I tensed, reading the shift in her expression. She was holding something back—had been since I'd arrived, some secret she was working up the courage to share.
"What is it?"
She didn't answer immediately. Instead, she stood and moved to where I sat, positioning herself directly in front of me. Then she took my hand and pressed it flat against her stomach.
Against her belly.
"I'm pregnant."
The words didn't register at first. I heard them, understood their meaning individually, but my brain refused to assemble them into anything coherent. Pregnant. She was pregnant.
With my child.
"Vasily?" Her voice wavered. "Say something."
I looked up at her face, then back down at my hand on her stomach. Her still-flat stomach, where something impossible was growing. Something we'd created together, that night in my bedroom when the walls between us had finally crumbled.
A baby. My baby.
"When did you find out?" The question came out hoarse, barely audible.
"Yesterday. I took two tests to be sure." She was trembling slightly, though she was trying to hide it. "I wanted to tell you in person. I needed to see your face."
My face. What was my face doing? I couldn't feel it, couldn't feel anything except the warmth of her skin beneath my palm and the thundering of my heart in my chest.
A child. A son or daughter who would have her dark hair or my green eyes, who would grow up in a world I'd built on violence and blood, who would need protection from enemies I'd spent a lifetime creating.
The terror hit first—a cold wave that crashed over me, threatening to pull me under. I wasn't fit to be a father. I was a monster, a killer, a man who'd done things that would make any decent person recoil. What could I possibly offer a child except danger and trauma and the constant threat of violence?
But beneath the terror, something else was rising. Something I hadn't expected, hadn't known I was capable of feeling.
Wonder. Pure, overwhelming wonder.
She was carrying my child. This woman I'd stolen and claimed and somehow started to deserve—she was giving me something I'd never thought I'd have. A future. A legacy beyond blood and empire. A reason to be better than I'd ever been.
I stood abruptly, my hand still pressed to her stomach. She flinched at the sudden movement, uncertainty flooding her expression.
"Vasily—"
I kissed her.
Not gently, not carefully. I kissed her like I was drowning and she was air, like she was the only thing keeping me tethered to the earth. My hands cradled her face, tilting her head back, and I poured everything I couldn't say into the press of my lips against hers.
When I finally pulled back, we were both breathing hard.
"You're not upset," she whispered. Half question, half statement.
"Upset?" I laughed, the sound foreign in my own ears. "Gabrielle, you've just given me something I never knew I wanted. Something I don't deserve. How could I possibly be upset?"
"I don't know what kind of mother I'll be. I don't know how to do this. My own mother died when I was nineteen, and my father—"
"Your father was a fool who couldn't see what he had." I cupped her face in my hands, forcing her to meet my eyes. "You are going to be an incredible mother. Kind and strong and fierce. Everything our child needs."
"Our child." The words seemed to hit her, making them real. "We're having a baby."
"We're having a baby."
She laughed then—a watery, overwhelmed sound that was half sob. I pulled her against my chest and held her while she cried, my hand stroking her back, my lips pressing kisses to her hair.
