Mirabella
"I am just a bit overwhelmed.. "
The lie rolled out automatically.. I didn’t tell him.
Not yet.
The words burned the back of my throat, but I swallowed them down like poison. Alex had enough to worry about without the added weight of this new, fragile life growing inside me. We needed clear heads and steady hands. If he knew, he’d never let me step foot on the battlefield. He’d lock me away in the safest room he could find, and I would lose my edge, my authority.
No.
I would carry this secret. For now.
When the war was over, when the blood had dried and the dust settled, I would tell him. We would build a future on the ashes of what we survived.
For now, survival was everything.
---
The day of the main assault dawned grey and cold, the sky heavy with the promise of rain
