My hands roll into fists and it takes everything I’ve got in me to not strike him. I force my eyes to the floor so I don’t have to look at his offensive face anymore. “May I please go to my room now?”
“Alright,” he says. “Just let me say goodbye to the little heir first.”
I squeeze my eyes closed and turn my head when he sinks to his knees. His hands come to the hem of my shirt and lift.
He exposes my very slightly rounded stomach, placing his hands tenderly on either side.
“I must say,” Charles says, looking up at me, “I had hoped we would have a successful insemination within the first four months. I didn’t expect it to take in the first four weeks.”
“Just say goodnight,” I whisper, unable to look down.
He chuckles, caressing my stomach. Leaning forward, he presses his lips just above my belly button. “Sleep well, my little heir.”
He rises to his feet, covering my stomach once more. He leans forward so his lips hover just above my ear. “Just think, only five more months and you’ll be released from this hell.”
He brings a finger up, gently sliding it over my throat.
“Your brother will be so thrilled to see your face again.”
Charles steps away, crossing to the keypad. He enters the code and the door pops open. “Sweet dreams,” he says quietly as I step inside. I don’t turn to see him lock it once more.
Michael still lies on the floor where I left him, his muscles twitching, his jaw clenched in pain.
“I will kill that bastard someday,” he hisses through his teeth.
I nod, only because I don’t have the energy to say anything. I cross to the full-length mirror that hangs outside of my bathroom. Placing my hands on my stomach, pulling my shirt against my skin, I look at my profile.
It’s rounded, though many probably wouldn’t be able to tell the truth.
The truth that I’m just over fifteen weeks pregnant.
Emotion bites at the back of my eyes as I count back over the weeks. Fifteen of them since Charles and the doctor made me take the second pregnancy test. Four more before that of needles and exams.
Nineteen since I missed my cat. Nineteen since I asked Lexington to leave the House of Martials to go get her.
Nineteen since I told him I loved him and watched him walk out the door.
And Charles found his window to get to me.
To get his revenge.
A sister for a sister.
I slide my hand down over my stomach, just as a single tear breaks free onto my cheek.
I increase the speed, upping it to where I can still just barely walk without having to jog. I stare at the wall, going through the chemical process of creating a vapor that will knock any being out, human, Bitten, or Born.
My hands are itching to get to my supplies and create it in reality.
“Why are you using that thing?” Michael asks from where he lies on the couch. He has a book propped open on his chest, reading, but apparently not paying much attention. “You don’t have to do what he says. He ain’t going to kill you before you birth that thing inside you. I’d think you’d not be so anxious to give him a perfectly healthy heir.”
I huff, catching my breath. Everything is so much harder now that my body is being inhabited by another living being. “Because.”
Charles had a treadmill installed in our room the day after I was brought here as prisoner. He made it very clear I was to use it and keep myself healthy and in shape.
“Elle,” Michael says with the shake of his head. “Don’t go getting attached to that thing inside you. You know everything that it stands for. That it isn’t your child.”
My eyes flick away from his, staring at the wall.
Except that it is.
It is biologically half mine.
It is half made up from my DNA.
But half comes from the man above me. The one who makes me want to vomit just by looking at him. The one who is a fool and ignorant to the real problems at hand. The one who forced himself inside of me with a doctor’s help.
That’s half of who the child inside of me is.
The breath catches in my throat.
Bile climbs up it.
I increase the speed, picking it up to a slow jog.
“Don’t forget what it really is,” Michael says quietly as his eyes go back to his book.
My eyes slide open to stare at the ceiling, a familiar feeling of longing and emptiness pressing down on my chest. My hand rises to the back of my neck, where I could swear Lexington’s hand was just moments ago.
My stomach heaves suddenly and I gag, trying to hold everything down. I leap to my feet, pushing past Michael as I dart for the bathroom. I barely get the toilet seat up before the contents of my stomach empty into it.
Michael is instantly there, holding my hair back from behind. Silently waiting as my body heaves violently. Shakes take me over as the last of it comes up. My exhausted limbs slide down, flushing it all away and I wipe my mouth.
Gently, Michael pulls me back, curling me up into a ball and pulling me into his lap as he sits on the floor. I tuck my chin to my chest, hiding behind my hair as I rest against his chest. He rubs slow circles into my back, not saying a word.
But there are enough of them in my own head right now. Ones that tell me I’ve given up. I’ve become weak. I’m not who I used to be.
Michael changed everything about who he was because of the determination and strength he saw in me. He gave me his loyalty because I utterly lacked fear when it came to standing up to him.
But here I am now. Violated. Stripped of my human rights.
Curled into the fetal position, held in his lap like I’m a small child, depending on her father for comfort.
Look at who I am now.
“Let’s take a look,” Dr. Gethrow says from the door.
Michael lies on the floor, yet again, twitching in pain. Angel shot him through the window in the door and he’s now in for twelve hours of pain just so he wouldn’t cause a problem for the twenty seconds it takes for them to let me in and out of the door.
It’s not fair.
