Chapter 280 I Miss Him – Amelia’s POV

Chapter 280 I Miss Him – Amelia’s POV
I woke to the wrong ceiling. White plaster, not obsidian. Early light filtered through the east-tower windows, pale and thin where the Royal Suite’s smart glass would already have warmed it. My hand found the empty space beside me before my mind caught up, and the absence felt like a draught.
Two nights. Forty-eight hours in my old suite because my husband had decided I was too fragile for the truth, and my pride had decided sleeping elsewhere was the correct response to being treated like glass. Kaela had spent most of that time restlessly circling our shared mind, her agitation feeding a headache that had nothing to do with pregnancy.
I still want to bite him, she growled as I pushed myself upright. Not hard. Just enough to leave a mark he can examine while learning how not to be an arse.
“You and me both.” My voice came out rough. The bed creaked beneath me, smaller than I remembered and sagging in the middle from years of sleeping one person. I pressed my palm to the curve of my abdomen. Fourteen weeks today. The bump had progressed from ‘maybe a large lunch’ to something no jumper could hide, firm and warm beneath my hand.
The pups offered no movement yet; Sylvia said that came later. Still, their solid warmth loosened something in me. Whatever Aleksandr had done, these two were perfect. Healthy. Growing exactly as they should, oblivious to the fact that their parents currently occupied different towers and communicated through intermediaries who looked desperate to be elsewhere.
I drew a bath, not because I wanted one, but because Sylvia had scheduled the fourteen-week scan for midmorning and arriving with dark circles and unwashed hair felt like surrender. The pipes groaned. Steam rose. I emptied enough expensive floral oil into the water to turn it opaque, then sank into heat that eased muscles stiff from two nights in a bed designed for someone half my husband’s size.
Kaela’s restlessness eased. Not completely; never completely. But she folded onto her haunches in our shared mind with the grudging contentment of a wolf who considered baths pointless and warmth useful.
I miss him, she said quietly. The ache behind the admission matched mine. Skoll’s an idiot. Aleksandr’s worse. But I miss their weight. The way the bed feels.
“I know.” I closed my eyes and let the water support my shoulders. “I miss him too, which is fucking infuriating. He deserves to be shouted at and missed in roughly equal measure, and doing both is exhausting.”
Human emotions, Kaela snorted. Messy. Complicated. I can miss my mate and want to tear his throat out. These things are not mutually exclusive.
I laughed, the sound bouncing off the bathroom tiles and returning slightly hollow but genuine. Kaela had spent twenty years trapped behind human ribs developing opinions on everything, including the emotional complexity that made marital arguments feel like being stabbed and hugged at the same time.
Dominic waited when I emerged. Crisp and composed, he assessed my damp hair, clean clothes and unconcealed dark circles in a glance, then arranged his face into professional concern.
“Your Majesty.” His bow was brief and precise, the gesture of a beta who had spent two days carrying messages between towers with dignified stoicism. “Medical wing at ten. Sylvia’s ready when you are.”
“I know, Dominic. I can tell time.” The sharpness surprised me. I hadn’t meant it to land that hard. “Sorry. That was... I’m sorry.”
He nodded once, forgiving me without making me explain. It was the kindest thing anyone had done for me in forty-eight hours, which said alarming things about the past two days. “The guards are ready. Whenever you are, my Queen.”
The walk to medical felt wrong. Six guards instead of twelve. No Aleksandr beside me, his frame taking up half the corridor and his hand resting at my back. Servants pressed themselves against the walls as we passed. Whispers followed, palace gossip moving faster than anything official ever could.
Sylvia looked up from her clipboard when I entered. Her eyebrows lifted, then her mouth tightened as surprise became professional assessment.
“Your Majesty.” She set the clipboard down. Her burn-scarred hands moved to the ultrasound machine with the efficiency of someone who treated medical equipment as extensions of her own body. “I wasn’t expecting you alone.”
“I wasn’t expecting to be alone either.” The words came out quieter than I’d intended. “Can you... would you record it? The scan? For him to see later?”
Her expression softened by the smallest degree. Sylvia had spent centuries watching people hurt each other and knew which wounds demanded immediate treatment. “Of course. Sit. Let’s see how these two are doing.”
The gel was cold, regardless of Sylvia’s claim that she warmed it. I flinched at the wet shock. Then the transducer moved over my abdomen and the screen filled with greyscale shapes that meant nothing to me and everything to her.
“There’s number one.” Her voice warmed as the image resolved: small, curled and unmistakably a pup despite the abstraction of ultrasound. The heartbeat filled the room in rapid, steady bursts. Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh. One hundred and sixty beats per minute. Strong. A tiny declaration of presence with no interest in parental arguments.
My throat closed. Tears came without permission, hot and silent, while Sylvia moved the transducer with tactful concentration and pretended royal emotion was not occurring beside her machine.
“And number two.” The screen shifted to a second shape, smaller and curled tighter, its heartbeat a fraction faster at one hundred and sixty-four. Sylvia had explained that variations of up to ten beats were normal. Hearing both, seeing both, made the reality unavoidable: two lives growing inside me while their father sat in another tower making security decisions without me.
They’re perfect, Kaela whispered. Her voice had gone soft, all the rage drained out of it, replaced by something that felt dangerously close to wonder. Look at them. They’re so fucking perfect, Amelia.
“They’re perfect,” I said aloud, because Sylvia was recording and Aleksandr would hear this later, and he needed to hear it from my mouth exactly as much as he needed to see it with his eyes.
Sylvia adjusted the transducer until both heartbeats overlapped in a chaotic duet, twins sharing a womb without apparent complaint. Then she wiped away the gel with brisk efficiency and handed me two printed images, satisfied by what the measurements confirmed.
“Fourteen weeks exactly. Both measuring perfectly. Heart rates strong. Development on track.” She capped the transducer and studied the screen once more. “In another two or three weeks, we may be able to tell what you’re carrying. It depends on position and how cooperative they feel.”
Boys, according to Aleksandr’s assumption. The Brecc line had only ever produced sons, and he called them his little princes with a century of precedent behind him. But the images in my hand offered no answers about sex, only the overwhelming truth of what they already were: mine. Ours. Perfect, regardless of chromosomes.
“Thank you,” I said. The words felt inadequate. Sylvia had kept the pups alive through a poisoning intended to take them, monitored them while I lay unconscious and delivered good news as though miracles were clinical outcomes.
She nodded, then rested one warm, scarred hand on my shoulder.
“Go show him,” she said, making it an instruction rather than a suggestion. “He’ll want to see. Recording or not, some things need to be held.”
I left with the images in my hand and Kaela quiet inside me, curled around the echo of two heartbeats. Whatever waited beyond the medical wing, the pups were worth every hard conversation, every hurt and every cold night in a bed built for one.