Vadim
Her face twisted in disgust as she tried to push me off her. Then she covered her nose with her hand. I pulled back and sniffed my pits. Clean. Fresh. I had showered after training this morning.
She gagged and tried to roll onto her side.
I climbed off her and watched her yank the covers back and run for the bathroom.
I knelt on the bed and waited.
Then I heard it—violent retching, followed by gagging, followed by silence, followed by more retching.
A flurry of excitement hit the pit of my stomach.
I climbed off the bed and walked to the bathroom door.
I knew I didn’t stink.
She was kneeling in front of the toilet, pushing her hair back with a groan, cheeks flushed. She reached for some toilet paper and then registered me in the doorway.
“What did you do?” she said, pinching her fingers over her nose and waving me out. “Use a whole bottle of shower gel?”
Insolent little—
“I believe that’s my child causing the sickness,” I said. “Not my scent.”
And I waited.
Waited while she went very still. Waited while it moved through her—the arithmetic of it, the timeline, the particular quality of silence that follows the arrival of something irreversible.
She carried my seed.
“I’ll send for a pregnancy test. If it’s positive you’ll see a doctor.” I pulled the door shut behind me.
And grinned all the way to my bedroom.
I had nailed her good and proper.
An heir.
My legacy.
He would be strong.
??
??
??
Me: Did you give it to her?
Radovan: Yes, Pakhan.
I stared at my phone. Nothing followed.
Me: Well? What did she say?
Radovan: She took the package and shut the door.
Me: And?
Radovan: She came out of her room a short while later and went to the kitchen.
He had delivered the test. She had sent me the picture—a single image of the positive result, nothing else. No message. No words. Just the photograph, sent and left to sit there.
Me: What is she doing right now?
Radovan: She asked for Spartak. Said something about stabbing me.
I rubbed my jaw.
How bad were these hormones going to get. And for how long.
“Bogdan,” I called.
The door opened immediately.
“Who’s in the office that has children?”
His expression was blank in the specific way of a man who had not been briefed for this specific question.
“Go and find someone with a child. A man. Preferably one with several.” I considered the timeline. Nine months was a significant operational period to navigate blind. “Send him up.”
I couldn’t ask my father. He was worse than me in every respect that mattered here.
Olya would handle her nutrition—she already monitored what came out of that kitchen with the focused attention of a woman who took her domain seriously. Radovan could take night duty. Iskra had no issues with Spartak, and Tau was always discreet.
He had never mentioned what he saw on the balcony that evening.
Not to me. Not to anyone, as far as I could determine.
My thoughts were interrupted by the door bursting open. Bogdan stood behind a man I didn’t recognise—middle-aged, pale, the specific expression of someone who had been collected from wherever they were and brought here without adequate explanation.
“Who is he?”
“He works in the bakery,” Bogdan said, with a shrug that suggested he had done his best with the brief he’d been given.
“You,” I said, pointing at the man. “Sit down.”
“Sir, I didn’t do anything wrong—”
“How many children do you have?”
“Please, Pakhan.” His eyes moved between Bogdan and me with increasing desperation.
“Leave us,” I told Bogdan.
I waited.
“Get away from the door,” I said.
A pause. Retreating footsteps.
“Now.” I pointed to the chair opposite me. “Sit. I have a few questions. That’s all.”
The man had been through four pregnancies.
Somewhere between awe and disgust, I poured him a large drink.
The trauma he had survived required at least an entire bottle.
The more he drank the more he talked—and the more he talked the further the internet’s clean clinical summaries retreated into irrelevance. This man had lived through four of these. Four. He had field intelligence that no website had thought to include.
I took mental notes.
All of them.
??
??
??
I stepped out of the car a new man—armed with knowledge, four pregnancies' worth of field intelligence, and the quiet confidence of someone who had done their research.
Tau opened the door as I approached.
“Congratulations,” he murmured, stepping aside. “You might want to check in on her.”
By the time I glanced back he had vanished. I heard him speaking to Bogdan somewhere down the hall.
My confidence adjusted slightly when I found Radovan stationed outside the living room with the expression of a man who had been through something he lacked the vocabulary to describe. He wouldn’t meet my eye.
I handed him my bag and peered into the room from the doorway.
She was curled on the couch, a light grey blanket pulled up to her chin, eyes red, nose running. I leaned in to see what she was watching.
A herd of reindeer. A newborn, legs folding and recovering, trying to find its footing in the snow. The mother circling, nudging, waiting.
“Come on,” Iskra whispered from behind the blanket, and began to sniffle.
Yeah. Fuck this.
I began to back away.
The scene cut to a pack of wolves running hard through the snow.
“Nyet. Poshel ty,” she screamed at the television.
I stopped moving.
I wasn’t equipped for this.
“Oh, you’re here,” she said, turning to look at me with red eyes. “That’s you. Those damn wolves.”
I looked at the screen. The reindeer were running. The herd was intact.
“In my defence,” I said, “I’ve never harmed an animal.”
The reindeer got away. Iskra blew her nose. I left—at pace—and took the stairs without looking back.
I closed my bedroom door behind me.
She was more volatile than me.
Radovan was bound to get the brunt of it.
With a chuckle, I went off to shower, thinking back to the baker’s advice.
It would be easier to avoid her.