Chapter 30
BILLY
The graveyard is trembling, the air tastes electric, the storm having passed, but it’s as if lightning hasn’t quite decided whether it’s finished with us or not.
The moon watches from above, cold, unblinking, painting her in cool candescent silver where she kneels in the mud, peering up at me like I am more than a man.
Balor lies facedown, face buried in the earth, nose and mouth filled with dirt. My hands are curled into fists. My pulse still not slowing. The rage not having left my blood, but it won’t, it never does, not where she’s concerned.
Penelope lifts her chin higher, peering up and over my head, unto the moon, my shadow falling over her as I drop down into a crouch. I lift my hand to her cheek, knuckles brushing away some of the dirt, and every part of me goes still.
There’s a tear in her lip; blood dried on her chin.
She’s breathing too fast, her ribs rattling like something fragile is trying to flutter away from inside.
Her big brown eyes aren’t on me, her clothes torn, her body shaking, matted hair strewn across her face, and I need her to look at me, to see me.
“Nellie,” I murmur, my voice strangely soft after all the violence. “Look at me.” And she does, uncertainty in her eyes. “You’re safe,” I tell her.
It’s a lie.
She knows it.
I know it.
The Obsidian knows it.
But she nods anyway.
And something in my chest cracks.
Her hand lifts, trembling, touching the back of mine against her cheek. Just her fingers on my skin, gentle as moonlight, and the whole world shifts. The anger, the fear, the months of absence, the nights spent wondering if she blamed me or missed me or cursed my name… all of it snaps into silence.
She’s here.
I am here.
And for a moment, nothing else matters.
“Come here,” I whisper.
She doesn’t hesitate. She pushes herself forward, collapsing against me, her forehead pressing to my collarbone, her arms curling weakly around my ribs. I wrap my arms around her, pulling her in, holding her with a care that feels foreign to a man like me.
She’s shaking so hard I can feel it through my bones.
“I thought you weren’t coming back,” she breathes into my chest. Her voice is ragged, scraped raw. “I thought- I didn’t know if-”
My hand slides into her hair, cradle-soft.
“I was always coming back for you.”
Silence falls between us, heavy but warm, broken only by her breaths as they slowly even out. I can feel her heartbeat against me, too fast, too frantic, but it’s there. Alive. Fighting.
When she finally pulls away, there’s something new in her eyes.
“Billy,” she says quietly.
It’s strange, she looks absolutely ruined, her lip split, hair dripping with rain and sweat, arms bruised where he grabbed her, yet she speaks like someone delivering a holy verdict.
She changes position, pulling slightly back from me, kneeling, mud soaking into her shins, palms slipping in the dirt as she steadies herself. Her breath comes in a slow, deep pull, preparing herself, bracing herself.
“I have to tell you something,” she whispers.
Immediately, something cold coils inside me. My hand reaches out instinctively, cupping the side of her neck, thumb brushing her jaw.
“What happened?” I ask, trying to keep the edge out of my voice. “Who touched you? Who else-”
“It’s not that,” she interrupts gently. Her fingers curl around my wrist. “It’s… something else.”
Her eyes drop, lashes trembling.
And it feels like the world holds its breath.
Mine stops entirely.
And then she says it.
And I think I might be dying.
“I’m pregnant.”
The moon could shatter above us and I wouldn’t notice. The world could split open beneath our feet, the mouth of hell swallowing us whole and I wouldn’t feel it. Every thought inside my skull empties in an instant.
Pregnant.
With my child.
With ours.
For a long moment, I don’t move. I can’t. All I can do is stare at her, the words echoing around in my head with a kind of awe I’ve never felt in my life.
“Say it again,” I manage, but it comes out like a plea.
Her eyes lift to mine, full of fear and fragile hope.
“I’m pregnant.”
My breath leaves me in a slow, trembling exhale.
Not shock.
But something deeper, baser, primal.
It feels like a vow etching its way into my bones.
I reach for her, both hands now, pulling her into my lap as if she belongs nowhere else.
