Chapter 135 135

Chapter 135 135
Amy's POV

Brian left without answering my question. He just stood up, looked at me for a moment with that expression I couldn't fully read, but knew he was pained and walked out. The door closed behind him and I heard his footsteps move down the corridor and get quieter.

I went back to planning. About twenty minutes later I felt the first thing.

It was low, a tightening, slow and dull, that moved across the bottom of my stomach and then released. I had felt things like it before over the past months... the doctors called them practice contractions, said they were normal, said my body was preparing.

I sat very still and waited to see if it came back. It didn't, at least not immediately. I filed it away and kept my face exactly the same. Thirty minutes after Brian left, the door opened again.

The man who walked in was not what I was expecting.

I don't know exactly what I had built Richard up to be in my head. Something harder maybe. Maybe someone that looked like the kind of person who poisons an entire royal family and spends so many years hunting their child. I expected someone who looked like a threat.

He looked like someone's problem. He wasn't even good enough for me as I felt disappointed. This is the man who killed an entire population because he felt like it?

He was older, well dressed, calm in a way that was completely natural. What a freak. He looked around the room briefly and then pulled over the single chair in the corner and sat down across from me like we were about to have a meeting.

He looked at me for a moment.

"You look like her," he said. "Your mother. Around the eyes."

I didn't say anything. I clenched my fists. How dare he talk about my mother like he was close to the Queen?

He nodded slightly like my silence was a reasonable response. "I imagine you have a lot of feelings about meeting me. That's understandable. I'm not going to pretend this situation is comfortable for you."

"What do you want?" I snapped at him.

"To explain myself," he said. "I think you deserve that much."

I looked at him. "You think I deserve an explanation from the man who murdered my parents? What I deserve isn't just that. I also deserve to have your head."

He didn't flinch. "I think the situation was more complicated than that framing suggests. But yes. I owe you honesty at minimum."

I kept my face still. Keep talking, I thought. Every minute you spend talking is a minute Damien is getting closer.

He leaned forward slightly with his elbows on his knees. "I don't want to hurt you. I want you to understand that clearly. You are the last of a royal bloodline that I have a great deal of respect for despite everything. Hurting you is not part of any plan I have."

"But my child is," I said.

"Your child's blood," he said, like he was correcting a minor factual error. "There's a distinction. The child won't be harmed. I need a small amount of blood taken at birth, cord blood, essentially. The concentration of royal lycan power in a newborn of your line, in the first hours after birth, is unlike anything that exists anywhere else."

He said it like he was explaining a research finding. He sounded like this was a topic he had spent a long time studying and was pleased to finally discuss with someone connected to it.

I felt sick. I didn't show it. I can't believe he's thinking of getting my child like he has a right to it.

"You've been studying this for a long time," I said. I kept my voice neutral.

"It's over twenty years," he said. "Since I first understood what the royal bloodline actually carried. It's not just strength. It's not just authority. The blood itself holds something that can be transferred under the right conditions. I've spent twenty years developing those conditions." He paused. "I was close with your parents once. Before things became complicated. Your father was brilliant. You should know that. He understood power in a way that very few people do."

He said it almost warmly. I thought about how my father died. About the poison that moved through the clan slowly and looked like illness, making my mother begging a man she trusted to take her daughter and run.

"In all my ears on this earth I have never seen someone as shameless as you are." I fired at him, "you poisoned innocent people and then me them go through hell by releasing demon rogues before they died. You're talking to me now like you have a right to my child. What kind of entitlement–"

The tightening came back so I wasn't able to finish what I was saying. It was lower this time. Starting at my lower back and moving forward and it was longer than the first one. I controlled my breathing very deliberately and kept my eyes on Richard's face and I did not move.

It lasted about forty seconds and then it released. If he knew about it, he might rush me and succeed with it.

I kept talking. Kept him focused on me and not on anything else. "So you need the birth to happen here. Under your conditions."

"Under controlled conditions," he said. "Yes. I have someone who can handle the delivery safely. You and the child will both be well cared for. After the procedure you're free to go. That's not a negotiating position, that's the actual plan."

He believed that. I could tell he actually believed that was a reasonable offer. That was the most unsettling part of this entire conversation. He had spent so long inside his own logic that he genuinely thought he was being fair.

"And Damien?" I wanted to know.

His expression shifted slightly. "Damien is a separate matter."

"He's the father of my child."

"He's also an obstacle," Richard said. Not unkindly but plainly. "I don't expect you to be comfortable with that. But I think you're practical enough to understand that some things are outside my ability to promise you."

Obstacle. The one who made it possible for him to get a baby he wanted to use was now disposable and an obstacle. Because he knew how powerful Damien was.

I filed that word away and added it to everything else I was holding onto right now.

He stood up. "I'm not going to rush you. You're close to your time and stress isn't good for either of you. I'd encourage you to think about cooperating because the alternative is simply waiting, and waiting means this happens on a timeline that's less comfortable for you."

He moved toward the door.

"Richard," I said.

He stopped and looked back.

"Did you know at all?" I questioned. "When you took everything from them, did you know know me?"

He looked at me for a moment. "I knew there was a child. I didn't know where. I looked for a long time."

"But you didn't find me."

"No," he said. "I didn't find you."

He left. The door closed.

I sat in the silence and I breathed. The tightening came back faster this time. Much faster than the gap between the first and second. It started in my back, moved forward, and this time it was real.

It felt like the beginning of something that was not going to stop. I pressed my restrained hands flat against the floor and I set my jaw and I rode it out without making a single sound.

It peaked and then it faded. I sat there breathing carefully when it was gone. Not yet, I told my body. We can't do it yet and not here.

He is coming. Damien would be coming and I knew that the same way I knew my own heartbeat. I just needed more time.

I needed my body to give me more time. I can't let them know. I absolutely can't.