SHADE POV -
Everything felt too loud in my head. The crown felt like it burned. I couldn't sit still. Couldn't shut my brain off. Couldn't stop flipping through papers that might as well have been written in venom.
Brooke was here. Back on this land. Breathing my air. And I couldn't do a damn thing about it.
I'd already fired off messages to every Council contact I had. Some formal. Some frantic. Some laced with the kind of threats that should've gotten me disqualified. Every response came back the same.
Abandoning a former fiancée after a confirmed pregnancy was bad optics.
In our world? It was treason.
That was the kicker. If I'd just let the damn thing be born, then snuffed it out quietly, no one would have said a word. Hell, I could've dumped it at a distant hospital and walked
