For a time, there is no treaty.
No corridors.
No saboteurs.
Only heat and breath and the solid reassurance of a body that has survived too much to be careless with what it wants.
When we finally lie still, my head rests against his chest, listening to the steady cadence beneath bone and scar.
I trace a slow circle over the center of his sternum, thoughtful now.
“There’s something,” I say quietly.
His hand tightens fractionally at my waist.
“What?” he asks.
“I ran a biomarker scan earlier,” I admit. “Routine.”
His body goes still in a different way now—alert, not tense.
“And?”
“There are markers consistent with early hormonal shift,” I say carefully. “It could be nothing. It could be stress.”
“Or?” he prompts.
“Or it could be conception.”
The word rests between us.
His hand moves instinctively to my lower abdomen, palm broad and warm, not pressing—just there.
“You are certain?” he asks.
“Too early to confirm,” I reply. “But enough to account for.”
He exhales slowly.
“This changes nothing about our current strategy,” he says after a moment.
“No,” I agree.
“But it changes our long-term planning.”
“Yes.”
He tilts my chin up so I meet his eyes.
“If this is true,” he says, voice steady and unflinching, “it will not be hidden.”
“I’m not asking to hide it.”
“And it will not dictate fear.”
“I don’t operate from fear.”
“I know.”
