Page 118 of Cruel Submission

The baby kicks again. Our daughter. Already demanding attention.

“We need to pick a name,” Mirabel says through a yawn. “We can’t keep calling her ‘the baby’ forever.”

“Tomorrow.” I pull the sheet up around her shoulders. “Sleep now, zaychik.”

She mumbles something that might be agreement and goes boneless against me, her breathing evening out as exhaustion claims her. I hold her through the descent, my hand never leaving the place where our daughter rests.

Beyond the bulletproof glass, our team is vigilant, all systems primed to keep the wolf from the door.

For tonight, my family is safe.

Tomorrow I’ll start planning how to make that permanent.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Mirabel

The morning starts with disappointment and eggs Benedict.

“I can’t go with you to the gynecologist,” Arkady says, setting down his coffee. He won’t look at me. Instead, he studies the table setting like the arrangement of silverware holds answers. “There’s a meeting. One I’ve been trying to reschedule for two weeks.”

“It’s fine.” I slice into my egg, watching the yolk bleed gold across the plate. It isn’t fine—not really—but I’ve learned to pick my battles in this house, and arguing about an appointment he genuinely seems conflicted about missing isn’t the hill I want to die on today.

“It’s not fine.” He says it like a correction. Sharp. “I should be there.”

“Arkady.” I reach across the table and cover his hand with mine, stilling it. “The baby and I will survive one checkup without you hovering over Dr. Petrov’s shoulder and making his sweat through his lab coat.”

He fights a smile and loses. “I don’t make him sweat.”

“Last visit, you asked him to explain the ultrasound measurements three times. The man’s hands were trembling by the second go.”

“His hands were cold.”

“His hands were terrified.”

Arkady exhales through his nose—the closest he comes to laughing when he doesn’t want to concede the point. “Debra can go with you,” he says. “And Yanis drives.”

“Yanis is not my chauffeur.”

“Today he is.” There’s no room for negotiation in his voice. “I’ll have a full detail on you—plainclothes. The armored sedan, not the SUV. It draws less attention.”

I want to roll my eyes. I want to tell him that a pregnant woman waddling through a shopping center is not exactly a high-value target requiring a motorcade. But I know better. Since the attack at the gate, since Gavriil’s men opened fire on our home, every outing has become a military operation with logistics documents and extraction routes and a man I love who can’t sleep unless he knows every exit between me and danger.

So I nod. “Okay. Debra, Yanis, armor-plated car, invisible soldiers. Got it.”

“And the panic button.”

I pat my coat pocket where the armband sits. “Always.”

He studies me for a long moment—not the hardened man he once was, but something softer, something that still makes my skin warm even after all these months. His eyes drop to my belly, to the swell that’s become impossible to disguise, and something unguarded moves behind his expression. Fear, maybe. Or wonder. Or the place where those two things live tangled together in a man who never expected to want this.

“Come home safe,” he says. Quiet. Not a command for once. A request.

“We will.” I squeeze his hand, then release it and stand… or rather, perform the laborious process that standing has become, which involves bracing, pushing, and internally cursing gravity. “Both of us.”

We gather our things, call for the car, and after too much fussing, finally get on the road.

“I didn’t think he was going to let you leave.” Debra smiles as we take the route to the doctors’ suites.