Chapter5
1259 Words
Astrid POV
I sat on the edge of the bed for a while, listening to the house settle around me.
Marcus had not moved from the hallway. I could hear his slow, steady breathing through the door. Patient. Immovable. Following orders the way pack enforcers did, without question, without guilt.
After about twenty minutes I stood up, squared my shoulders, and walked to the door.
"I need to go downstairs and eat something," I said calmly. "I have not eaten since this morning."
Marcus looked at me without expression. "Alpha said you stay put."
"Alpha did not say I should starve."
"He said you stay put," Marcus repeated. "That is all I know."
I stared at him for a moment. He stared back. He had at least a hundred pounds on me and the blank, settled look of someone who had never once lost a standoff.
I went back into the bedroom.
I tried Damon's phone. It rang four times and went to voicemail.
I tried again. Same thing.
I sat on the floor with my back against the bed and my knees pulled up and I focused on breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. My head was starting to feel a little light, which meant my blood sugar was dropping. I had not eaten since a small breakfast before my morning clinic appointment, and now it was nearly evening.
The baby needed food. That was the only thing I let myself think about. Not Damon. Not Sable. Not the way Vera had looked at me with that perfectly calm, perfectly unkind face. Just the baby.
I got up and knocked on the door again.
"Marcus. I am not asking to leave. I am asking for food. Please call Damon and ask him. He would not want me going without food, I know that much."
A long pause. Then I heard the sound of a phone being dialed. Low murmuring I could not make out through the door.
Then silence.
The door opened a c***k. Marcus looked at me differently now. Not softer, exactly, but something in his expression had shifted. Like whatever Damon had said had landed somewhere complicated.
"Alpha is busy," Marcus said. "He said you are fine."
I blinked. "He said I am fine? He did not say send me food?"
Marcus closed the door.
I stood there in the middle of the room and felt something cold spread through my chest. Not fear. Not yet. Something more like clarity. The kind that comes when you stop hoping the situation is something other than what it is.
Damon was at the clinic with Sable. He was worried about her pregnancy. He was not worried about me.
I looked around the bedroom for options. The window opened onto the sloped part of the roof over the back porch. I had joked once, years ago, that I could escape out the window if I ever needed to. Damon had laughed and said, "Where would you even go, little storm cloud?"
I was not laughing now.
The drop to the porch roof was maybe six feet. From the porch roof to the ground was another ten or twelve. In the dark, hungry, and pregnant, that was not a risk I was willing to take.
I sat back down. I drank water from the bathroom tap. I pressed my hand flat to my belly and talked quietly, the way Dr. Lena had said some mothers did even this early, when the baby could not yet hear but the mother needed to say something out loud.
"We are going to get out of here," I told it. "Both of us. We are going to be fine."
Hours passed. The light outside the window went from gold to grey to black.
I was lying on the floor with a folded blanket under my head when I heard the front door open downstairs. Heavy footsteps. Damon.
I heard his voice, low and quick. Marcus answering. Then the footsteps came fast up the stairs and the bedroom door opened.
Damon looked exhausted. His tie was loosened, his sleeves rolled up, his face drawn tight.
He stopped when he saw me on the floor.
"Why are you on the floor?"
"Because I got dizzy from not eating and sitting up was too much effort," I said flatly.
Something moved across his face. "Marcus was supposed to bring you food."
"Marcus said you told him I was fine."
He swore under his breath and crouched down in front of me. He reached for my hand. I let him take it because I did not have the energy to pull away, and also because some stupid part of me still wanted him close.
"Astrid, I am sorry. That is not what I told him. He misunderstood."
"Or he took the version of your instructions that gave him the most control over me," I said. "Because that is what some of them do, Damon. When you are not watching."
His jaw tightened. He knew I was not wrong.
He helped me sit up. He went downstairs himself and came back with food, real food, soup and bread and a glass of cold water. He sat on the floor beside me while I ate and did not speak until I was done.
"We need to talk," he said finally.
"I know."
"I am not going to let you leave, Astrid. I know that is not what you want to hear. But you are my mate. My fated mate. That is not something either of us can just walk away from."
I set down the empty bowl. I looked at his face. The face I had memorized in every mood, in every light, in two years of a life I had built entirely around loving him.
"You locked me in our bedroom, Damon."
He flinched. It was small but I saw it.
"I know. I should not have done that. I panicked."
"You panicked," I said slowly. "And your solution was to lock me in a room while you went to check on the woman carrying your child."
He had no answer for that.
I pushed myself up to standing. My legs felt steadier now that I had eaten. My mind felt steadier too. Clear in a way it had not been all day.
"I am going to need you to decide something, Damon. Not for the pack. Not for the Council. For me." I met his eyes. "What am I to you? Really. Because right now, tonight, I do not feel like your mate. I feel like a problem you are trying to manage."
He stood up too. He reached for me.
And then his phone rang again.
The look that crossed his face when he saw the screen, that brief flash of conflict, told me exactly where his priority was before he even opened his mouth.
"I have to," he started.
"I know," I said.
He answered the call and stepped out into the hall.
I stood alone in our bedroom. I looked at the half packed bag still sitting on the bed. I looked at the door, open now, the hallway empty for the first time all evening.
I looked at my stomach.
I thought of Dr. Lena's report still folded in my bag, proof of the thing Damon did not know yet. Proof of the miracle I had been carrying alone all day.
He did not deserve to know. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
I picked up the bag.
And I walked out.
- Writer
