Chapter 3

It's hard to find someone with a kinder heart and who's more loving and supportive than Jessa Baker, the twins' mother. Sadly, their happy family was torn apart by disasters over the past two years. First, their brother Sean and Mirabella's boyfriend Patrick died in a car crash. Then their father got cancer, and their mother stayed strong through it all, refusing to give in to despair.

But things got worse when their father recovered from cancer and left their mother for a younger woman, taking half of their home and business. Miah felt heartbroken watching it happen. She realised she couldn't trust her father anymore. Despite being well-off as an accountant, he wanted a share of their family home and the small business their mother had built on her own. Money can change people and make them do terrible things. Now it seemed like Mirabella was caught up in the same mess.

“Pay the money back,” Miah urged tightly. “You can’t marry some foreigner you don’t even know for money.”

“Well, I can’t marry him now, can I? I mean, I’m carrying Henry’s baby!" Mirabella pointed out flatly. “And Henry wants us to get married in the next couple of weeks.”

Miah nodded, unsurprised by that sudden announcement. Miah always did everything at supersonic speed. That she had fallen in love, fallen pregnant within months, and was racing equally fast into marriage was the norm for her. She had never learned patience, and if common sense threatened to come between her and her goals, she would ignore it.

“You must go ahead and marry the alpha in my place," Mirabella continued, "or I’ll be forced to consider an abortion.”

Shattered by that announcement, Miah pushed her chair noisily back and leapt upright. ‘What on earth are you talking about? Me marrying this alpha guy? An abortion? Is that what you want?”

"Well, it's not like there is an option here.”

“Mirabella, you are seriously out of your mind. I can't marry a werewolf—Jesus! An alpha. Are you nuts?”

A petulant expression traversed Mirabella’s face. “No, of course it’s not what I want, sis, but what choice do I have? I signed a legally binding contract, and I accepted a huge amount of money on the strength of it. Most of the money has been spent, so I can’t give it back. So, where does that leave me?”

“Oh my God, this is crazy!” Miah grumbled between heavy breaths. She was once again aghast at that admission. “Spent?”

“Mostly on Mom. Okay, so I bought the car and a few other little things. At the time, I thought that with the sacrifice I was making in agreeing to marry the guy, I had the right to spoil myself a bit. After all, it was me, not you, riding to Mom’s rescue!”Her twin vented, treating her sister to a scornful appraisal. “I mean, here you are, acting all shocked at what I’ve done. But what have you done but sit here wringing your hands and checking bank statements? It took me to take action, so don’t you dare look down on me for being willing to marry a stranger for money. Money and lots of it are the only real cure for the problems here!”

The louder Mirabella’s angry voice got, the paler Miah became, and she sat down heavily again. “I’m not looking down on you in any way. You’re right. You have pulled off something that I couldn’t have, and, yes, we are desperate for money—but to an alpha? I don't know if—”

Her sister clasped her hand in a fierce plea for understanding. “Don’t I deserve to be happy?”

Miah sighed. “I’ve never doubted it.”

"I never thought I'd be happy again after Patrick died. I felt like my life was over, like I should've died in that car with him and Sean," Mirabella confessed with pain in her voice. "But now I've met Henry, and everything's different. I love him, and I want to marry him and have our baby. I feel like I've got my life back, and I want to enjoy it."

Moved by her sister's heartfelt words, Miah clasped both of Mirabella's hands in a warm gesture of understanding. "Of course you do. Of course you do."

"But Henry won't want anything to do with me if he finds out what I did. It'll ruin us!" Mirabella sobbed, switching from defensiveness to self-pitying tears. "He would never understand or forgive me. He's a straightforward, honest man."

Suddenly, Miah felt like she was back on familiar ground. When they were kids, Mirabella often got into trouble, and Miah usually helped her out. Miah would even take the blame for Mirabella's mistakes because she knew her sister couldn't handle difficult situations. Mirabella might be daring, but she was fragile and couldn't cope when things went wrong.

"Maybe Henry doesn't need to know about this?" Miah suggested, feeling guilty for suggesting Mirabella keep secrets from her future husband.

“Listen, sis,” Mirabella breathed. ‘If I don’t show up and marry the alpha, I’ll have to repay the money, and I can’t. Do you honestly think a guy like Alexander Bluemoon is going to let me get away with defrauding him of that amount of cash?”

