Chapter 4 Chapter 4
Chapter 4
Aurora pov
Sound pulled me out of sleep before my alarm did. Glass against glass, clattering somewhere below me, sharp enough to cut through the haze of a night I barely remembered falling asleep in. I lay still for a second, listening, my heart picking up before my mind even caught up with why.
The power had gone out sometime after midnight. I remembered that much, the room turning thick and airless without the fan, my skin sticking to the sheets until I gave up and stripped down to nothing just to breathe. I reached for my nightgown now, fingers finding it crumpled at the foot of the bed, and pulled it over my head in the dark.
The clattering continued downstairs, steady, deliberate. Not the chaos I was used to. My mother's mess usually announced itself in crashes, in things knocked over and left where they fell. This sounded almost careful.
I moved toward the stairs, my bare feet cold against the wood, my hand trailing the banister the way it always did when I wasn't sure what I was walking into. The kitchen light was on, weak and yellow, throwing my mother's shadow long across the floor before I even saw her.
She was crouched in front of the open fridge, pulling bottles out one by one and setting them into a crate by her feet. The label caught the light each time she lifted one. My beers. The ones I'd bought two nights ago with money that should have gone toward the electric bill, money I'd handed over just to keep her out of the bar for a few days.
I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and just watched her for a moment, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.
"Mom?"
She didn't turn around right away. Just kept working through the row of bottles, methodical, like she'd done this a hundred times before and I'd simply never been awake to catch her at it.
"You're up early," she said, finally glancing back at me.
I crossed my arms over my chest, more from the chill in the kitchen than anything else. "What are you doing with my beers?"
"They're going." She straightened up, crate balanced against her hip, and nudged the fridge door shut with her elbow. "Found something better."
I stared at her, waiting for the rest of it, the part where she admitted what I actually wanted to hear. My chest tightened around the question before I even asked it.
"Did you stop drinking?"
She laughed, short and almost offended, like I'd suggested something ridiculous.
"Stop drinking?" She shook her head, already turning toward the back door with the crate in her arms. "I just switched brands, Aurora. This one's smoother going down. No reason to keep the old stuff sitting around taking up space."
The hope I hadn't even realized I was holding folded in on itself, quiet and fast, the way it always did whenever I let it out for even a second.
I didn't say anything else,I glanced at the clock on the wall instead. Eight forty.
Two hours until I had to be standing in front of three alphas, pretending I had any idea what I was walking into.
I turned to head back up the stairs, then stopped halfway, remembering.
"I have an interview today," I said, glancing back at her. "At the Moretti estate."
My mother froze with the crate still in her arms, the bottles clinking softly against each other as she shifted her weight. For a second she just looked at me, like she was waiting for the punchline.
Then she laughed,a short, mocking kind she used whenever she wanted me to feel small without having to say the words outright.
"The Morettis?" She set the crate down on the counter, shaking her head slowly. "Aurora, the Morettis are alphas. You know that, right? Every single person working in that house has a wolf."
"So?"
"So you don't." She said it plainly, like she was reminding me of something I'd simply forgotten, not something that had defined every uncomfortable conversation of my life. "You're twenty four years old without a wolf. Do you understand what that makes you in a house full of alphas?"
I didn't answer. I already knew where this was going, and some small, stubborn part of me hoped she'd stop before she got there.
She didn't.
"The lowest of the low, baby. An omega without even a wolf to her name. You'll be lucky if they let you clean the floors, let alone watch their sister." She picked the crate back up, like the conversation was already finished as far as she was concerned. "But sure. Go waste your morning."
Something hot rose in my chest, fast and ugly, and I turned before it could climb any higher into my throat. I didn't trust myself to say anything that wouldn't make this worse.
I took the stairs two at a time and shut my bedroom door harder than I meant to, the sound of it cracking through the quiet house. My hands were already shaking as I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and called Alexa, pacing a tight, useless circle around my room while it rang.
"Hey, you're up early—"
"She knows," I cut in, the words tumbling out before I could organize them properly. "About the interview. I told her, and she just laughed, Alexa. She said I'm the lowest of the low, that I don't even have a wolf, that they're not going to want someone like me anywhere near that house."
There was a pause on the other end, brief and steady.
"Aurora." Alexa's voice came through calm, the way it always did when mine wasn't. "You know your mom. She's been finding ways to make you feel small since before either of us could drive. This isn't about wolves or omegas or any of that. This is just what she does."
I sat down hard on the edge of my bed, pressing the heel of my hand against my eyes.
