Pregnant for the Ruthless Billionaire Vampire

CHAPTER 6

ELENA'S POV

The GPS said forty-three more miles.

Forty-three miles of dark mountain roads, black trees swallowing the headlights on both sides, and Viviana Drakov slowly dying in the passenger seat.

"You're gripping the wheel too hard," she said. "I can hear your knuckles cracking."

"I'm driving. Stop talking."

"Talking keeps me conscious."

"Then say something useful." I kept my eyes on the road. "Like why the council chose tonight to poison you."

She shifted in her seat and winced. Even in the dark I could see the black veins spreading up the side of her neck.

"I confronted Lady Morgana directly," she said. "Told her I knew about the plan to eliminate you and the baby. I thought she'd pull back. That she'd want to avoid the exposure."

"Morgana Aion doesn't pull back from anything."

"No. She doesn't." Viviana pressed her palm against her ribs. "She poisoned my wine at dinner. Smiled at me the whole time. We talked about the weather. Asked about my family in Europe." A pause. "I didn't realize until I was back in my room and my skin started burning."

"And Lucian?" The words came out harder than I meant them to. "Was he at dinner?"

"He was there."

"Did he know?"

"No."

"You keep saying that."

"Because it keeps being true."

I said nothing. The road curved sharply and I took it too fast, tires screaming against the asphalt.

Lucian's text sat in the back of my mind like a lit fuse.

“I'll find you. I'll find our child. And when I do, we'll settle this, once and for all.”

Protection or threat. I still couldn't tell. And not knowing was worse than knowing the worst.

"What does he know right now?" I asked. "Tonight.

What has Morgana told him?"

"That you ran because you were lying about the pregnancy. That you panicked when the truth was about to come out." Viviana paused to breathe through a wave of pain. "She's been feeding him a version of tonight that makes you look like the villain and makes him look like the victim."

"And he believes her."

"He wants to believe her. There's a difference." She turned her head toward the window. "Believing his mother's lies is easier than facing what he did to you. What he felt during that ritual. What his eyes turning gold actually means."

"I don't care what it means to him."

"Yes you do," she said quietly. "You wouldn't be this angry if you didn't."

I pressed harder on the accelerator instead of answering.

"Elena."

Her voice dropped. Urgent and stripped of everything except the warning underneath it.

I glanced over.

The veins had reached her jaw. Her hand was shaking hard against her ribs, fingers trembling like she'd lost control of them.

I floored it.

The safe house came out of the darkness without warning.

A stone cabin buried deep in the mountain, trees packed so tightly around it that the road behind us vanished the second we pulled in. No neighbors. No lights for miles in any direction. Just wind moving hard through the pines and the sound of my own heartbeat loud in my ears.

I killed the engine and ran around to the passenger side.

Viviana couldn't hold her own weight. I pulled her arm over my shoulder and took most of her against my side, moving us fast toward the front door.

"Seraphine mentioned a keypad," she said against my ear.

"She didn't give me a code."

"Then break it down."

"I can't just…."

"Elena." Even half-dying she managed to sound sharp. "You killed two fourth-tier vampires tonight with your bare hands. You threw a vampire through a wall with a single burst of power. Break the door down."

I shifted her weight to one side, pulled back my free arm, and drove my fist into the wood just below the handle.

The door swung open like it had been waiting for me.

I stood there for half a second staring at my own hand. The knuckles weren't even bruised.

"Nightshade strength," Viviana murmured. "The sooner you stop being surprised by it, the better."

I got her inside.

Seraphine had stocked the cabin like she was preparing for a long war.

Weapons mounted on the far wall. Silver daggers, stakes, vials of holy water lined up in precise rows.

Shelves packed with labeled vials, dried herbs, thick books with cracked spines and handwritten notes tucked between the pages. A kitchen with real food. A first aid kit opened on the counter like it had been left ready on purpose, like she always knew this night was coming.

Maybe she did.

I got Viviana to the bedroom at the end of the hallway and lowered her onto the bed as carefully as I could manage.

In the light she looked worse than she had in the car.

The black veins covered the entire left side of her neck and branched across her collarbone in thin jagged lines that kept moving while I watched, crawling forward in tiny increments like something alive and patient. Her skin was burning hot. Her breathing came in shallow, uneven pulls.

"Tell me what you need," I said.

She opened her eyes. "Why are you helping me?"

"Because Seraphine isn't here and you're dying and I'm the only one in this cabin." I moved toward the shelves. "Tell me what you need."

"Green vial. Small. Smells like copper and burning metal."

I worked fast, pulling every green vial off the shelf and uncorking each one until the smell hit me like a fist. Copper and something scorched. Sharp enough to make my eyes water.

That was it.

I brought it back.

Viviana took it with shaking hands and drank exactly half, her face twisting like it tasted like something dredged up from a grave. She held it back out without a word.

"The rest," she said, "rub along the veins. Start at the collarbone and work upward. Don't rush it."

I sat on the edge of the bed and worked the liquid slowly along the branching black lines. Where it touched them they faded slightly, like ink dissolving at the edges. Not disappearing. Retreating. Slowing just enough to breathe.

"Is it working?"

"Buying time." She exhaled carefully. "The full antidote is back at the brownstone. We left without it."

"So what does that mean right now?"

"It means I need something stronger to hold the poison back until Seraphine gets here." Her ruby eyes found mine. "I need Nightshade blood. A few drops mixed with what's left in that vial. It won't cure me. But it'll neutralize the dark magic component long enough to matter."

I looked at her.

This was the woman who stood in the council chamber and dismantled me in front of the most powerful vampires in existence. Who wrapped herself around Lucian while Logan's hand was still bruising my arm. Who smiled at me with that slow, triumphant smile as the elevator doors closed on my face.