“Alexander Bluemoon? The alpha billionaire?” Miah queried in consternation. “He’s the guy who wants to hire a wife? For goodness’ sake, he’s always knee-deep in supermodels and actresses. Why would he have to pay a woman he doesn’t know to marry him?”

“Because a long time ago, he was supposed to get married, but it didn’t work out. This time around, he wants a marriage of convenience on a strict business basis.”

“But that is not their law. Alpha needs a luna. A real one. His mate.”

“Wow, Miah. I never thought you knew about them that much,” Mirabella smirked.

“I know because I read and watched the news.”

“Whatever, I owe him. And I can't pay him back. Marry him.”

“Is there any way?”

“I don’t know any more than that,” Mirabella replied, her eyes swerving abruptly from her sister’s questioning gaze to rest fixedly on the table instead, her whole face taut and shuttered. ‘That was what the lawyer told me, and he said I didn’t need to know any more and that it was just a job; maybe a little different from other jobs, but a job nonetheless.”

“A job,” Miah repeated, widening her expressive eyes in emphatic disagreement.

“If you marry the alpha of Bluemoon instead, I’ll be able to go ahead and marry Henry; we’ll keep the money, and Mum’s life will go back to normal.”

Miah sighed, shaking her head. “But he is an alpha, he would know. They have an acute sense of—”

“That's not a problem, the alpha hasn’t met me yet, so he won’t know we’ve switched, and he’s never going to guess that you’re not the woman who was selected—”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s crazy, and I couldn’t do it," Miah framed unevenly, feeling the weight of the pressure her twin was heaping on her shoulders and firmly resisting it.

“I applied in your name," her sister reminded her. "It’s you; the lawyers will come after you if you don’t follow through on that contract.’

Miah, who is usually slow to lose her temper, was finally getting angry. “I don’t care what you did—I didn’t sign any contract!”

“Well, you might as well have done it because I forged your signature,” Mirabella informed her wryly. “I’m sorry, sis, but we’re both involved in this up to our throats. Short of a lottery win, we can’t return the money, and why would you want to anyway? We've got no other way of saving this house for Mom. At the moment, it’s impossible to get a loan—”

“But Mom couldn’t have afforded to pay it back anyway. And now there’s not even anything left to sell,” Miah acknowledged.

The family had already sold a few valuable pieces of furniture and jewellery to help their mother's finances. The cottage was heavily mortgaged after Jessa used it to buy premises for a coffee and craft shop in the village. Despite being up for sale, there was little interest due to its need for modernization.

In the tense silence, Miah stood up. "It's raining—I promised I'd pick her up."

Miah drove off in her mother's old hatchback car. When she arrived outside the shop, she saw a curvy brunette with a bright yellow umbrella. The woman, Martha Lines, was her father's girlfriend. Alarmed, Miah hurried out of the car and knocked on the shop door, finding it locked.

“What was that woman doing in here?” she demanded of the small blonde woman who let her in.

Her mother’s eyes were reddened and overbright, her level of stress was palpable in her fearful expression and trembling hands. “She came to talk to me. She said she didn’t like to come to the house, and at least she waited for closing time—”

Miah was rigid with outrage on her gentle mother’s behalf. She felt that it was bad enough that her father had had an affair, but it was unspeakably cruel that he should allow his partner in crime to harass the wife he had deserted. “You don’t need to talk to Martha. She’s Dad’s business, not yours, and she should keep her nose out of what doesn’t concern her!”

“She says that fighting it out between the lawyers is only increasing our legal bills,” Jessa muttered tautly.

“What did she want?" Miah prompted, carefully removing the dishcloth that her mother was twisting between her nervous hands.

“Money. What she said is your father’s due,” the older woman explained in a mortified undertone. “And although I didn’t like hearing it, what she said was right. It is the law that he has to get his share of everything, but there’s not a lot I can do when we haven’t even had an offer for the house, is there?”

“She shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t have to speak to her.”

“She’s a very determined young woman, but I’m not scared of her, Miah . And you shouldn’t be getting involved in all this. Your father may well marry Martha and start a second family with her. It happens all the time, so it would be wiser if you didn’t take sides right now.”

Her troubled eyes glistening with tears, Miah gripped the older woman’s hands tightly in hers. “I love you so much, Mom. I hate to see you being hurt like this.”

Jessa Baker attempted a reassuring smile. “In time, I’ll get over it. “Move on,” as Martha likes to say. But right now, it’s all too fresh. I still love him, Miah,” she muttered guiltily. “That’s the worst thing about all this. I can’t seem to switch off my feelings.”