49. CHAPTER 46 #2
My head found its place on her chest, right over her heart. Her fingers threaded into my hair without hesitation, her nails skimming my scalp in the way she’d learned I liked. It was a shared vice; she loved the weight of my hand in her hair as much as I enjoyed the feel of hers in mine.
It was pathetic how much it soothed me; how easily she could lift the burden of my father’s passing with a single touch.
I tried to steady my trembling hand, fighting back the tears threatening to spill behind my eyes, as I placed it gently over her belly.
For months we haven’t been able to take our hands off each other.
It was no surprise this was the outcome, but the shock still hit hard. The timing was too cruel, too poetic.
“Are you okay?”
Her voice was heavy with that rare tenderness I’d come to crave.
“That’s my line, Maia.” My voice sounded unfamiliar, and broken. “Are you okay?”
She said nothing for a long second. I waited.
“I’m… processing,” she said honestly. I felt her inhale under my cheek, her heartbeat thrummin steadily beating in my ear. “Mostly terrified, sad… a little excited…and also annoyed.”
I huffed, surprised by the small bleed of amusement that managed to pierce through the grief. “Annoyed?”
“Yes.” Her fingers continued their lazy, grounding path through my hair. “Because of course your father would die the day I find out I’m pregnant. He really is determined to haunt every chapter of our lives.”
I swallowed, a broken laugh catching in my throat. “That sounds like him.” Always the perfectionist. Even in the timing of his exit.”
Neither of us had anything else to say. I stayed there listening to her heartbeat until I finally heard her sigh.
“I’m sorry about your father,” she whispered, breaking the silence.
I closed my eyes.
“I thought I’d feel… crushed,” I admitted. “Like everything was caving in. But being with him last night…also knowing now we’re having a baby—” I rubbed her stomach and sighed. “The fear doesn’t feel as strangling as I thought it would. And that makes me feel guilty.”
Recognising in this moment that I’d leaned toward love and joy, pushing behind the grief and fear. Something about being in my wife’s arms made the future less scary.
She repositioned herself, pressing a kiss into my hair. “You spent months bracing for this. For the moment he’d be gone and the responsibilities would fall on you alone. It’s okay if it feels different than you pictured. Grief doesn’t follow rules.”
“And fatherhood?” I asked, still touching her. “Does that follow rules?”
Her fingers stilled for a moment and I missed her touch. Then she continued and I almost groaned, wanting to tell her not to stop.
“Probably. I don’t know any of them yet.” She said into my hair. “We both come from families that put legacy before all else. My father has expectations for my brothers and his disappointment in them is loud because they fail to meet them.”
I almost scoffed at her understatement; her brothers were a disaster, but she was the only one who could find the grace in that mess. Instead, I leaned more into her touch.
“I know your father had expectations of you and from the stories you told me, I know he was proud of you… so I don’t know what rules exist, but I do know that you’re going to be a great father, Orion.
Because you already know what it feels like to be built for a purpose, and you’ll never do that to another human being. ”
The thought of it—the freedom I never had—lodged in my chest. “How can you tell?”
“Because we’re going to do this our way,” she replied. “Not theirs.”
I swallowed hard, my mind dragging me back to my father’s room this morning, to the sight of his body being taken out of my view. I pulled my wife closer.
“I don’t want to be him,” I confessed, the words scraping my throat. “I don’t want our child to look at me and see… nothing but responsibility.”
She hummed a sound in her chest. “Then we’ll let them choose. It’s not complicated, ma douceur. Hard, yes. But not complicated.”
The name pressed into me more deeply this time. In the middle of grief, fear, and all the old instincts telling me to lock everything down, she still chose to call me soft instead of broken. Hers—soft, vulnerable—in a way I'd never been allowed to be.
Her hand continued to work my scalp. “You already made one choice when you changed the clause. You didn’t have to, but you did it anyway. Start there.”
I didn’t deserve the faith in her voice.
I was selfish and ruthless and entirely unfit for the gentleness she kept handing me, and yet here she was, letting me put my head on her heart like a child too big for comfort.
The difference was I loved her with everything in me and would gladly go to hell to keep that faith.
