The room stopped breathing.
I stared at Damien while Roman’s words echoed violently through my head.
Pregnancy rumors.
My pulse began hammering so hard it drowned out everything else.
“What?” I whispered.
Damien didn’t answer immediately.
That terrified me more than if he had.
His face had gone completely unreadable. Cold. Controlled. But I could see it now, because I knew him better than I should.
The tension in his jaw.
The stillness.
The dangerous kind of silence.
Fear.
Real fear.
“Who started the rumor?” he asked Roman quietly.
Too quietly.
The kind of quiet that came before terrible things.
“We’re tracing it now,” Roman answered. “It started in the Black Quarter an hour ago.”
My stomach twisted sharply.
The Black Quarter.
Of course.
Rumors there spread like blood i
