Chapter 127 Chapter 127
When I came back into the bedroom, Zaiel looked up instantly. “You were in there for more than ten minutes.”
“I’m allowed to use the bathroom.”
His jaw tightened slightly. “That’s not what I meant,” he said. I softened a little.
“I’m fine.” He stood and walked toward me slowly.
“You don’t have to be strong about this.”
“I’m not trying to be strong.” I said,
“Yes, you are.” He was too observant. I hated that about him sometimes. I moved past him. “I just need space.” The word landed wrong, and he went still.
“From me?” he asked.
“From everything.”
That was closer to the truth; that night I lay awake again. Not because of pain, but because of thoughts. What if I can’t do this? What if I lose it again? What if I resent it? What if I resent him? The last one terrified me most. Zaiel shifted beside me and pulled me closer in his sleep. Possessive, even unconscious. Safe. And suffocating. I slipped out of his arms carefully and walked downstairs. The house was quiet. I made tea in the kitchen and stared out into the dark yard.
Footsteps sounded behind me. Dad. “You’re pacing,” he said softly.
“I couldn’t sleep.” He didn’t look at me immediately.
“Is it about the hospital?” he asked. My heart stuttered. He knew. Of course he knew.
“I saw the discharge bracelet in the trash,” he continued calmly. “You forgot to rip it up.”
I closed my eyes briefly. “It’s early,” I said quietly. He didn’t react with shock. He just nodded.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Terrified.” He walked closer and rested his hand on my shoulder.
“You don’t have to want it right away,” he said.
“I don’t know if I want it at all.”
“That’s honest,” he said.
“I feel selfish.”
“You’re not,” he reassured me.
I turned toward him. “What if I lose it again?” I asked, and he didn’t give me false comfort.
“Then you’ll survive again,” he said quietly. His faith in me sometimes felt heavier than doubt.
“I don’t want to break again.”
“You won’t,” he said. “You’re not that girl anymore.” I wasn’t sure he was right.
The next few days blurred together. Nausea, fatigue. Silence. Zaiel started coming home earlier; he started watching me closer. He didn’t say anything controlling. He didn’t forbid anything, but the house shifted subtly. More staff present, more check-ins, and more quiet surveillance. I noticed he knew I noticed, but neither of us addressed it.
One evening, he found me sitting on the floor of our closet staring at nothing; he crouched in front of me.
“What’s going on in your head?” he asked.
“I don’t feel connected to it.”
“To the baby?” he asked.
The word made me flinch.
“Yes.”
“That’s okay,” he said, caressing my face.
“I feel like something’s growing inside me that I didn’t agree to.” I said weakly, and he didn’t correct me; he didn’t argue biology or fate, he just listened.
“I don’t want to disappoint you,” I admitted.
“You won’t.”
“What if I can’t love it?” I asked.
His hand came up slowly and rested over mine. “You will,” he said with confidence.
“How do you know?”
“Because you love fiercely. Even when you pretend you don’t,” he said with a smile. That hit too close, and I looked away.
“Don’t monitor me,” I said quietly, and his expression shifted.
“I’m not,” he said.
“There are more guards. More cameras.”
“You’re pregnant,” he said defensively.
“So?” I asked.
“So that changes things.”
“There it is,” I said.
He exhaled. “I’m protecting you, Beauty,” he said.
“I didn’t ask for that.”
“You never do,” he retorted.
Silence; this wasn’t an argument, not yet, but it was friction. He stood slowly.
“I won’t suffocate you,” he said.
“Promise?” I asked.
A beat.
“I’ll try,” he said, but
That wasn’t the same thing.
A week later, the fear hadn’t faded. If anything, it had deepened; every cramp made my heart race, every twinge felt like a warning, and I started counting days obsessively. I started reading medical forums at three in the morning, and I started imagining blood again. Zaiel caught me once, laptop glowing in the dark.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Research.”
“You’re spiraling.” he said
“I’m preparing.” I said,
“For what?”
“For it ending,” and his face hardened.
“It’s not ending.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Neither do you.” I shut the laptop.
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
He didn’t push, but I saw it was the beginning of frustration of helplessness. Zaiel Rhyland hates helplessness. And pregnancy—especially one he can’t control—makes him powerless. That realization scared me more than anything because powerless men with too much power compensate, and I could feel something shifting beneath the surface of our marriage, not breaking, not yet, just tightening like a string pulled too far. I lay back down beside him that night and let him wrap his arm around me again.
I didn’t know if I was seeking comfort or testing whether I could still breathe, and as I stared into the dark, one thought repeated over and over: I don’t know how to be a mother, and I don’t know how to stay myself if I become one. The fear wasn’t loud; it was quiet, and quiet fears are the most dangerous ones of all. I knew something was wrong before the blood came.
It started with a dull ache low in my abdomen, deeper than the cramps I had been obsessing over for days. I told myself it was normal. The doctor had said there would be discomfort. My body was adjusting. My hormones were shifting. Everything was fragile in the beginning; "fragile" was a word that had followed me for weeks.
Zaiel had left early for a meeting that morning. He stood in the doorway before he left, adjusting his cufflinks, watching me from across the room with that quiet intensity that never really turns off.
“Call me if anything feels off,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
“You say that a lot.”
“Because it’s true.”
It wasn’t, but I needed it to be.
The ache sharpened around noon. I was sitting in the library pretending to read when it hit harder, twisting and sudden enough to steal my breath. I gripped the arm of the chair and stayed still until it passed. My first instinct was to call him. My second instinct was stronger.
I went upstairs instead. I locked the bathroom door even though no one else was on that floor. My reflection looked pale again. I pressed my hands to the counter and tried to steady my breathing.
“It’s nothing,” I whispered to myself.
The cramp returned, heavier this time, spreading through my lower back. Then came the warmth between my thighs; my body recognized it before my mind did. I already knew I didn’t move at first. I just stood there, staring at the sink, waiting for denial to take over. It didn’t. When I finally looked down and saw the blood, something inside me went quiet. Not shattered. Not hysterical. Just silent. Again.