I Lost Seven Babies for His Human Lover

Chapter 2

He rarely showed his emotions. Most days, his stone-cold demeanor made me joke that he was as stiff as a clockwork robot.

Even when I had nearly been drained by a low-born vampire last time, all he did was give a slight frown and bark orders at the physician to patch me up.

Turns out, Soren wasn't heartless after all.

I just wasn't worth it to him.

When I looked up into his glacial stare, my breath caught.

Servants swarmed me from behind, their grip ironclad as they wrenched my arms back.

In the manor's operating room, needle after needle of Pitocin stabbed into my flesh.

Cold sweat drenched me, and agony ripped through my body.

On the other side of the glass, Jolie Wells swung Soren's arm like an excited child.

"Dearest Soren, you're so wonderful! Soon our baby won't be a monster anymore. He'll just be a perfect, healthy little angel!"

Soren's steely mask flickered with something like remorse or pity, but the moment he saw the radiant smile of the girl in his arms, his tension vanished.

The doctor emerged, hesitating. "Sir, must we perform the C-section now? Miss Wells's due date is still two months away. Waiting would allow Elara to..."

Soren idly twirled Jolie's hair around his finger. "Jolie wants to see how long a five-month vampire spawn can survive outside the womb."

"Besides," he added with a cruel smirk, "aren't we doing Elara a favor? Fewer months of misery for her. Once she's recovered, we'll just make a proper, full-term heir."

The doctor paled but fell silent under Soren's withering glare.

The operating room doors hissed shut.

The scalpel's glint sealed my fate with a slicing sound as it cut into my abdomen.

Nearby nurses tittered behind their hands.

"Well, well, if it isn't our favorite lost cause," one of them said. "Finally squeezing out a brat, are you? Too bad it's just another vampire's curse."

"This abomination's only purpose is to absorb the curses meant for Miss Wells's child," another nurse spat. "Master's orders: no anesthesia, just yank it out raw."

The jeers sliced through me and sent my thoughts spiraling back to that anniversary night six months prior.

The normally icy Soren had seized me with desperate intensity, his fingers biting into my waist as he crushed his lips against mine.

He buried his face in the crook of my neck like a drowning man clinging to driftwood.

"I love you," he had growled, his voice husky with need. "Bear my child."

His whiskey-glazed eyes burned with such raw hunger that I nodded before thinking.

When I lost the first pregnancy, he mobilized every physician within reach.

During the procedure, he knelt at my bedside, and his calloused fingers trembled as they wiped my tears.

"Elara," he said as his thumb brushed my knuckles. "We'll try again."

The man who never showed weakness, this untouchable emperor, had glassy eyes when he whispered, "I promise."

I bit my lip until it bled while nodding, my chest aching with fragile hope.

We conceived, and we lost the baby again and again until the eighth pregnancy came along.

Each loss carved deeper wounds into me.

Now, after catching Jolie in his study and hearing those nurses' venomous laughter, the brutal truth detonated in my chest.

The child he had always wanted was never mine to begin with.