16. Zara
ZARA
F ive Weeks later
Ache is the first thing I register, sweet-sting, everywhere he marked me. It’d been like this for weeks. An insatiable need between us. A fire I didn’t want to put out. The only good thing I had going for me.
My hand spread across my belly. The second only good thing I had going for me. I wasn’t sure how my mother would feel if she could see me now.
Pregnant.
No doubt, no maybe. The ultrasounds and tests etched the truth in grayscale, eight millimeters of future, pulsing like a verdict. The technician congratulated us, and Sterling met my gaze over the monitor, smiling the way conquerors smile at new land.
I wasn’t quite sure if I was ready to be a mother. What did someone as young as me know about parenting? Especially since I had one dead, whom I couldn’t remember, and one alive, who was striving to win the worst parent award.
I stared out the windows on my side. Sterling’s breath warmed the notch at my spine, his arm lying heavy across my waist, palm entwined with mine over barely swollen skin, as though he could already feel royalty kicking back.
I stared at the window’s reflection, and let memory storm.
One week after the night he cornered me in the laundry room, Sterling found me again.
No chloroform haze, no rough scramble. He came on silent feet, linen whispering as he lifted the sheet. Moonlight carved him in silver. Scars and ink, menace dressed as desire.
“Open for me, hummingbird,” he’d murmured, voice all smoke and hunger. “Let me see you choose it.”
I should have shut, locked, welded. Instead my knees drifted apart, of their own treacherous will.
His palm soothed bruises he’d painted earlier, and shame twisted into a heat too bright to bear.
He slid inside, slow, deliberate, until burn became fullness, and fullness became need.
When release snapped my spine, I hated the gasp that broke from me, almost as much as I hated the way he whispered ‘mine’ like a prayer.
That night seeded what beats beneath my ribs now, proof that choice can hurt more than force.
Back in the present, Sterling stirred, fingers flexing against my abdomen. Half-sleep fell from him in folds, and he lifted his head, eyes dark and smug.
“Still sore?” he asked, voice gravel-rough with morning.
“Sore isn’t the word.” It’s not quite reproach, not quite confession.
He chuckled into my hair. “That’s because you asked for it.”
“Asked,” I echoed, tasting rust.
His hand covered the small swell the doctor named the ‘gestational sac’. “Eleven weeks,” he mused. “A good start.”
Anger sparked bright, but my body, traitorous, exhausted, leaned into the warmth. I slipped from beneath his arm, bare feet sinking into the Aubusson rug. My robe hung on a chair, like dignity waiting to be reclaimed, and I knotted it tight, crossing to the vanity mirror.
Reflection: wild curls, bruised lips, a constellation of love-bites Sterling called proof. The robe’s belt cinched just above the barely-there curve. A ribbon on a gift he wrapped without permission.
Water hissed as I twisted the faucet. Cold bit my fingers, until pulse and fury matched rhythm. Behind me, bedsprings sighed, and footsteps padded across hardwood.
His presence filled the doorway, bare chest, inked ribs, trousers slung low. Steam curled from a coffee mug servants anticipated before sunrise. Predators always awoke ready.
“Regret it?” he asked softly. “Say the word, and I’ll open every door.”
Doors he nailed shut himself; jobs lost, accounts frozen, friends ghosted. He salted exits like a general poisoning wells. I met his gaze in the mirror.
“I regret that it’s you,” I said. Truth tasted like blood and freedom both.
His jaw ticked, subtle. “But not the child?”
Answering felt like choosing a side in a war I never enlisted for. My hand settled over my belly. “No,” I whispered, because the flutter there felt innocent of his sins.
Something unspooled in his expression, satisfaction? Relief? He masked it fast. “Then we agree.”
A knock sliced the moment.
“Why isn’t Zara in school?” Madeline’s voice, lacquered and lethal, drifted through the corridor, like poisoned perfume.
Panic jolted. Sterling’s eyes glinted and amusement sharpened his mouth. He set the mug down and closed the space between us, fingertips stroking a bruise along my collarbone.
“Does she care,” he murmured, “or does she already know?”
He kissed the hollow behind my ear just as the door swung wide.
Madeline Kingsley stood framed in cream silk, assessing the tableau: me in Sterling’s robe, Sterling half-dressed, steam twining like gossip. Her gaze lingered on our proximity, on the flush climbing my neck.
“You’re not dressed,” she observed, voice sugar-iced.
“It’s Saturday,” I managed.
Her smile was all blade. “Some girls enjoy sleeping in.” Eyes flicked to Sterling. “Your father needs help with luggage.”
“He’s not my father,” Sterling muttered, but brushed past her, past me, with a look that promised later. The corridor swallowed him, and his absence chilled the suite.
Madeline remained. The polite mask dropped, and cruelty gleamed beneath. “Desperation,” she said softly, “never wears well, even in silk.”
I gripped the vanity edge. “I’m not desperate.”
“You’re predictable.” She stepped closer, gaze fixed on the robe’s knot. “Women with nothing always bet their bodies. He’ll tire of you.”
My pulse hammered, but a second heartbeat fluttered back, steady, defiant. “Kings don’t discard heirs,” I said, shocked by how calm it sounded.
A flicker, surprise, maybe respect, before disdain returned. “Every empire buries mistakes. Pray he doesn’t label you one.”
She turned, perfume trailing contempt. The door clicked and silence expanded like lungs. I inhaled, slow, steady, feeling the weight and wonder of the life inside me, and the iron in my spine that wasn’t there yesterday.
Footsteps returned, Sterling. He paused at the threshold, reading the tension.
“What did she say?”
“That I smell of desperation.”
He crossed, sliding a knuckle under my chin. “I smell power,” he said. Then, quieter: “Marry me.”
“On my terms,” I answered, before fear could muzzle me.
He arched a brow. “Name them.”
“My accounts unfrozen. My school credentials reinstated. Public acknowledgment; full sunlight, no shadows. And when I say stop, you stop.”
A heartbeat. Two. Empires weigh faster than hearts. He nodded, once. “Done.”
We stood in a hush, two predators recasting rules. I don’t trust him, never will, but power isn’t trust; it’s leverage. Outside, dawn set marble aglow, and inside, I felt steel kindle behind my ribs.
Ownership cuts both ways, king.
And I will learn how to bleed you with it.