Two years. Two years of starving and shrinking and surviving on scraps while she walked past me through those penthouse doors like I was part of the furniture.

"You knew," I said. "Three times a week for two years you walked into that penthouse. You saw exactly what my life looked like. You knew I was barely eating. You knew how he spoke to me. You knew all of it and you never said a word."

"No," she said. "I didn't."

"Why?"

"Because I needed him to choose me. You being weak and invisible made that easier." She held my gaze without flinching. "I'm not going to soften that into something more forgivable. I knew and I chose to look away. Every single time."

The room was very quiet.

"I'm not asking for forgiveness," she said. "I'm asking you to decide who you are. Not who two years of that penthouse made you. Not who the council wants you to be. Who you actually are when it's just you and the choice in front of you."

I picked up a silver dagger from the weapons wall.

Sliced across my palm before I could think about it any further.

Three drops into the vial. I swirled it once and handed it over.

She drank it.

For a moment nothing happened. Then the veins at her collarbone began to pull back steadily, retreating like something that had finally met resistance it couldn't push through.

Viviana closed her eyes and let out a breath that sounded like it had been held for hours.

"Thank you," she said.

"Don't thank me. Stay alive long enough to be useful."

The ghost of a smile crossed her face. "I can do that."

I went to the kitchen, found bread, and ate standing at the counter with the silver dagger still in my other hand.

My body needed fuel. Two years of ignoring that fact ended tonight.

I ate and I listened. Wind against the stone walls.

Viviana's steadier breathing from down the hall. The cabin settled around us like it was deciding whether to trust us.

And underneath all of it, the silence where Seraphine should have been.

Sixty miles south. Alone in a brownstone with a council hit squad at the door. She had put me in that car and told me to drive and I had driven because she was right, because the baby came first, because sometimes the hardest thing you'll ever do is leave someone behind and keep moving anyway.

I finished eating and went back to the bedroom doorway. "How long have you known about the mate bond?"

Viviana had her eyes on the ceiling. "Since the night of the ritual. When a vampire finds their true mate it sends a pulse through the supernatural world. Those of us sensitive enough feel it like a frequency shift."

She paused. "I felt it from across the city. I knew before he did."

"And you came running."

"I came fighting," she corrected. "I had spent years building something with Lucian. Not love. I won't lie and call it that. But position. Security. A future that made sense on paper. And in one night a blood servant I'd barely looked at twice threatened to unravel all of it."

"So you made sure he threw me out."

"I made sure he had every reason to choose me over you." A pause. "I'm not proud of it."

"What did Morgana promise you? In exchange for all of it."

She was quiet for a moment. "Protection for my family in Europe. Old debts. Old council enemies. She promised to clear them if I helped keep Lucian focused and away from anything that might make him question her." Her voice dropped. "The fake pregnancy was my idea, not hers. I was desperate. I could feel him pulling away even before you left. Like the bond was already working on him whether he wanted it to or not. I thought a child would lock him in place."

"And Morgana found out you were lying."

"She always finds out everything." Viviana's jaw tightened. "She didn't confront me. She just poured the wine, smiled across the table, and waited."

I pulled the chair from the corner and sat facing the door with the dagger across my knee.

If something was coming through that door tonight it wasn't going to find me with my back turned.

Several minutes passed in silence.

Then I saw it.

One thin black line pushing past Viviana's collarbone with slow, patient determination. Then another beside it. A third branching upward toward her throat.

"Viviana."

She looked down.

That quiet expression crossed her face. The one that had already made its peace with something I wasn't ready to accept.

"Silver bowl," I said, already moving. "Black herbs, red thread. Don't tell me it's not enough."

"Elena…."

"Don't." I had the bowl off the shelf and the herb bundle in my hand before she finished my name.

Struck a match, got the herbs burning, carried the smoke back to her bedside and held it steady against the advancing lines.

They slowed. Pulled back from the edge.

But Viviana's expression didn't change.

"It's slowing it," I said. "That's something."

"It's managing," she said. "Not fixing. There's a difference and you need to understand it. Without the full antidote this poison will keep adapting to everything we throw at it. We are buying time, Elena.

That's all."

"Then we buy enough time for Seraphine to get here."

She opened her mouth to answer.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand.

I grabbed it fast.

Unknown number. No name. No context. Just eight words and a set of coordinates.

“Safe house compromised. Do not stay. Move now.

I stared at the screen.”

Before I could process a single word of it, Viviana's hand locked around my wrist.

Iron grip despite everything. Her eyes were fixed on something past my shoulder, wide and locked in a way that made every hair on my body stand straight up.

I turned slowly.

The protection symbols carved into the doorframe were glowing red. Pulsing in a slow building rhythm, like a heartbeat accelerating, like pressure mounting behind a wall that was running out of time to hold.

Someone was pushing through Seraphine's barrier from the outside. Pushing hard and getting closer with every pulse.

And then Viviana's body went rigid beneath my hand.

Her back arched clean off the mattress. Her mouth opened in a silent scream, jaw locked so tight I could see every tendon standing out in her neck like cables pulled past their limit. Every black vein on her body blazed at once, all of them simultaneously, racing across her chest and up her throat and branching across her cheek in seconds like fire that had been waiting all night for permission to run.

Her body slammed back against the mattress and arched again. Hard. The bed frame cracked against the wall with each convulsion.

"Viviana!" I grabbed her shoulders and held on with everything I had. "Viviana, stay with me!"

Her eyes rolled back.

The veins were still spreading.

She was dying, right now, right in front of me, faster and harder than any of us had prepared for.

And whoever was outside that door was still coming.