Always have time for you.
No matter how many children we make.
Those words bounced around my skull until they turned my brain to mush. If–no, when–this worked and the clinic did what it was infamous for, there would be no more trying. No more failed heats, no more miscarriages, just results.
Just a child that was half me and half Logan.
Then another.
And another.
And another.
He’d keep me swollen and silent while he paraded me around and others praised him for having such an obedient wife. I’d be nothing more than an incubator with a name.
The second they got his cum inside me, I’d be trapped.
Forever.
My breath hitched, and I stumbled over the heels he forced me to wear. No sneakers for Mrs. Stellar, Logan said I was too small, and they helped us look better together, but I knew the truth. He made me wear them so I couldn’t run.
“You’re okay,” he murmured. “This is going to fix everything.”
Terror clawed through my chest, sending a bolt of electricity down my spine. For so long, I’d survived by being the perfect wife. I was obedient; I did what was expected of me.
Always have time for you.
No matter how many children we make.
The words echoed inside my head once more, and this time something in me snapped.
Once I walked in those doors, I had two options.
I could do what I’d always done.
Be good, be quiet, be compliant. I could let them strap me into a bed and pump me full of Logan’s “solutions.” As long as I did what I was told, life could be easy after that. Strangers would congratulate me on the street, and I could live through a cushy American dream that never belonged to me as they finished erasing every hint of who I was in favor of the Stellar name.
Or, I could do something terrifying, and stupid, and likely to get me killed.
I could run.
The idea wasn't brave or thought out; it was just raw instinct roughly shaped by panic.
The last time we came, they needed a urine sample, and there was a little window in the bathroom. It was high up, but if I tried just hard enough, maybe I could reach it.
Just the idea brought a smile to my face.
“You look excited, Little Dove.” Logan placed his hand on the small of my back and guided me into the clinic.
Air conditioning rushed to greet us, and I breathed a little easier.
I nodded and hummed in approval.
“Good, you should be.”
I kept smiling because I had a plan, an escape. All I needed was the bathroom.
“Alright, Ms. Stellar,” the nurse following me down the hall said. “All we need is for you to pee in this cup–” She paused and handed me the plastic cylinder. “–then we’ll take you to your nest, and before you know it, everything will be over.”