But entirely what I expect from Charles.
I stand from where I knelt beside Michael, knowing there’s not a thing I can do for him right now. I look darkly at the doctor as I walk out of the room and to the door across the common room.
It looks just like a doctor’s office inside. Medical equipment and cupboards and drawers packed with supplies line the walls. That terrifying table with straps dominates the center of the room. The smell alone is enough to send me vomiting into the sink.
“The nausea should be subsiding any time now,” Dr. Gethrow says as he helps me up onto the exam table. “Generally it goes away in the second trimester, which you are now three weeks into. Has it gotten any better since I saw you last week?”
“Maybe a tiny bit,” I say as I lie back and pull my shirt up to reveal my stomach.
“And you’re still sleeping well?” he asks as he pulls out his equipment.
I nod. I’ve been sleeping like the dead.
He presses the stethoscope to my stomach and feels around for a moment. And then there it is.
A fast, even whooshing sound.
A heartbeat.
So quick and so strong.
I squeeze my eyes closed and lie my head back on the pillow.
“How does everything look?”
My skin crawls as his voice enters the room and every cell of my being wants to shy away from his presence.
“We’re just getting started,” the doctor tells Charles.
“A good, strong heartbeat,” Charles says. “Already a true Allaway.”
My jaw clenches, my fingers curling into fists.
Even as the thought, no, like a Ward, echoes through the back of my mind.
But I push it down. Push it back. Try to bury it.
“There’s a chance we might be able to tell the gender of the baby today,” Dr.
Gethrow says as he puts the heart monitor away and turns to the machine in the corner of the room. He wheels it over, plugging it in and prepping it. “Generally we wait until the eighteen to twenty week mark, but equipment has advanced. Sometimes we can tell at fifteen weeks, and you’re actually almost to sixteen. Would you like to know?”
“Of course,” Charles pipes up. He looks over at me, a sadistic smile curling on his face. “Oh, I’m sorry. Were you hoping to keep it a surprise?”
I look away from him, focusing on the ceiling.
“Might as well find out now, Miss Ward, you may not get your chance later.”
He chuckles darkly.
Because he intends to cut my head from my shoulders the moment I push this baby out.
I may never even get to see its face.
Dr. Gethrow takes the gel and squirts it onto the probe and pushes it against my stomach. The screen lights up with blurry green shapes.
“See the head there,” he points out, indicating the large round blur on the screen. “And there’s a hand there.”
My eyes are wide. Huge and round. I don’t want to look. I don’t want to see any of this. Didn’t want to hear the heartbeat. Don’t want to make out the tiny round nubs that are fingers. Don’t want to see the palpitations of a tiny heart beating.
But I can’t look away.
The breath catches in my throat as I see a tiny profile, with an itty-bitty nose and tiny little lips and a chin.
That’s a little human being in there.
A blank slate. An empty vessel.
“So, can you tell?” Charles asks as he squints at the screen.
The doctor shifts the probe around, going to the side of my belly, giving us a view from beneath the baby.
“It’s got its legs crossed over our view right now,” he says as he shifts our view again, trying to gain a picture from above. “This little one wants to remain a surprise for now.”
He pulls it away, wiping it clean and handing me tissues to clean my stomach off. The ultrasound machine suddenly beeps and out pops five pictures I didn’t even realize he’d taken with the machine.
It takes everything I have in me to not grab them immediately and study them once again.
But Charles does indeed take them, looking them over carefully.
“Everything looks great,” Dr. Gethrow says. “The baby is growing at the rate it should. Looks perfectly healthy. We’ll try again next week to see if we can see the gender.”
Charles nods, a little smile coming on his face. He flips to the next picture. “I do believe that is your nose,” he says as he turns the picture for me to see. The one of the baby’s profile. “But I am quite certain that is my chin. This child may not have been conceived in love or in the usual fashion, but I dare say we have made quite the adorable little Royal together.”
I want to spit in his face. To let out a string of curses and bad voodoo on him. Instead, I roll onto my side, away from him.
Charles laughs. “It will certainly be fascinating to see who it turns out to look more like. I’ll be sure to send your brother pictures as it grows.”
My limbs shake in anger and fear. A vibration works its way down to my core. Something violent and cosmic. A momentum that can destroy Royals and Houses.
But my hand comes to my stomach, caressing the roundness.
I’m capable. I can defend myself.
But nightmares of blood and tearing and gushing have haunted me for weeks at night.
I can fight. But at what cost?
“You can keep this one,” Charles says as he lays one of the pictures on the table beside me so I can see it. The one of the baby’s profile.
“Same time next week,” I hear Charles say as he retreats upstairs.
“You took out five of my men once upon a time,” Michael says in a whisper in the dark. “In about thirty seconds or less. Come on, Elle. I’m sure you could take out just Angel.”
I stand at the window, looking out over the river. Through the dark, I see trees, thousands of them, covered in thick leaves, the world brilliantly green at the end of May. I pull a blanket tight around my shoulders, trying to fight against the chill.
Michael stands behind me, his arms crossed over his chest.
