Page 48 of The Pakhan’s Hidden Heir

“Get out!” I scream, flinging a hand toward the door, my whole body trembling. “I can’t do this! Oh my god.” I stare up at him then turn away, unable to even look at him. “Get out… Just get out!”

Bastian turns and stomps out, leaving the door open, and the entire room starts to spin. My vision blurs, and my body feels weak and shaking. I get dizzy, so much so I almost dive forward head-first off the bed, but Ingrid is there, coaxing me back onto the mattress. She has her arms around me, talking quietly.

“There you are,” she breathes, easing me back into the pillows and drawing the blanket up over me with quick hands. “There you are, love. You almost took a spill, didn’t you?”

Reaching for the tray, she pulls it into her lap and lifts the bowl of warm broth, picking up the spoon.

“Now you’ll listen to me, and you’ll listen well. You’re going to eat, and I won’t hear a word against it.”

“I can’t,” I whisper. The hostility has gone out of me, but the fight is still there. It’s just shifting now. I’m fighting myself, fighting all the things I wish I could say, the questions I need to ask. The way I want him to hold me and comfort me now.

“You can, and you will.” Dipping the spoon, she holds it to my lips, her face softening even as her voice holds firm. “I’ve bitten my tongue all week and let you turn me away because I know your heart is breaking, and heaven knows you’ve got a good reason for it. But that ends here. The baby inside you doesn’t know a thing about bombs or bratva or any of the rest of it. All that little one knows is whether you feed it, and right now you aren’t.”

I turn my face away as tears well up, streaking down my cheeks as I realize the man I’m in love with is a monster.

He probably kills people.

He probably went and killed whoever he thinks planted that bomb and…

“If you keep on refusing,” she says, leaning with a look of concern, “that baby stops growing. Do you hear what I’m telling you? You’ll lose the baby.”

Her words snap my attention to her face and my hand rests on my belly where in a month’s time I could be finding out if I’m having a boy or a girl.

The tears come hotter as I realize she’s right.

I can’t keep starving my baby.

Bastian will just get angrier and he won’t let me go either.

And on top of losing him now, I may lose the baby too?

My mouth opens obediently and she tips the sour-tasting broth onto my waiting tongue.

I can punish him by being cold or distant, which may not be a punishment to him anyway, but I won’t punish my baby.

I love this baby already.

Another thing Lada is right about. I’m not going to risk losing it because Bastian’s real nature finally surfaced.

My heart can’t handle losing both of them.

17

BASTIAN

I wake early with Raina tucked against my chest, her back curved into me and the swell of her belly resting under my open palm. Under my palm the baby shifts and drives a heel or an elbow into her flesh and I keep my hand where it is through another kick, feeling him move.

He’s growing now, with only a month or so until he enters this world, and none of us are ready for it yet. I lift my palm away and slide my arm out from under her neck, easing to the edge of the mattress and sitting up with my back to her.

Depression has swallowed me whole over the past six months, a darkness I have never in my life experienced and may never recover from.

The only reason I’m still functioning is that she is alive, in bed beside me where I can monitor her and this baby. The only other time in my life I’ve felt this way was when Agnya was gone and my heart had been ripped out. At least Raina still breathes.

I just can’t have her.

Even if I could, she still hasn’t accepted my job.

The sheets shift as she rolls into the warm spot I’ve vacated, reaching across the mattress to brush her fingers along my back. “You’re leaving?” Her voice is rough with sleep, and her fingers find the waistband of my boxers and curl into them. “It’s not even six yet. Come back down here.”