Chapter 79: Eighty

Hope

It was annoying how I was always waking up to Darius sitting by my bed. However, today, he was not the only person by my bed. There was a physician standing over the bed. I easily recognized him as he had attended to me once before.

I sat up on my bed defensively and said, "What is it? What's going on?"

"Calm down. Everything is going to be alright." Darius said in a soothing voice, then reached to touch my face.

I slapped his hand away from my face. "Don't. Why's he here? What's happening?"

Seeing that I wasn't going to relent until I got answers, Darius exhaled through his mouth and decided to explain things to me.

"He is here to perform a full body check up on-"

"I don't need one," I quickly said, cutting Darius off.

A full body check up? That was equivalent to executing me with a stake! I glanced at the physician and glared at him. If he touched me and sensed my pulse, he would immediately be able to tell that I was pregnant.

And since he appeared to be deathly loyal to Darius, there would be no way for me to convince him not to tell Darius about my pregnancy and lie that I had a plague instead. Wasn't this the worst situation that I could ever find myself in?

"No. I will not listen to your complaints today. I heard what happened yesterday. Hope, you're not well. We need to do something-"

"Are you afraid?" I cut Darius off once again, tightening my features in order not to reveal the fact that I was the one who was afraid.

"A-Afraid of what?" Darius stuttered.

"Afraid that I have a terminal and contractable disease that could affect you and your kingdom." I spoke with a bold tone.

Darius' eyes widened at my accusation and I could see his jaw tick. Hm. It looked like he was angry.

Darius turned to look at the physician and gestured for him to leave the room. The middle-aged man did as he was told obediently without putting up a fuss.

Even if he hadn't been ordered by Darius to leave, with the look on his face, it was clear that he was uncomfortable and would have eventually excused himself.

Well, that worked out for me. If he could just stay away forever, that would be the best thing.

Once the physician was no longer in the room, Darius scooted closer to me on the bed and said, "I'm not afraid that you'll affect me and the kingdom. I'm afraid that something bad might happen to YOU."

Darius emphasized on the last word and it surprised me, prompting me to point at myself and say, "Me...?"

"Yes, you. Don't you know that you're the most important person to me?" Darius asked rhetorically but I wanted to give him an answer.

I didn't know. Maybe I did know, but I didn't believe it.

"Am I more important than your kingdom? Than your throne? If I were to ask you to choose between me and them, would you choose me?"

I didn't know why I was saying all of these things. I didn't even-

"I would."

My brain froze up.

"If you really wanted me to choose, then I would choose you. I'm not a king because it's fun. It's just my duty and the only means I have to keep myself alive in this Kingdom. But if you were to ask me to let go of the throne; if you were to ask me to take your hand and run away with you, leaving all matters of politics and war behind...

"I would. I would choose you over anything else. Over. And Over. And over again." Darius said with an earnest tone.

I stopped breathing.

"Do you... Do you really like me that much?" I asked Darius with a small voice.

The response I got was him putting his hand over mine and holding onto it tight.

"I thought it was already obvious. I like you, very much. I love you very much, in fact. And that's the truth. So even if there's something up with your health, I'll be more concerned about helping you overcome it than doing anything else." Darius spoke with a reassuring tone.

Badum. Badum. Badum.

I could hear the sound of my heart beating loudly.

"Do you promise?"

Badum. Badum. Badum.

"I promise. I swear it." Darius said.

He squeezed my hand and reminded me that he was still holding onto it. It felt warm-his skin against mine. It was so warm and so... comfortable.

I was so much at ease that I let my brain stop making decisions for me as I said, "Then you can call the physician back inside to check me."

Darius smiled with his full set of teeth. Then he lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it.

"Thank you. Everything will be alright from now on. So don't worry any longer." Darius said, standing up to his feet to call back the physician.

He delayed in letting go of my hand to the point where I had to rip it away from his grasp. Afterwards, he called in the physician and it didn't even take as long as I thought it would for the man to announce me as pregnant.

However, I thought everything was fine since Darius told me that he would pick me over anything else. It was no new information that giving birth to a Lycan child in a human body would be impossible.

So from a certain perspective, the child inside my womb was a threat to my health. Darius would have to pick doing away with the child if he truly wanted to keep his promise of choosing me over everything else.

But Darius' next words after hearing that I was pregnant weren't the words that I expected to hear coming out from his mouth.