“I won’t be able to help you if they knock me on my ass like they always do, but I’ve seen you in action.” He speaks low, so quiet I can barely hear him. He’s got all the water in our tiny living quarters running, trying to drown out the sound of our voices.
“I had supplies then,” I say in an even tone, low and quiet. “I was armed. You know I don’t have anything to fight with.”
“We’ll make some damn stakes,” he says, his pitch increasing slightly. “See that table there? I can bust it with these two hands and voila. You hide one of ‘em in your dress and find just the right moment.”
“And after Angel there’s Megg, and Murphy, and Russell. And then Charles,” I shake my head. “Even if you weren’t knocked out by the toxin I’m not sure the two of us could take on the five of them. You were captured pretty quick, after all.”
He makes a little growling, grunt noise, obviously none too pleased to be reminded how he tried to track down and kill Charles for me more than five months ago. He’s plenty capable, but he isn’t as strong as those Born upstairs.
“Come on, little bird, you’ve survived this long, surely you’ve got something up your sleeve.” His voice is desperate. But the confidence in it is slipping.
A light suddenly flips on outside our cell. I listen for footsteps, but I don’t hear any. But the next moment something whistles through the air and Michael lets out a hissing moan.
“Not this shit again,” he growls as he drops to his knees. His jaw locks up, hissing through his teeth. “Did you have to make it so damn painful?”
He collapses to the floor, seizing.
“I’m so sorry,” I say with a trembling lower lip.
Of all the good my toxin has done, of all the times it’s saved lives, I regret it in these moments, when it brings so much pain to my one and only friend in hundreds of miles.
The door swings open and Angel steps inside. “Get dressed,” she says with cold eyes as she looks me over, wearing only a nightshirt.
It does no good to question her, so I turn, heading for the dresser of clothing Charles provided. I pull on a pair of skinny jeans and a pink long-sleeved shirt. Angel nods her head to my boots and a jacket, which I also pull on.
The Taser pressed to my back, I follow her out the door, which she locks behind her, and we rise up the stairs. As I climb into the great room, I find Charles waiting beside the front door.
“I thought some fresh air would do you some good,” he says as he looks me up and down, and I’m not really sure what he’s looking for. “Come.”
He reaches for me, tucking my arm under his, and opens the door. I expect Angel to follow us, but she doesn’t. Charles shuts the door behind us, and the two of us walk alone down the grassy lawn toward the road.
Moonlight illuminates the night enough that I can see without tripping over everything. I look up, taking in the brilliant stars above. They’re so much brighter here than they are back in the city. Almost like they were back in Mississippi.
I take a deep breath, sucking in the fresh air, something I haven’t breathed in now for four months.
“How have you been feeling today?” Charles asks as we walk down the road, side by side.
“Fine,” I say.
“Miss Ward, you are carrying the heir to the Allaway throne. I think you should know that the answer of ‘fine’ is not sufficient,” he says in a cold voice. His blue-green eyes are bright in the moonlight, cold as ice.
“I haven’t thrown up since the day before yesterday,” I say, not looking at him. “I’m still sleeping like the dead. I’m eating all the meals you send down to me. I walk for an hour a day. I haven’t started feeling it move yet.”
“It,” Charles says. “It is a tiny human being. It i
s a baby destined to be a Royal one day. Do you feel so little toward the child that you are able to call he or she an it?”
Cold, black ink works its way down my veins. A mix of ricin and castor, poisonous and deadly. It seeps into my heart and my lungs, oozing out of my skin.
I can’t give Charles a reply, so I say nothing at all.
“My human spies say there have been many Born looking for you at the official House of Allaway,” Charles moves on. Because he always strikes when I’m the most raw. “Even a Bitten. They’ve been scouring the countryside, searching. But they’re still hundreds of miles from here.”
My pulse picks up, hope at hearing any news from my friends and family.
“So far there’s been Lexington, of course,” Charles says, patting my hand that’s looped over his arm. “That Bitten you’ve been running around with. Kai, I believe is his name?”
My eyes widen and slide over to meet Charles’. Fear tightens around my throat.
“And your brother,” Charles says as the smile grows on his face. “He hasn’t been back to that swamp you two called home in months, now.”
“They’ll never find us,” I say, shaking my head. “Leave them alone. Just a few more months and you can tell them to stop looking.”
He lets out a little chuckle, but it’s humorless. I feel his mood shift, darken.
“You understand why I have to do it, right?” Charles says as we turn left onto a main road, and if I recall correctly, this one leads into the town of Woodson.
“Why you have to exact revenge for something I had nothing to do with?” I clarify, feeling fire and anger race through my blood. “I was sixteen at the time, Charles. I literally don’t have any memories of my mother, other than the one of me killing her. Cora is the one who killed your sister, Charles, not me. If anything, I already got revenge on her for you.”
He shakes his head. “I suppose as a mortal you can’t fully comprehend the Born’s value on blood. On family. Forgiving you, forgiving your brother, would be the same as forgiving the woman who made the both of you.”