Braxton’s POV:

The silence had never felt so heavy.

The announcement post had gone up that morning: a softly lit photo, a hand over your stomach, along with the written announcement that you and Matt were expecting. You were three months pregnant, and my chest tightened the moment I saw it. The ground felt unsteady beneath me because the timeline matched that horrible night.

I’d replayed that night more times than I could count. Not because I wanted to, but because it haunted every waking breath. The ghost of chains digging into my wrists. The hunger from days without food, without light, and Matt’s mad ramblings about losing his inheritance because he couldn’t produce an heir due to being declared sterile by the doctors. He told me his plan to use me to impregnate you during your h e a t. He made sure I got weak and near delirious while locked in his estate’s basement, dressing me in his clothes so I’d smell like he does.

And then one day, your scent crossed my nose, and even weak, my Alpha instincts responded to the hormones you released. Sharp and primal, your body calling out in pheromones, and mine, weakened and betrayed, answering on instinct. No choice. No control. Just biology and cruelty conspiring against us both.

When I had managed to drag my heavy head up, you had been blindfolded and guided by Matt’s instructions so you’d think every step you took was toward him and not me. And you… God, you had believed it was Matt the whole time. How could you not? The blindfold, your mind lost to your biology, the scent Matt had smeared into his skin. You hadn’t chosen me, nor I you.

But once it had been done and my release had claimed what wasn’t mine to take and should have been yours to give, there was no taking it back. And then, as insurance, Matt had taken pictures, staged them, and twisted them to be proof meant to paint me as the monster who had done this willingly to you. Matt’s insurance to keep me silent.

But worse than the blackmail was the reality itself: Matt’s plan had worked. And now there was a life growing inside you. A life you believed belonged to Matt. A life you didn’t know was, in truth, mine.

Matt, thanks to his successful and twisted plan resulting in your pregnancy, had finally met the condition his father had set for unlocking the family fortune: providing a blooded heir. He was leaving the country for a few days, business or celebration or both. And for the first time since that night, the estate where you and Matt lived would be empty, with only you inside.

The perfect chance. Maybe the only one I’d ever have to tell you the truth, because I couldn’t take this anymore.

I didn’t think. I just drove. Faster than I should have, hands clenched white on the wheel, a storm of guilt and dread crashing in my chest because I was about to turn your world upside down as well as my own. Matt’s estate loomed on the horizon. I’d sworn I’d never return to this place once he’d released me from the basement.

But I didn’t slow down. I couldn’t. Not now that I had the opening and the chance.

The tires crunched against the gravel drive as I pulled in, heart pounding so hard it hurt in my chest. Before I could lose my nerve, I was out of the car and moving across the courtyard, up the stone steps, and then my fist was slamming against the front door again and again, urgency shaking me as much as the door.

You answered faster than I expected, surprise flickering across your features as you pulled the door open.

And gods help me, I nearly broke right there and turned around, leaving you to your ignorance while my mind haunted me with the memory of the night my once closest friend and cousin used me and you to create an heir for him to claim as his own.

The heir growing inside you.

My child. Your child. Not his.

"I need to talk to you," I blurted, the words ragged and desperate, spilling out before I could stop them. "It can’t wait. The truth has waited too long as it is."