Chapter 324 The Line I Won’t Cross

Emilia’s POV

Surrogacy strips a woman down to a womb for hire. It turns a body into a product, a pregnancy into a service you can put on an invoice. And the woman on the selling end is always the one with the emptier bank account, renting out nine months of her life to someone who can afford to buy them.

And now Titus wanted me to be the buyer.

I stared at the man across the table and felt something inside me go quiet and hard.

I’d walked in here braced to be the gracious wife. Ready to swallow my pride, to nod along while Titus asked me to accept a husband with a mistress, a child that wasn’t mine, to smile and pretend it didn’t gut me. I’d have done it. I’d already half made peace with it.

But this wasn’t that. This was worse. He wanted my eggs. He wanted my body harvested for parts and some stranger’s body rented to carry the result.

I understood the logic. Titus thought I was too proud to stomach the humiliation of a mistress, so he’d offered me a cleaner version. A surrogate. As if that made it kinder.

No.

There’s a line, and that was it.

“I’m sorry, Titus.” My voice came out steadier than I felt. “I can’t accept a surrogate.”

His brow pulled down. “You what?”

“You heard me.” I kept it even. “I could accept Sebastian sleeping around. I could accept a child born outside this marriage. But surrogacy? That’s a no.”

“I’m doing this for you.” He said it like it settled everything. “For both of you.”

“See, that.” I pointed at him, and my hand didn’t shake. “That right there is exactly what I’ve woken up hating. That line. For your own good. You’ve all been running me down that track, telling me it’s already decided, that it’s happening whether I like it or not. But you’re the ones making it happen. You could stop tomorrow if you’d only let me have a say. You just don’t want to give me one.”

Eve stirred in the back of my skull, alert now, listening.

“So you tell me the train’s already left the station.” I leaned in. “And you never once let me choose whether to get on it. You dress it up as mercy, Titus, but it’s just control with better manners.”

“Emilia—”

“Let me finish.” I wasn’t loud. I didn’t need to be. “You say you need a child with Simons blood, or the pack ends. A hundred years of legacy. But go back far enough and it was never about blood at all, was it? Whoever beat the Alpha, whoever could lead, became the Alpha. That’s how it worked. So we adopt a child of Alpha stock. We raise it, we train it, we pour everything into it. Why is that not enough for you?”

He opened his mouth. I ran right over him.

“You want to know what blood really buys you?” A laugh scraped out of me, ugly and short. “I’m my father’s blood. His own daughter. And he handed me off in a marriage contract to save his company, and before that he stood by while people beat me bloody. That’s what your precious bloodline is worth. Nothing. It’s worth nothing. And I sat in this chair and almost said yes to all of it. God, I was stupid.”

“That’s enough.” His hand came down flat on the table. “Calm yourself down.”

I looked at him and realized I’d never in my life been calmer.

“I’m perfectly calm.” I straightened. “And I’m done. I’m not agreeing to a single one of your arrangements, Titus. Not the mistress, not the surrogate, none of it.”

“If our talk today has to end with one answer, then here it is. I’ve still got a thirty percent chance of carrying a child of my own. Thirty percent. If it takes a mountain of pills and every needle in Silverlake to get there, then fine. I’ll take the needles. But it’ll be my choice, and my body, and our child. Not something you ordered off a shelf.”

Titus’s face softened, and somehow that was worse than his frown. “Emilia. You’re a sensible girl. You can’t let your temper make this decision for you.”

“Alpha Titus.” I used his title on purpose. “I have always respected you. You’ve been good to me. You took me in, you called me daughter, you gave me more warmth in a year than my own father managed in a lifetime. I know that. I won’t forget it.”

I held his gaze. “But you’re also a cruel man. A few minutes ago, it wasn’t enough that you wanted me to accept my husband fathering a child with another woman. You wanted me to be the one to tell him. To sit him down and hand him permission, in my own words. How exactly did you picture that going?”

For a moment he said nothing. Then, quietly, “Emilia, I’m sorry. I know what I’m asking. But there’s no one else in this world who can reach that boy. He doesn’t listen to me. He doesn’t listen to his mother. He only listens to you.”

And there it was. The whole trap, laid out clean and finished, waiting for me to step into it.

He’s the one who did this to us, Eve murmured. No fire in it this time, just exhaustion. We were both worn down to nothing.

I don’t remember much of the drive back. My head was a fog the whole way.

Mila was in the living room when I got in, one hand pressed to her forehead, lost somewhere far off in her own thoughts.

“Mila.”

She flinched and looked up. “You’re home.”

I crossed the room and sat down beside her. There was no soft way to land it, so I stopped trying to find one. “I told Titus no. I don’t agree to it.”

Her whole body went rigid, and her eyes filled in an instant. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I know how much this is asking of you. It was thoughtless of us. Thoughtless of me.”

Of the two of them, Mila was the one who felt it in her own bones, woman to woman, exactly where I was standing. I knew what I was doing was selfish where the Simons name was concerned. I knew it, and I couldn’t do it anymore.

I put my arms around her, and I cried.