I found Alistair waiting in our bedchamber, shoulders squared to the window like a soldier at attention. Frost etched violent patterns on the glass. He didn't turn.
"The cold helps," he said, pressing his palms flat against the frozen panes. "Numbs the senses. Makes your scent bearable instead of..." He stopped, jaw locking.
Even as a vampire, he maintained that maddening composure that had first drawn me—the way he could command a room with stillness alone.
"We need to sort out what happens next."
He turned then, gray eyes winter-sharp, and for a heartbeat I saw him—my Alistair, the man who'd courted me with rare books and rarer smiles, who'd danced with me until dawn at our wedding, who'd once traced poetry on my bare shoulder with his fingertips.
That man still lived behind the monster's hunger.
"Sort." He tasted the word. "Is that what we're calling your infidelity?"
"I was lonely for months. You barely touched me—"
"To keep from killing you." The words snapped between us. "Every night, fighting hunger while you slept beside me."
"How could I know that?"
"You couldn't." Something shifted in his expression—regret, perhaps. Understanding. This was why I'd loved him, still loved him: his capacity to see past his own pain. "A wife abandoned seeks warmth. I comprehend the logic."
My heart hammered. Here stood everything I might lose—not just the man, but the title, the protection, the life that kept me from becoming another ruined woman begging relations for scraps.
"Understanding doesn't equal forgiveness." He moved to the fireplace, gripped marble until his knuckles went white. "You're Lady Blackwood. We're watched, measured, judged."
"I know what we are."
"Do you?" He faced me again, and God help me, even in anger, he was magnificent—that controlled power, that lethal grace. "Soon, they'll count months. They'll whisper."
"Let them."
"Easy to say when you're not raising another man's bastard."
The word cracked like a whip. "The child might be yours."
"Might." His laugh held bitter edges. "Our marriage hangs on might."
I stepped closer, drawn despite everything. This was the thrill of him—dangerous and disciplined, a blade that might turn in my hand. "What will you do?"
"I'll hunt animals." The admission came reluctantly. "Deer in the north woods. Boar, if I can find them."
"Animals?" Hope flared.
"Better than the alternative." His jaw locked. "Better than servants. Better than you."
"Will it work?"
"It must." He moved past me toward the door, and I caught his sleeve. The fabric was ice-cold.
"Don't leave. Not like this."
He stilled, looking down at my hand on his arm. "You want promises I can't make, Helena. About the child. About us. About a future I can't see past tomorrow's hunger."
"Then give me tonight." My fingers tightened. "Give me something."
For a moment, his control cracked. He cupped my face with frozen hands, and I leaned into the touch, remembering a thousand tender moments before fangs and secrets poisoned everything.
"Lock the door behind me," he said, pulling away. "Iron and oak might slow me if hunger wins."
"Alistair—"
"Take care of yourself." His voice gentled fractionally. "The grounds aren't safe after dark. The thing that made me still hunts."
He left. I turned the lock with trembling fingers, then collapsed against the door.
My position balanced on a knife's edge—one word from him would cast me out, destroy everything. Yet when he'd touched my face, I'd felt it: the love still there, buried under hunger and betrayal but not dead.
Not yet.
I pressed palms to my growing belly and made silent promises to the child within. I would win Alistair back. I would secure our position. I would not become another cautionary tale.
* * *
The following days stretched like a wire about to snap.
Alistair disappeared—sometimes for entire nights, vanishing into the north woods and returning before dawn.
The change struck hard and fast. Gray skin warmed to near-living. Hands steadied. That lethal precision returned to every movement. Whatever he hunted out there, it worked. He looked almost human again.
I caught servant whispers in corridors, conversations that died when I appeared.
"—master's taken wine at dinner—"
"—color in his face, did you see—"
"—her ladyship's been glowing—"
"—the sickness every morning, poor thing tried to hide it—"
They scattered like birds when I rounded corners, but their excitement lingered in the air. I passed the kitchen and heard Cook's voice: "Mark my words, a baby changes everything. Brings a man back to life, it does."
"Explains why his lordship looks so much better," another replied. "Nothing like an heir to give a man purpose."
Kathrin watched me with hawk eyes across the breakfast table. "The servants are talking."
"Servants always talk."
"About your condition." She set down her cup with deliberate precision. "And about Alistair's remarkable recovery. They've connected the two, naturally."
"Let them."
"Helena." Her voice sharpened. "They expect an announcement. The entire estate holds its breath for joy."
But there was no joy in the mathematics of our distance. Alistair maintained separation with military precision—never the same room alone, never closer than the length of a dining table, never a touch, not even accidental.
When duty forced us together, he stationed himself by doors or windows, always within reach of an exit.
And still I waited—leaving a chair turned toward his, a candle burning later than it should, the latch unshot on nights he passed our corridor—small invitations he could ignore until the hour he chose not to.
I told myself that fear was only a season, that hunger could be gentled, that one evening he would cross the length of a table and the length of his caution both, and take my hand.
For now, I believed that was still possible. I had to.