"I'm not trying to make you mine." The words snapped between us like a pure lie. Behind us, the castle's preparation roared on—servants shouting, wheels grinding over cobblestones, Kathrin's commands ringing from upper windows.
Nathaniel's jaw locked. "Then what are you trying to do?"
"Get answers." I stepped closer, close enough to see frost forming on his leather coat. "You work for my husband. You draw wages from Blackwood coffers. That means you owe me the truth about what you know and how you know it."
"I owe you nothing beyond my contracted service."
"Wrong." My voice could have frozen flame. "You know how to kill vampires. You carry silver stakes. You speak of their nature with battlefield certainty. Explain."
His hand drifted to the stake's hilt—reflex, not threat. For a moment, only winter wind spoke between us.
"I was five." He started his confession. "A hamlet called Ashford, thirty miles north. We had forty families, a mill, a chapel with one bell that rang for births and deaths both."
"Nathaniel—"
"They came at dusk." His eyes went somewhere I couldn't follow. "A raiding cadre. Seven vampires, maybe eight. They moved through houses like wind through wheat. Doors meant nothing. Locks meant nothing. They drained whoever they found—children, elderly, pregnant women. The screaming lasted hours."
My stomach twisted. "How did you survive?"
"The Order of the Argent Dawn." He spat the words like a battle cry. "A militant brotherhood devoted to vampire extermination. They'd been tracking that cadre for weeks. Arrived just before midnight, when half the village lay dead and the other half lay dying."
"They saved you."
"They found me under my mother's body." His voice went flat as hammered steel. "She'd tried to shield me. Her blood had soaked through my clothes, made me smell dead enough that the vampires passed over me. The Order pulled me free, confirmed both parents were corpses, and took me with them."
"Took you where?"
"Their stronghold. A fortress-monastery where orphans like me learned to read, write, and kill." He pulled the stake fully from its sheath, silver catching winter light. "By seven, I could recite vampire anatomy. By ten, I could forge blessed silver. By fifteen, I hunted alongside senior knights."
"They made you into a weapon."
"They made me into what the world needs." He resheathed the stake with violent precision. "Someone who understands that vampires aren't misunderstood humans. They're predators wearing human faces."
"If your life belonged to the Order, why take employment here?" I pressed harder. "Alistair hired you before his transformation. You were hunting foxes and rabbits months before any vampire walked these halls."
"A grown man needs coin."
"A grown man with Order training could earn coin anywhere." I studied his face, watching the muscle in his jaw jump. "Unless the Order wanted eyes on noble estates. Unless your employment was always surveillance dressed as service."
He didn't deny it.
"Christ." The realization hit cold. "How many estates have Order hunters embedded? How many servants are actually soldiers?"
"Enough."
"And when nothing supernatural appears? You just... what? Clear vermin and collect wages while waiting for monsters?"
"Something always appears eventually." His smile held no warmth. "Your husband proved that."
"What's it like?" I couldn't stop the question. "Living from childhood with that much hatred lodged in your heart? That splinter of revenge that never works free?"
"It's not hatred. It's a clarity." He moved closer, backing me against ancient yew bark. "Vampires are not human. Whatever personality they wore before transformation, it's just echo. Memory. The hunger always wins."
"Not all creatures are the same. Human or otherwise."
"Pretty philosophy from a woman who's never watched vampires feed."
"I've watched humans commit atrocities without supernatural excuse." My voice sharpened to a blade. "Lord Pemberton poisoned three wives. The magistrate in Whitmore hanged children for stealing bread. Men are perfectly capable of monstrosity without fangs."
"Men can choose differently. Vampires can't." His certainty burned like acid. "The hunger isn't a suggestion—it's law. Physics. Gravity. Your husband will feed on human blood eventually."
"He hunts animals—"
"For now." Nathaniel's laugh scraped like glass on stone. "Wait until stress peaks. Until the animal blood stops satisfying. Until you're bleeding and vulnerable and singing to his hunger like a siren."
"Stay away from him." The command cracked between us. "Alistair has never harmed a human and won't start now."
"I'll watch. I'll wait. And when he crosses that line—not if, when—I'll have every right to put silver through his heart."
"You have no rights here—"
"I have every right." His voice dropped to something dangerous. "That child you carry? It's mine. My blood. My claim. That gives me more rights than any employment contract."
The truth hung between us like a blade.
"Just a reminder: tomorrow, there'll be an official announcement." I forced steel into my voice. "Documents will be signed. The child will be recognized as the Blackwood heir. Publicly. Legally. Permanently."
His face went white as fresh parchment. "You can't maintain that lie."
"Watch me."
"Helena, please—"
"No." I stepped around him, moving back toward the castle's bright chaos. "You made your choice when you let me return to Alistair's bed all those months. You chose silence and wages over truth. Now I'm choosing security for this child."
"Security with a vampire?"
"Security with a lord who claims the baby despite knowing it's not his blood." I turned back, meeting his wounded gaze straight on. "That's more than you offered. All you gave me were afternoons in secret and a hunter's paranoia."
"I gave you truth—"
"You gave me what you could spare without risking your position." Each word aimed to wound. "Don't pretend otherwise. And don't interfere with tomorrow's announcement. The child will be Alistair's heir. You'll remain the hired hunter who clears our lands of pests. Nothing more."
I left him standing in the winter light, his face carved with hurt deeper than any stake could drive. Behind me, I heard silver sliding from leather again—not practice this time, but frustration given form.
The castle doors swallowed me back into warmth and celebration, but I carried the cold with me—the weight of Nathaniel's history, his certainty, his claim on the life growing beneath my heart.
Tomorrow the lie would become law. Tonight, I'd count the costs.