled beneath a table. Evie did not notice. The object bore Lara’s medical marking and retained the faint residual glow produced during the examination.
Leopold found it later while searching for Evie. The stone was not ordinary jewelry; pack physicians used such objects when monitoring supernatural pregnancies and injuries. As a boy, he had seen similar stones used whenever the pack welcomed a new generation, and he recognized the soft residual glow. Lara’s symbol on its surface made its origin impossible to dismiss. Evie could challenge his interpretation of the curse, but she could not easily explain why a pregnancy diagnostic had been hidden among her belongings.
He closed his hand around it. Evie had denied being pregnant while lying in an infirmary bed, then denied it again after moving into his home. The evidence confirmed what his senses and the bond had already told him, but not why she feared the truth so desperately.
Evie stopped at the foot of the stairs when she saw the stone in his palm. The color drained from her face before she could hide her reaction.
“You dropped this,” Leopold said. His restraint was colder than anger. “Doctor Lara uses it for pregnancy examinations.”
“She treated my injuries too.” Evie reached for it, but he drew his hand back. “Finding something from the infirmary doesn’t prove anything.”
“My curse proves it. Your pain proves it. The scent of three pups proves it.” Leopold stepped closer. His anger did not come only from deception; it came from the realization that Evie considered him dangerous enough to hide their children after he saved her life. “This stone only proves that you looked into my face and lied.” If she feared him, he wanted the chance to understand why. Pride made the demand sound more like an accusation.
Evie’s fear sharpened into defiance. “You don’t get to demand trust after everything you said to me. The first time I asked you to keep a promise, you treated me like I had sold myself for a job.”
The accusation landed because it was true. Leopold had judged her before learning anything about the family threatening her or the work she did to survive. He had offered her anything during the night they bonded, then treated her request as proof of corruption. His suspicion had taught her that bringing him life-changing news would invite another attack. Whatever concern he showed now had grown in soil poisoned by his own words.
“I was wrong about the money,” he said, the admission forced but sincere. “That does not explain why you believe hiding my children from me is safer.”
Evie heard possession in the phrase my children. He had not asked what she wanted, whether she was well enough to endure the pregnancy, or how frightened she had been since the clinic. He spoke as though confirmation alone would transfer every decision into his hands. The babies would become Stonehearth heirs before they remained hers, and she could not trust a hierarchy that had allowed Francesca to treat her as less than human.
“There are no children to hide.” She held out her hand for the stone. “You are seeing what you expect to see because of your family’s curse.”
Leopold returned the stone but did not accept the denial. The bond carried too much fear for her words to be true. What he could not determine was whether she feared him, the pack, or something that would happen once the father became known.
“If you are protecting someone, tell me who.” His voice lowered. “If the babies are not mine, then whose are they?”
Cornered between a truth she could not trust him with and a lie he would no longer believe, Evie chose the only answer she thought might sever his claim permanently. “They belong to someone else.”