Chapter 11 011

Chapter 11 011

MEIRA

Cora knocked on my door just after eight.

"Someone's ,here for you," she said. "Downstairs."

I hadn't been expecting anyone. I didn't know anyone here. I followed her down with my hair still half done and my mind running through who it could possibly be.

A woman was waiting in the sitting room off the main hall. Small, older, a bag on the chair beside her. She stood when I came in and held out her hand.

"Meira. I'm Dr. Voss. I'm here for your prenatal appointment."

I stood in the doorway. "I didn't book an appointment."

"No," she said simply. "Someone did it for you."

I looked at her for a second. Then I came in and sat down.

She was quiet and efficient and didn't ask me anything she didn't need to. How far along did I think I was. Any pain. Any bleeding. Was I eating. Was I sleeping. I answered everything and she wrote things down and didn't react to any of it, just moved through it all like it was ordinary. That helped more than I expected.

Then she took out the doppler.

"Let's see what we've got," she said.

She pressed it to my stomach and the room filled with static for a second and then —

Two heartbeats.

Fast and strong and real, overlapping each other, filling the quiet of that room like the most certain sound I'd ever heard in my life.

I didn't cry. I was not going to cry in front of a stranger.

But my hand went to my mouth and I stayed very still and just listened.

Dr. Voss watched me over the doppler with the particular look of someone who had seen this moment many times and still respected it every time.

"Both strong," she said. "Good size for the stage. You're doing well."

I nodded. I didn't trust my voice right then.

She finished up and gave me a list of things to take, things to avoid, told me to eat more than I thought I needed to and sleep when I could. Said she'd come back in three weeks. Then she packed her bag and Cora showed her out and the room went quiet.

I sat there for a while.

Two heartbeats. I'd known there were two of them, Rose had told me, but knowing it and hearing it were completely different things. Hearing it made them real in a way nothing else had. Made them mine in a way that had nothing to do with Kaelan or my father or any of it.

Just mine. Just ours.

I pressed both hands flat against my stomach and sat there in that quiet room and let it settle into me properly.

I heard him in the hall before he appeared in the doorway. He stopped there, looked at me, took in whatever was on my face.

"She came," I said.

"Yes."

"I didn't ask for that."

"No," he said. "You didn't."

I looked at him. He was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, completely still, watching me with that expression he always had — calm, unreadable, giving nothing away.

"I heard them," I said. "Both of them. Their heartbeats."

Something shifted in his face. Small, quick.

"Good," he said.

That was all. Just good. But the way he said it wasn't nothing.

I looked down at my hands in my lap. "Why did you do it."

He was quiet for a second. "You needed it."

"I would have sorted it myself."

"I know," he said. "I moved it up."

I looked back up at him. He wasn't doing it for me — I understood that. It was practical. A pregnant woman in his house needed a doctor, it was a loose end, he tied it up. That was how he thought. I'd figured that much out about him already.

But he'd noticed. He'd paid attention without making a thing of it, without waiting for me to ask, without making me feel like I owed him something for it.

I didn't know what to do with that.

"Thank you," I said quietly.

He nodded once and pushed off the doorframe.

"Eat something," he said. "Cora has food."

He was gone before I could say anything else. Just footsteps down the hall and then the quiet settling back in around me.

I sat there a minute longer with my hands on my stomach and the echo of those two heartbeats still sitting somewhere in my chest.

I had come here with nothing. No plan, no safety net, no idea what came next. I was in a deal with a man who had his own reasons for everything he did and none of them were about me.

But my babies were healthy. And someone had thought to make sure I knew that before I even asked.