The castle transformed into a war machine preparing for celebration.
Servants crashed through corridors balancing china towers and gleaming silver.
Footmen hammered ice for wine buckets, the sound ricocheting off stone walls.
In the great hall, Kathrin's voice boomed as she rehearsed proclamations about Helena's pregnancy and the Blackwood heir, each word weighted with triumph.
I needed air that didn't taste of preparation and performance.
From the morning room window—nothing. From the solar—empty lawns. From the servants' stair landing—no hunter's coat crossing the grounds.
Only after confirming Nathaniel's absence did I risk the gardens, slipping through the side door into February's grip.
The yew walk stretched before me, ancient trees forming a tunnel of shadow beneath pewter skies. My boots whispered against frost-brittle grass.
"You hide poorly."
I spun. Nathaniel emerged from behind a trunk thick as a carthorse, moving with that liquid grace that marked him as predator.
"I wasn't hiding."
"Checking every window before venturing out?" He blocked the path ahead, arms crossed. "That's hiding."
"That's avoiding unnecessary complications."
"I'm a complication now?"
"You always were." I stood straighter, refusing to step back. "But before you launch into another warning about my monstrous husband—"
"Your monstrous husband who'll drain you dry?"
"My husband who's publicly claiming our child." The words rang with more confidence than I felt. "There'll be an announcement. Documents. Legal recognition. The heir to Blackwood estate grows in my belly, and Alistair has chosen to embrace that future."
"It's easy to embrace what you can't create yourself." His laugh scraped like a blade on stone. "Dead things don't make life, Helena. He's claiming your bastard because it's the only heir he'll ever have."
"Don't call the child—"
"What should I call it? The miracle conception? The immaculate vampire baby?"
He stepped closer, close enough that I smelled leather and gunpowder.
"Here's what happens next. You birth that child. You're weak, bleeding, body torn open and remade. And him? He'll smell that blood, that vulnerability. The hunger will spike beyond any feeding, and he'll drain you before the midwife cleans the baby's face."
The image slammed into me—Alistair's control shattering, fangs finding my throat while our child wailed. My hand pressed to my belly instinctively.
"You're trying to frighten me."
"I'm trying to save you."
"From a future you've imagined?" Anger burned through the fear. "Or from a future where you're not the center of my world?"
"Helena—"
"You can't stand it, can you? That he's keeping me. That the child will have his name, his protection, his inheritance." I advanced on him now, fury lending me courage. "You wanted me desperate and cast out, running to your cottage with nothing but the clothes on my back."
"That's not—"
"You hate that I'm Lady Blackwood still. That I'll remain Lady Blackwood. That every door that closes to you stays open to me."
His jaw locked tight. "You think this is about jealousy?"
"I think you're furious that I chose him."
"You chose death." His voice dropped to something darker. "Vampires don't love, Helena. They are hungry. They feed. They survive. Whatever humanity you think remains in your husband, it's performance. Mimicry. The real Alistair died."
"You speak with such certainty." I studied his face, the absolute conviction there. "How? How do you know what vampires feel or don't feel? What are they capable of?"
"Common sense—"
"Bullshit." The profanity cracked between us. "You know the specifics. Details. You speak like someone who's studied them."
"Maybe I have."
"How? Can you even read those treatises you reference?" The barb flew before I could catch it, aimed at his common birth, his hunter's education.
His expression went granite-hard. In one fluid motion, he drew something from his coat—a silver stake, polished to mirror brightness, sharp as winter.
"This is my education."
He spun the stake between his fingers, the metal singing through air.
His body shifted, weight forward, arm extending in a perfect thrust that stopped inches from where my heart would be. Every movement contained lethal economy, the precision of long practice.
"This is how they die." His voice carried no emotion, just fact. "Silver through the heart. Quick, if you know the angle. Slow, if you want them to suffer."
Heat raced through me—fear mixing with something more dangerous.
The deadly grace of him, the control, the way his body moved like violence given form. This was what drew me months ago, this barely leashed danger, this promise of protection and threat combined.
"Do you demonstrate that for all the women?"
His mouth quirked, that crooked smile that had undone me before. "Only the ones who matter."
"I don't matter to you. You said so yourself."
"I said you'd never choose me." He sheathed the stake with practiced ease. "Different thing entirely."
"So this is what—your audition? Showing me you could kill my husband if needed?"
"Showing you I could protect you." He stepped closer, backing me against the yew's rough bark. "When this fairytale collapses, when his hunger wins, when you're bleeding out while he feeds—I'll be the one who saves you."
"I don't need saving."
"Not yet." His hand rose, hovering near my face without touching. "But you will. And when you do, you'll remember this moment. You'll remember I warned you. You'll remember I was ready."
"Ready to kill the father of my child?"
"Ready to kill the monster wearing his face."
We stood in the hush. He held my gaze as if any word might break something fragile between us.
"My Helena," he said at last, voice low and maddeningly sure, "fighting me because you want me to be yours."
The words landed like a match on tinder. I said nothing. I didn’t dare.
The truth of it pulsed under my skin with the same treacherous rhythm as the child’s heartbeat, and I let the quiet swallow us before I did something I could not take back.