I’m pregnant.
“You bastard!” He turns toward the doctor and, in a move I didn’t see coming, he lifts the gun and fires. The shot rings out before my mind registers what’s happening, and blood sprays up the wall, almost in slow motion.
A scream rips from me, and the lifeless body falls to the floor, blood spilling out over the carpet from where the bullet went through his head. I pull my legs up to my chest and wrap my arms around them.
He killed him.
He killed a man in front of me again!
Azrael’s chest heaves as he turns his attention toward me. The darkness in his eyes has spilled over, leaving him looking more maniacal than ever before.
“We can’t have a baby, Hevan. Do you hear me?” His words send a gut-wrenching pain through me, but my protest becomes stuck in my throat. “I can’t have a fucking baby!” he bellows.
A strangled sound, almost like a sob, bubbles inside him, and I want to comfort him, but he’s angry and volatile and just killed a man, so I don’t want to push him further when he’s already well past his boundaries.
“I-I’m sorry,” is all I can muster. For what, I’m not sure, but the broken, desperate look on his face has my heart shattering into a thousand pieces.
“There’s no way,” he says, turning his attention to above my head, but it’s like he’s talking to himself. “None.”
Then he turns and walks out the door, leaving me with a dead body, a room full of blood, and a baby in my belly.
I’m utterly terrified.
But so is he.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Azrael
“How did she take you shooting the doctor?” Czar asks.
“I haven’t a clue.” I shrug. “It was a blur.”
“It’s not like you had a choice. From the moment he arrived, your father would have been aware, let alone him leaving. You did the poor bastard a favor, he’d have only tortured the truth from him,” Jensen says, understanding my reasoning.
“What are you going to do?” Czar studies me, and I keep gazing at the desk, utterly vacant.
“I have no idea.” I’ve never not been in control of a situation until now. Until Hevan, and the thought of losing control, of losing her, is too much to bear.
“She can’t have it,” he bites back, and I couldn’t agree more.
Our world is not a place where children belong. Our scars are a testament to that. It’s cruelty personified, a place to dehumanize, not a place for innocents.
I swallow thickly, knowing how much Hevan is going to hate me. “She wants to be a schoolteacher,” I whisper into the office, and a mocking laugh leaves me. “She loves kids.”
“She loves you,” Jensen states, and while I know this is true, the hurt I’m going to cause her will outweigh it. I’m certain it will. It already does; she’s just unaware of it.
There’s a sting in my eyes, and I take another drink from the Scotch bottle, embracing the burn. “I want to take her away somewhere before it all goes to shit.” I want to pretend to be normal, just for a short while. Have the memories of us happy together before I destroy it all.
“Where will you go?” Jensen asks, and I know the answer immediately.
My mind goes to the book she’s reading. “Italy. She’d love to go to Italy.” My voice has me sounding detached, and I know it’s because I’ve given in to the inevitable.
She can’t have this baby. We can’t bring an innocent life into this world for it to be destroyed by it.
I can’t allow this to happen.
My mind whirls with hopeless possibilities as I watch her sleep. Possibilities of normality, a future together where I can give her everything she desires. Where my darkness leaves her untainted by the blood pumping through my veins, thanks to the turmoil infecting my bloodstream.