“Are you happy?” My voice was almost inaudible. “About the baby, I mean. Be honest.”
“I’m—” She took another breath. “Scared. But yes. Under all the noise, and fear, your mother, my family, and us finally finding each other… yes. I’m happy.
I wanted to be a mother someday. I just didn’t think it would be under these circumstances.
” Her fingers pulled firmly in my scalp.
“But I also didn’t think we’d be like this either.
And I love you. So I think we’ll be okay. ”
Everything inside me stilled.
I rolled onto my side until I could see her face. Her eyes were glittery, her mouth lifted in a faint, tired smile. “I need to hear it again,” I said to her.
She smiled wider, knowing what I meant. “I love you so much, Orion Kade. Even the parts of you that are still learning how to be loved.”
I propped myself on my elbow on the mattress, inclined toward her, and kissed her gently. Grief was still in the room with us, and there was a new life between us that we were already bound to protect.
It felt a bit strange, and sanctimonious—the end of one reign and the terrifying, beautiful dawn of another.
I kissed her neck, then the small space on her stomach visible from her sheer blouse; she let out a soft laugh.
I kissed back up to her cheeks and her lips.
The pressure of it was grounding, pulling me back from the ledge of the morning’s tragedy.
I kissed her deeply, every swirl of my tongue an assurance that no matter what the future holds, we’d always be the center of each other’s gravity,
“I have you,” I whispered with my lips on hers, sealing the vow possessively. “That’s all that matters."
Mine. Hers. And soon, ours.
A week later, we buried my father. The church filled with Presidents, Prime Ministers, men who'd built empires alongside Henrik Kade. Outside, black cars stretched down the block, security everywhere. It felt more like a state funeral than a private goodbye.
The eulogies were impeccable; the tributes scripted, befitting the man my father was. Men who'd tried to gut him in the markets stood at the pulpit and wept. I watched them through a film of glass, their voices sounding like they were coming from the end of a long, dark tunnel.
I stood beside the casket in a tailored black suit, my wife's hand tucked into the crook of my arm, and felt…
strangely hollow. It wasn't a hole; it was a vacuum.
The air felt too heavy to move, the scent of a thousand lilies cloying and sweet, like a shroud over my senses.
I still despised them, but my mother had insisted. I allowed it.
I was a spectator at my own life, going through the motions I couldn’t wait to finish.
Léonie was my only anchor. She wore a simple black dress, a subtle flare that we both knew was meant to protect a secret that felt increasingly surreal.
Her hair was swept back, pearls in her ears, her makeup understated but immaculate.
She looked like the perfect Kade wife—elegant, composed.
Her fingers squeezed my arm softly every time someone important approached, keeping me present, even as the world around me turned into a blur of black clothing, suffocating flowers and rehearsed sorrow.
My mother sat beside me during the service, perfectly still, with her hands folded.
Poised as always. She wasn’t crying—she never shows emotion in public.
But as the priest spoke, I noticed a slight tremor in her lace gloved hand—the only visible crack in her well-varnished facade.
She was strong, unreadable to the room, but I could see the grief was hollowing her out from the inside.
She wasn’t just burying a husband; she was burying the only man who truly knew the woman behind the mask she never took off.
My father’s words played in my head.
She is hard because the world was harder on her.
I held out my hand and placed them on hers. She looked up at me, and our eyes met. It was the first time she’d ever looked at me like I wasn’t failing at something. The grief we shared sat between us, forging an understanding we’d never had before.
The burial itself was more intimate—family only. The air was colder here, biting through the wool of my coat. My mother stood beside me, stiff like a statue that might disintegrate if the wind changed direction.
Standing there, the smell of damp earth triggered a memory I hadn’t touched in decades.
I was eleven again, standing at a similar grave for my uncle, Lars.
That day, my father had stood behind me, his hand had been a heavy weight on my shoulder.
His grip was hard, commanding me to stand tall, and not let anyone see me break.
Now, I could feel a phantom hand on my shoulder, the same firm grip, same pressure. My eyes stung, and for a second, I was a boy again, waiting for a direction that would never come. Then, a real hand touched me—this time not on the shoulder, but a firm grip on my arm. Severin.