Alistair stood rigid behind his desk, jaw locked with the particular tension.
"Speak plainly," I commanded, moving away from his desk, closer to the door in case his anger suddenly descended upon me. "Whatever poison you're choking on, spit it out."
"My mother knows." The words landed between us like a trap snapping shut. "Not suspects. Knows. The child isn't mine."
My lungs seized. "That's impossible—"
"She named him." Alistair's voice could have frozen flame. "Our pest hunter. Nathaniel Crowe. Said his name like she'd been holding it on her tongue for weeks, waiting for the right moment to strike."
The certainty I had armored myself with cracked down the middle. I forced my spine straight, meeting his gray eyes that had gone silver with suppressed fury. "Your mother sees conspiracies in every shadow—"
"Don't." He slammed his palm flat on the desk, papers scattering. "Don't insult my intelligence by pretending she's wrong."
"What did you tell her?"
"Nothing. Yet." He circled the desk with deliberate steps, each movement too controlled, too precise. "She wants him dismissed immediately. Tonight, if possible. Gone from the estate before another dawn breaks."
"Then dismiss him." The lie tasted like copper on my tongue.
"I've delayed."
Alistair stopped at the window, pressing his palm to the shuttered glass.
"If her suspicion proves true—and we both know it does—dismissal invites retaliation. A man scorned, especially one who believes he has a claim to what grows in your belly, might expose our connection. Use it as leverage. Destroy us both with a few well-placed words."
The sadness that had weighted his shoulders shifted, sharpened into something colder. When he turned from the window, I saw it clearly—the predator stirring beneath the man's careful control.
"Do you know what enrages me most?" His voice dropped to something darker than midnight. "Being forced to picture him. The man you chose while I rotted in this tower. Strong. Vital. Blood pumping hot through living veins. Eyes that burn with the fire I'll never possess again."
"Alistair—"
"I've become this thing, this mockery of life, while you sought warmth in arms that could give it." He moved closer, that unnatural grace making my pulse spike. "Tell me, when he touched you, did you think of what I'd become? Or did you simply not think of me at all?"
The vampire's nature had fully stirred now, turning my controlled husband into something far more dangerous.
I recognized the signs from Maeve's texts—dilated pupils despite the candlelight, that absolute stillness between movements, the way he tracked my pulse at my throat and wrist.
"Hold yourself in check." I kept my voice level despite the fear crawling up my spine. "There's more we need to discuss, but not while rage decides the terms."
"Rage?" He laughed, the sound scraping like glass on stone. "You want to discuss my rage?"
"I want to discuss our survival—"
"You betrayed me with him." Not a question. The assumption landed like a slap. "There was no one else. Just the hunter who makes my mother bare her teeth. Just him."
"You don't know—"
"I know enough." He crossed the space between us with inhuman speed, slamming his palms against the door on either side of my head, caging me with his body. "I know his scent clings to your skin some days. I know you watch him from windows when you think no one sees. I know the child's heartbeat doesn't match mine because mine stopped beating the night I was turned."
"Stop—"
"You're mine." The words emerged on a growl that raised every hair on my neck. "Not his. Not anyone's. Mine by law, by vow, by every claim that matters."
His mouth crashed down on mine—brutal, demanding, full of fury and possession that should have terrified me.
Instead, heat pooled low in my belly as he kissed me like he meant to devour or brand me. His fangs scraped my lower lip, not quite breaking skin but threatening, promising, claiming with barely leashed violence.
When he pulled back, his eyes had gone fully silver.
"You belong to me alone, Helena. The hunter can rot in his room, but you—you're Lady Blackwood. My wife. Mother to my heir. No one else's."
The possessiveness frightened me. It also sent arousal spiraling through my veins like wildfire, shameful and undeniable. I fought to steady the moment before everything shattered beyond repair.
"We can't simply dismiss Nathaniel." I forced the words out steady despite my racing heart. "It won't remove the danger."
"What danger?" Alistair's hands stayed braced against the door, keeping me trapped. "Speak plainly."
"He knows I'm pregnant. Knows the child is likely his." I met his silver gaze directly. "But that's not the worst of it."
"Tell me."
"He's not just a hired hand clearing vermin from our lands." I drew a breath that tasted of his winter scent. "Nathaniel Crowe is a hunter of vampires, placed here by the Order of the Argent Dawn. They tasked him with tracking the elder who turned you."
Alistair went absolutely still—that terrible stillness that preceded violence.
"The injury during the celebration came from pursuing that elder. He was following a lead through the wine cellars when it nearly killed him." I chose my next lie with surgical precision. "His presence now serves our family's protection. Another blade between us and the thing that made you."
I swallowed the rest—that Nathaniel waited for any excuse to drive silver through Alistair's heart, that his protection came with conditions sharp as stake points, that the hunter who'd warmed my bed now circled my husband like a wolf tracking wounded prey.
"You're telling me," Alistair's voice could have cut glass, "that your lover is a vampire hunter stationed on my lands?"
"I'm telling you we need him alive and employed if we want to survive what's coming."
The silence stretched taut as a garotte between us, me trapped against the door while my vampire husband processed betrayals layered thick as winter snow.