The Clinic Swapped My Donor, So a Billionaire Alpha Fathered My Baby novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Lot Sixty-One
At a wolf-run fertility clinic Marit learns the wrong vial was used and the father is billionaire Alpha Anselm Strandberg, who slides her a card for a discreet solution; she tears it in half and walks out, and when he grabs for her wrist, his hand stops in the air.
The clinic director had put a box of tissues on the table before she said a word.
That was how I knew it was bad.
I had been to Cedar Row Fertility four times, and the tissues had never been there.
I sat in the leather chair with my parka still zipped and my keys in my fist.
I was six weeks pregnant.
I had told exactly one person.
She was in the ER across town in pink Crocs, waiting for me to text.
"Ms. Falkner," the director said, "thank you for coming in on your break."
She was a wolf, like everyone who worked at this clinic.
That was the whole reason I had chosen it.
A human clinic would have run my bloodwork and asked why it came back strange, and here nobody asked anything.
Here the donors were wolves too, listed by number, with no names and no faces and no way for a man to ever find me.
I had wanted a baby that nobody could claim.
I had saved for three years to buy exactly that.
"Your bloodwork is perfect," the director said. "The pregnancy is healthy."
"Then why is there a box of tissues?"
She looked at the table.
"Because there was an error in the vial," she said.
I didn't move.
"You selected Donor Sixteen," she said. "A teacher, thirty-four, a clean line. On the third of February the technician pulled the wrong lot from the vault."
"Which lot?"
"Sixty-one," she said.
"There is no Donor Sixty-One in the catalogue," I said.
"No," she said. "Lot Sixty-One is not a donor. It belongs to a private vault."
My mouth had gone dry.
"Whose?"
The door opened behind me before she could answer.
I knew he was in the room by the way the air changed.
A wolf that size takes over a room by walking into it.
He was very tall and very broad, in a charcoal suit, with ash-brown hair cut close and a short beard going grey at the chin.
His eyes were a pale, clear blue, and they went straight to my stomach and then, with visible effort, up to my face.
I knew the name before he said it.
It was painted on the cranes at Terminal 5, nine feet high, in white.
"Ms. Falkner," he said. "I'm Anselm Strandberg."
The director stood up so fast her chair rolled back.
"Alpha Strandberg, I did ask you to wait until..."
"I waited," he said, without looking at her.
He didn't sit.
He stood at the end of the table with one hand flat on its edge, and I watched him decide how to talk to me.
"The mistake belongs to the clinic," he said. "The clinic will answer for it, in full."
"That's kind of it," I said.
"The rest is a matter between you and me."
He took a card out of his inside pocket and laid it on the table and slid it toward me with two fingers.
It had a phone number on it in black ink, and nothing else.
"There are discreet ways to resolve this," he said. "Quietly, and on your terms. You would never have to think about it again."
The room went very still.
I understood him perfectly.
A man who had just learned he'd fathered a child by accident was offering me a number to call.
It was so that the child would not exist.
I picked up the card.
I looked at his name on the back, the little embossed ship.
I tore it in half and put both halves back down on the table in front of him.
"I'm not resolving it," I said.
"Ms. Falkner..."
"I picked a donor because I wanted a baby no man could take from me. Instead of a teacher, I got an Alpha with a card. That's not my mistake and it's not my problem."
I stood up.
My knees held, which surprised me.
"I'm keeping this baby," I said. "I'll send the clinic my bills. You can stay out of my life."
I turned to go.
His chair scraped, and he moved faster than a man that size should.
He reached for my wrist.
I felt the heat of his hand an inch from my skin.
Every old instinct from my years on the run went white in my head.
"Don't," I said.
His hand stopped in the air.
It stopped there with his fingers open and his arm shaking, and he stared at it as if it belonged to somebody else.
I didn't wait to see what he did next.
I walked out past the tissues and the director and the sign on the door.
I took the stairs down all four flights so no one could follow me into an elevator.
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