My forehead presses to hers, our breaths mingling, my hands sliding to her waist, her ribs, her back as if relearning every part of her with new meaning, before finding the swell of her belly hidden beneath the oversized fabric of her torn long-sleeved T-shirt.
“You’re carrying my child,” I whisper.
Penelope nods, a tiny movement against my lips.
“And you were out here alone, down in the-”
Her breath hitches, guilt flickering in her eyes. “I didn’t know anyone would be down there…” she turns away, dropping her gaze as my hands tighten on the hard curve of her belly. “I was looking for a way out,” she confesses, something inside of me suddenly hot and prickly.
“A way out?” I pull back just enough to look at her fully, my hands tightening around her waist. “You were going to leave me?” She swallows, lips trembling, I shake my head slowly. “Penelope…”
She blinks hard, tears spilling over, “I was trying to keep him safe.”
“Him?” I ask her, my head doing all kinds of crazy things, working out numbers, dates, weeks, months, five since I last saw her, the night of our union, was she already pregnant before that? “You already know he’s a boy?”
“Well, no,” she sniffs, shaking her head, “It’s just.” She shrugs. “A feeling.”
Staring down between us, my hands on our baby, hers coming over top, she looks up at me, smiling, and I don't think I've ever seen her look more perfect than now.
I kiss her, savouring her, soft, slow, reverent. Her hands fist in my coat, pulling me closer, as if she’s afraid I’ll vanish again.
When I pull back, my breathing is erratic.
“They hurt you tonight,” I say quietly, trying to force the anger in my voice to quiet. “They touched what is mine. They could have taken you from me.” I press harder against her stomach, “From us.”
Her breath stutters, “Nobody knows, yet.”
“I don’t give a fuck, I will not let them think they can touch you whenever they want. You’re my Pair, everyone knows this, you are not to be touched. Pregnant or not.”
She looks up at me, fear and love and a little bit of lunacy twisting together in her expression. “What are you going to do?”
I smile, but there’s no kindness in it.
Only certainty.
Only conviction.
“I’m going to show them you’re untouchable.”
Her fingers tighten on my coat. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” I murmur, brushing a thumb over her cheek, “that tonight, every one of them will understand exactly what you are to me. And what this child is.” I tilt her chin up, my voice dropping to a darker register, her scent filling my nose, roses and earth.
“No one will ever lay a hand on you again without remembering what I did to the last man who tried.”
She shivers, and I hold her tighter, burying my face in her neck, breathing her in like I’ve been starved for months, and I have.
“I’ll protect you. Both of you. Even if I have to tear the whole estate to the ground.”
She exhales, a trembling, fragile sound, “I was so scared you wouldn’t come back.”
“I’ll always come back to you,” I vow against her skin. “I don’t care if the world tries to steal you a thousand times. I’ll take you back every single time.”
When she leans into me, exhausted, shaking, but safe, I gather her into my arms and rise to my feet, lifting her with a gentleness I didn’t know I had. She curls against my chest, trusting me, for what feels like the first real time.
“Don’t leave again,” she says, soft but pulled tight with fear. “I don’t wan-”
“I won't. I'm not.”
The moonlight follows us as I carry her from the graveyard, away from the blood, away from the fear, toward whatever comes next.
I look down at her, my Pair, my salvation, the mother of my child, and I know one thing with perfect, bone-deep certainty.
Anyone who touches her again, will pray for death long before it comes.
The graveyard is silvered with moonlight, marble stones gleaming like bones half-buried in wet soil.
Hail clatters against angel statues and cracked mausoleum doors, the storm reigniting, spitting its fury.
But everything feels quiet now, quiet that comes right before a life changes in ways it cannot return from.
My hand shackles around Balor’s ankle, and I haul the man through the fields, over the threshold of the manor, down corridors that echo with old whispers and fresh dread.
Nellie follows behind me, steps light but unwavering, clutching her arms across her belly to shield the life growing beneath them.
At the end of the hall, two guards stare me down as I approach, but then they see Balor, dragging behind me, the fury in my eyes burning like lava, they open the heavy doors to the meeting chamber without resistance.
