The hours after his warning were the longest of the whole ordeal. Declan could not watch over her every second, and the thought of an open door, a hidden eye, clawed at him. He would have barricaded her from the world if he could. And Makayla, for her part, refused to be made a prisoner of the life she had been given. She walked the garden in the morning, sat with Eleanor at the table, and told him gently but firmly, 'I will not live behind bars. Not for you, not for the baby. I will live.' And he loved her all the more for it.
Some nights, when the house slept, Makayla woke and went to the window and watched the dark. She had spent so much of her life bracing for the worst that she had almost forgotten how to stand still. But here, in this guarded, quiet place, with a man who looked at h
