Chapter 30 Konstantin
thirty
Konstantin
The mansion has become a war machine dressed in chandeliers.
Steel gates are layered twice over, cameras are tucked into shadows, and motion sensors hide in gargoyle mouths.
I’ve ensured every corridor is mapped by my men until they know the layout better than their own home.
It’s been three days with barely two hours of sleep, but the bond keeps me upright with her pulse steady against mine, proof that she’s alive.
As long as I feel that, I don’t break.
I fucking can’t.
Because the Reaper circles while my little fox carries my child. That makes this war something different now.
Misha finds me in the front hall while I bark orders at more of my men. He eyes the chaos with something between amusement and worry.
“You have turned the house into a military base,” he states.
“Good.”
“She will hate it.”
“She will live.”
Misha leans against the wall, folding his arms across his broad chest. “You are nesting, brat.”
I roll my neck along my shoulders before I snap someone’s neck. Preferably not the man who is like a brother to me. “I am securing my family.”
He snorts. “I do not think there is a difference right now.”
Cressida is upstairs doing . . . something.
Probably staying out of the way of my bad mood.
She doesn’t know yet that I’ve tripled her guard rotations again, that I’ve swapped out two men whose nerves I didn’t like, and that I’ve ordered a panic room to be built into the library.
That is an argument I’m saving for later, when she is too tired to scream at me.
Misha blows out a heavy breath as he shakes his head. “You will smother her.”
“She can breathe when she is safe.”
He tilts his head, watching me through those eerily, blank eyes of his. “And when she tells you she does not want all of this?”
The look I give him is cold and final. “She will get it anyway.”
There are parts of me that has softened around Cressida, but I am still the same monster in my core. That will not change. Especially now that there are even more reasons to let that part of me out to play.
She knew who she was getting when she accepted our bond and agreed to be my wife.
That night, I don’t let her walk the halls alone. I shadow her, silent, always close enough to touch. At first, she pretends not to notice. My little fox is clever like that, letting me think I’m winning while she waits for her opening.
She reaches for the kettle, but I beat her to it, pouring the water myself.
“I can make my own tea,” she says flatly.
“I will make it better.”
Her lips curve sharply. “Oh? Magic Russian hands?”
Instead of answering her taunt, I continue to make her tea just the way she likes before sliding the mug toward her.
She takes a sip then sets it down, cutting her eyes to me. “You’ve added more guards.”
“Da.”
“Konstantin.” Her voice is a warning and plea at once.
“Da,” I repeat in a harder tone.
“You can’t keep me in a cage.”
“You are not in a cage,” I growl.
Her eyes flash, her ire spiking to match mine. “It feels like one.”
The fury coming from her buzzes under my skin. I should let her rage burn itself out, but I’m not build to let her win an argument about her own safety.
“You are carrying my child.” My voice sharpens. “The Reaper wants you dead. There is no compromise.”
Her hand slams against the counter, the sound echoing through the house. “You don’t get to decide for me.”
“I do when it is your life.” My throat tightens. “Our child’s life. Do you think I could go on if something happened to either of you?”
She sees it then, the fracture under my calm. The place where my soul will split if she falls.
Her fury doesn’t vanish, but I watch it soften. “You can’t protect me from everything, Konstantin.”
“I can die trying,” I tell her, turning away before we break further apart.
Sleep is foreign now. When she finally dozes beside me, curled into my chest, I lie awake and count every beat of her heart. My hand rests along the curve of her stomach, feeling nothing yet, but imagining everything. A future I never asked for, never thought I wanted, but now can’t live without.
I get up at dawn, leaving her tangled in silk to stalk the grounds. I check the cameras, the gates, even the fucking shadows. I double-check the security rosters and swap men until I’m satisfied.
I’m spiraling, I know it, but the thought of her walking beyond these walls without me is enough to make my chest cave.
Yet, I bury the panic deeper.
Misha corners me by the garage. “You are becoming unhinged.”
“I snapped the day I found out she was pregnant and being stalked by a fucking psychopath.”
He sighs. “Then you better hope she does not find out just how deeply you have gone, or she will kill you before the Reaper gets the chance.”
But they don’t understand. None of them do because they haven’t seen the nightmares I have. The ones where I find her lying in a pool of red. The ones where I’m too fucking late and Giselda wins.
There is no line I won’t cross.
No rule I won’t break.
Because this isn’t about politics or power.
It’s about her.
It’s about the way she touches my face when I’m lost to the beast in me. About how she smiles at me like I’m still worthy even when I’m not. It’s about the heartbeat that now flutters inside her, tethered to mine by blood and fate.
By the third day, Cressida notices the panic room. She storms into the den where I’m reviewing shipment reports, her hair wild and her combat boots loud against the wood. “You added another room to my library and didn’t tell me?”
“Da,” I reply, climbing to my feet.
Cressida paces the room, the bond sparking in my chest. “Do you want me to rot in this house? Hide forever? Pretend I’m porcelain while you tear yourself apart out there?”
“Da.”
Her hand flies out slapping my chest hard enough that the sound echoes. “Bastard.”
I catch her wrist before she can pull away, my grip firm, but not cruel, and I pull her closer to me. “Your bastard.”
Her throat works, her eyes glistening with tears she’s trying hard not to let fall. My heart twists inside my chest, softening slightly.
“You’re suffocating me,” she says, her voice breaking.
I rest our foreheads together. “I’m keeping you alive.”
She may hate me in this moment, but she also loves me despite it. If I have to deal with her hate to keep her breathing, then I’ll carry it on my shoulders.
A world without her is unfathomable.
Later that night, she crawls into my lap in the dark, straddling me while the city howls beyond the windows.
Her hands grip my jaws, her nails biting into my skin. “Konstantin, you can’t keep me in glass. I can’t go on like this. You’re breaking me in a way that she’d never be able to.”
My jaw works back and forth as I fight responding in a way to push her further away from me.
Her hair swishes along her shoulders as she twists her head back and forth before she presses her forehead to mine. “I need to fight, Kon. I need to breath. Or you’re going to lose me anyway.”
My hands cup her waist, spread wide and trembling against her skin. “Don’t ask me to give you less. I can’t do that.”
She kisses me deep and angry. I taste her defiance, her fire, her love. I taste the reason it’s so fucking hard for me to stop doing what I’m doing.
When she pulls back with a ragged breath, she whispers, “Then find a way to let me breath without breaking yourself.”
I don’t answer her because I don’t know if I can.
But I can promise her that I’ll try. For her, for our love, for the heartbeat growing under her ribs.
Even if it fucking kills me.