The Council sits in their high-backed chairs, robed, silent, ancient as stone.
And I throw the dead man up onto their seated platform like rotting meat.
The thud echoes like a gunshot.
Every head lifts. Every gaze drops to her at my back, my Nellie, her bruises, her torn clothes, the dried blood down her chin. Never before has a woman been in this chamber.
Ignoring Gore as he stands, my eyes only on our father, I raise a single brow.
A murmur ripples through the chamber, low and poisonous.
I step between her and their eyes, blocking their view.
“Penelope is pregnant.”
The room goes still.
Dead still.
Silent.
Voice steady, cold, unshakable, I speak loudly, projecting, “Which means she is sacred. Untouchable. And anyone who harms her harms the child that carries my name, my bloodline. The Obsidian’s legacy.”
One of the elders leans forward. “We did not hear this from her.”
“You hear it from me,” I snap.
Silence again.
But something shifts.
Recognition.
Submission.
“This man touched her,” I tell them, “presumably without Council approval?” I look over them all, all fifteen of them sat along the large rectangular table, all peering down at me from their little stage, except for Gore, still standing.
“Two,” Milus says my name like a cold wash of heat dropping down my spine.
“You know, as well as we, that if you cannot get your Pair under control, someone else will come along to prove that they can.” My heart punches in my chest, clapping against my rib bones.
“You let her get away with murder.” He lifts a dark brow, lounging back in his throne style chair, carved wood, velvet seat covering.
“Literally,” he emphasises the word with a subtle lift of his mouth on one side, a silent mocking.
“And yet, she still stands, still walks, still talks.” His bright blue gaze drops to Balor, a crinkle to his nose as he sniffs, as if to allude to his removal of Balor’s tongue, like I should take his silent prompt and feel lucky Penelope did not suffer a similar fate.
“So many worse things could have been done to her,” he sighs heavily.
As though he wishes he had done more, as though he’s exhausted with my display, like I’m being overly dramatic.
But my thoughts wander to the many things that already have been done to her. I bristle. Wondering how the fuck I ever let them convince me to leave her for such a long time alone. Vulnerable.
“I fail to see why she is an exception to our laws. You step out of line, you are punished.”
Gore is still standing, his chest working harder than I’ve seen in a long time. His deep emerald eyes focussed entirely on Milus, and in this moment, I’m unsure whether he might use those huge, tattooed hands to finally put us all out of our misery and strangle the life out of our leader.
He could do it. He would get away with it. It would cause a lot of headaches, but I think Gore is much more liked than he thinks, despite the loyalty to our father.
“Balor threatened what is mine. Threatened what will become ours.”
Eyes widen all round as if just realising they themselves are going against their vows, our laws, we must endeavour to protect the future of The Obsidian.
They must recognise this pregnancy and protect it.
Just as they have every time before.
“And so,” I finish, voice dark as the earth beneath the crypts, “I will deal with his body in the way our laws demand.”
A blade is offered to me by an elder on the very end of the table, his wrinkled hand outstretched, but I don’t take it, preferring something of my own. I pull the short silver dagger from my boot, the one engraved with us, Two.
But before I step forward, I turn to her, my Pair, my future, my impossible salvation. Exhaustion sits heavy beneath her eyes in large navy rings, but there’s something far darker in them. Vengeance, hate, fight, love. Fuck, so much love.
I cup her cheek and she presses into my palm like it’s the first warmth she’s felt in months.
“She is my Pair,” I say, loud enough to rattle the carved walls, still looking at her. “She carries my child. From this night forward, she is to be honoured as such. As any of your Pairs. Anyone who looks at her with anything less than respect will answer to me.”
Gore looks at me now as I glance back up to the table, my head held high, strong, firm. And he bows his head.
And then slowly, the Council bow theirs too.
Every.
Single.
One.
But Father, his eyes are on mine, his chin lifted.
And even as Penelope takes the dagger, sawing off Balor’s hands, removing the parts that hurt her. Father Black watches, his gaze on her, a glint in them as blood paints her skin, the ‘clink’ of blade on bone, and I just know this isn’t over.