Now he slipped her hand into his, startled by how cold it still was. Worry began to assail him again, so he pressed the button for the nursing station in the next room.
The doctor treating her entered. Some, just some, of Aléx’s building anger subsided.
“She’s been in this bed for hours. What the devil is wrong with her?”
Before the doctor could speak, he heard Regina moan. Her face was scrunched up like she was in pain, and every protective bone in his body wanted to comfort her. They hadn’t sent anyone to the block in nearly a century, but if this doctor didn’t fix what was ailing Aléx’s wife, he was going to lose his head before morning.
“Can you stop barking, your kingship? My head is killing me.”
“Treasure?”
She cracked one eye open, and relief bled through him, making his legs feel wobbly. He sat down in the chair next to her bed, never letting her hand go as he used the other to bring the chair closer to her bed.
“Are you okay? You scared the hell out of me when you passed out like that.”
She groaned again. “I passed out? I guess that will teach me to let my blood sugar get that low again.”
“Your Majesty, I’m afraid it wasn’t your blood sugar that caused you to faint.”
Regina finally opened her other eye and followed the sound of the doctor’s voice until she was staring at him.
“What’s wrong with me, then?”
“The ventilation system went out in your lab.” The doctor opened the chart in his hand, grabbing his reading glasses from his lab coat. “The emergency technicians found an openedcontainer of polyethylene glycol on your working station. We think the poor ventilation and chemical exposure may have contributed to your fainting.”
“No wonder it was starting to get hot in there.” Regina rubbed the side of her head, presumably trying to give herself some relief while she spoke. “I was so focused on what I was doing, I didn’t realize. I thought it was the overhead lights at my workstation.”
“As I said,” the doctor continued, “we think the conditions and the chemical exposure contributed to your fainting, but we don’t think it was the cause.”
For the first time since she’d woken up, Aléx pulled his eyes from Regina’s frail form and looked at the doctor.
“Then what the hell is wrong with her? Go ahead and spit it out, man.”
There was a small, cautious smile on the man’s lips, and Aléx was two seconds from calling in the palace guards and having the doctor thrown in a dungeon. How dare he find amusement of any kind in his wife’s ailing condition?
“Your Majesties, the queen is pregnant.”
“The queen is what?” Regina said as she sat up in her bed, grabbing her head the moment she did. “That can’t be so. I had my menses as normal. It’s been more than three weeks since then, and every time I’ve used an ovulation kit, it’s said I’m not ovulating. How can I be pregnant without ovulating?”
The doctor walked closer to the bed, placing a gentle hand on Regina’s shoulder, adding just enough pressure until she took the hint and lay down. He then pressed a button on the side of the bed, raising Regina’s head up.
“You probably mistook implantation bleeding for your menses. The reason the ovulation tests were negative—”
“Is that I was already pregnant. Damn, I guess I’m proof that educated fools do exist. How could I be this stupid?”
The doctor chuckled. “Not stupid. Just not looking at the right signs. It happens more times than you’d think. I’ll leave the two of you alone so you can talk amongst yourselves. May I be the first to congratulate you both on the coming heir.”
Aléx finally found his voice as the shock of the doctor’s news wore off, and he finally met his wife’s gaze. His heart was pounding with excitement and worry, and if he admitted it to himself, he was all kinds of nauseous too.
“We’re going to have a baby.”
The words rushed out in an almost disbelieving huff. His chest was tight from the growing ball of joy swelling so quickly that it was pressing against all his vital organs. If dying of happiness was a possibility, Aléx was certain he might be nearing the end. It was a childish game Regina and her sister had played that brought them here. A twin swap gone wrong had brought joy bursting back into his life like he’d never imagined possible. For the first time in five years, Aléx was going to be a father again.
He glanced over at his wife. Her eyes were filled with tears, and she was looking at him as if he was the strongest, most capable person she’d ever met in her life. When she looked at him like that…goodness, it was more than pride, it was healing, slowly chasing away the darkness that had plagued him for so long.
He wanted to be the man she saw with his whole being. He wanted to be unscared, unafraid, and free to face his past without fear of drowning in it again.
The urge to tell her what she made him feel and what this news truly meant to him clawed at his insides. She was his wife. She should know what he’d been through and why this child was such a gift to him.