"I know," I said quietly. "I just thought, for one morning, she wouldn't.”
The gates alone took my breath before I even reached the front door.
I arrived at exactly nine fifty seven, my hands still faintly trembling from the drive, the kind of trembling that had nothing to do with the cold morning air. The mansion rose up ahead of me like something out of a magazine I'd never been able to afford, pale stone and dark windows, ivy climbing one entire wing like it had been planted there on purpose, just for the effect.
A woman met me at the door before I even had the chance to knock, older, silver hair pulled back into a knot so tight it looked painful, wearing all black except for a single gold pin at her collar. She didn't smile, exactly, but there was something not unkind in the way she looked at me over.
"Aurora?"
"Yes." My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to.
"This way."
I followed her through a foyer with ceilings too high for any normal house, past a staircase that curved up into shadow, and into a living room that could have swallowed my entire apartment twice over. Everything was dark wood and pale gray stone, a fireplace large enough to stand in, furniture arranged with the kind of precision that meant nobody actually relaxed in here. I stood at the center of it, suddenly aware of how loud my own breathing sounded in a room this quiet.
"Wait here," the woman said. "They'll be down shortly."
She left me standing there, and I stayed exactly where she'd put me, too nervous to wander, too aware of how out of place I probably looked against all of it. My eyes moved over a row of framed photographs on the far wall, family portraits, none of them smiling the way most families did in photographs. I was still studying them when a voice cut through the quiet, deep and unfamiliar, coming from somewhere above me.
"We have a visitor?"
I startled, turning toward the staircase, but there was no one on it yet. The question had come from somewhere further back, a hallway maybe, and the woman who'd let me in answered before I could place it.
"Yes. It's the nanny."
A pause followed, just long enough to make my pulse climb.
Then the voice came again, closer this time, low and unhurried in a way that made my skin prickle.
"So she's finally here."
I turned toward the sound of footsteps just as a man stepped into view from the hallway behind me, and I understood, immediately and completely, why my mother's warning hadn't been enough to prepare me for any of this.
He was tall in a way that made the room feel smaller, dressed like he'd just stepped out of a meeting that had nothing to do with the house he lived in, dark suit, sleeves still rolled to the forearm like he hadn't bothered putting himself back together all the way. His eyes found mine and stayed there, sharp, assessing, the kind of look that made me feel like he already knew everything my mother had said about me that morning, and didn't care to disagree.
"Marco Moretti,"
I swallowed hard, forced my spine straight, and held out my hand anyway.
"Aurora.”
He crossed the room without acknowledging the hand I'd offered and lowered himself into a single armchair near the fireplace, gold trim catching the light along its arms, the kind of chair that looked built for exactly one person and no one else. He crossed his legs, unhurried, like my standing there meant nothing at all to his schedule.
I stayed where I was. I couldn't quite make myself look at his face directly, so I let my eyes settle somewhere near his shoulder instead, my hand falling back to my side, still warm from a handshake he hadn't taken.
"We don't need a nanny anymore," he said.
The words landed flat, final, like he was closing a door I hadn't even finished walking through. I opened my mouth, searching for something, anything, that might keep me in this room a few seconds longer.
I never got the chance to use it.
"We do."
The voice came from the doorway behind me, smooth and unhurried, carrying an authority that filled the space before the woman attached to it even stepped fully into view. I turned, and there she was, moving into the room like the house itself had been built to frame her in doorways exactly like this one.
She was older, silver threaded carefully through dark hair pinned back from a face that had clearly once been, and still somehow remained, striking. She wore deep emerald, fitted at the waist, a single strand of pearls resting against her collarbone, and she carried herself the way I imagined royalty did in places that still had royalty. Every step toward us looked deliberate, unbothered, like the whole room had simply been waiting for her to arrive in it.
Marco's expression shifted the moment he saw her, something flickering behind his eyes that hadn't been there a second ago.
"I thought you left a few minutes ago," he said, straightening slightly in the chair.
She didn't answer him right away. Instead she crossed the rest of the distance toward me, her gaze settling on my face with an attention that felt entirely different from her son's, warmer, more curious than assessing.
"I forgot something in my chambers," she said finally, though her eyes hadn't left mine. "I needed it rather urgently."
She smiled then, small and knowing, the kind of smile that made me feel like she'd already decided something about me before I'd said a single word.
"You must be Aurora."
I nodded, my throat too tight to manage much more.
"I'm glad you came." She glanced once at Marco, the smile not quite reaching that part of her expression anymore.
"Despite what my son seems to have already decided.”
