“I can die trying,” I tell her, turning away before we break further apart.
Sleep is foreign now. When she finally dozes beside me, curled into my chest, I lie awake and count every beat of her heart. My hand rests along the curve of her stomach, feeling nothing yet, but imagining everything. A future I never asked for, never thought I wanted, but now can’t live without.
I get up at dawn, leaving her tangled in silk to stalk the grounds. I check the cameras, the gates, even the fucking shadows. I double-check the security rosters and swap men until I’m satisfied.
I’m spiraling, I know it, but the thought of her walking beyond these walls without me is enough to make my chest cave.
Yet, I bury the panic deeper.
Misha corners me by the garage. “You are becoming unhinged.”
“I snapped the day I found out she was pregnant and being stalked by a fucking psychopath.”
He sighs. “Then you better hope she does not find out just how deeply you have gone, or she will kill you before the Reaper gets the chance.”
But they don’t understand. None of them do because they haven’t seen the nightmares I have. The ones where I find her lying in a pool of red. The ones where I’m too fucking late and Giselda wins.
There is no line I won’t cross.
No rule I won’t break.
Because this isn’t about politics or power.
It’s about her.
It’s about the way she touches my face when I’m lost to the beast in me. About how she smiles at me like I’m still worthy even when I’m not. It’s about the heartbeat that now flutters inside her, tethered to mine by blood and fate.
By the third day, Cressida notices the panic room. She storms into the den where I’m reviewing shipment reports, her hairwild and her combat boots loud against the wood. “You added another room to my library and didn’t tell me?”
“Da,” I reply, climbing to my feet.
Cressida paces the room, the bond sparking in my chest. “Do you want me to rot in this house? Hide forever? Pretend I’m porcelain while you tear yourself apart out there?”
“Da.”
Her hand flies out slapping my chest hard enough that the sound echoes. “Bastard.”
I catch her wrist before she can pull away, my grip firm, but not cruel, and I pull her closer to me. “Your bastard.”
Her throat works, her eyes glistening with tears she’s trying hard not to let fall. My heart twists inside my chest, softening slightly.
“You’re suffocating me,” she says, her voice breaking.
I rest our foreheads together. “I’m keeping you alive.”
She may hate me in this moment, but she also loves me despite it. If I have to deal with her hate to keep her breathing, then I’ll carry it on my shoulders.
A world without her is unfathomable.
Later that night, she crawls into my lap in the dark, straddling me while the city howls beyond the windows.
Her hands grip my jaws, her nails biting into my skin. “Konstantin, you can’t keep me in glass. I can’t go on like this. You’re breaking me in a way that she’d never be able to.”
My jaw works back and forth as I fight responding in a way to push her further away from me.
Her hair swishes along her shoulders as she twists her head back and forth before she presses her forehead to mine. “I need to fight, Kon. I need to breath. Or you’re going to lose me anyway.”
My hands cup her waist, spread wide and trembling against her skin. “Don’t ask me to give you less. I can’t do that.”
