"You. Me. Dalton, who confirmed the marker under confidentiality. That's it."
I nod.
I stand. My knees hold.
I walk to the door. Through it. Down the corridor.
Maximus is coming toward me. He's halfway down the hall. He sees my face and stops.
I reach him.
"I need to talk to you, but not here."
He doesn't ask. He turns. We walk to our quarters. The door closes behind us.
I take his hands.
"Elena ran a panel tonight. She found a marker she'd never seen in vampire blood. She ran it again and confirmed." I hold his gaze. "I'm pregnant. Conception was before Thessivane. She's certain."
He goes still. All of him. Hands, jaw, breath.
A breath leaves him. Long. Uncontrolled.
His mouth opens. Closes. His chin drops a fraction, and the muscle at his jaw releases.
I know what was taken from him on a road outside Florence, the night Luciano ended his human life. His name. His house. The chance to pass it to a son. He told me once he stoppedcounting that as a loss and started counting it as a fact. Vampires are dead. Dead things don't make new life.
"Celeste." His voice breaks on the second syllable.
His grip tightens. His jaw works. The composure he carried through all of tonight goes. I watch it go.
His eyes fill.
He doesn't hide it. He doesn't wipe them. He stands in our room with my hands in his and lets the tears come.
His hands release mine and go to my stomach. Both palms. Flat. Careful.
He presses his forehead to mine. His chest moves uneven. His palms are cool against me, and underneath them my skin is warm, and underneath the warmth is a heartbeat he can't hear because it keeps time with ours.
He stays there. Forehead to forehead. Hands on me. I put my hands over his.
Neither of us says anything.
Chapter
Thirty-One
She falls asleep with her hand on my chest, over the mark.
I don't.
My hand rests on her stomach. I haven't moved it since her breathing leveled, and the tension in her shoulders released by degrees.
Her skin is warm beneath my palm.
But underneath it, folded into the rhythm of a heartbeat that matches mine, something is growing in a body that shouldn't be capable of growing anything.
Luciano took this from me. The night he found me and took everything I had, this was part of it. The ring. The name. The chance to pass it to a son. I buried those things so many times I stopped noticing they were buried. Vampires are dead. Dead things don't create life. I let that become fact.
