Summary
Vampires can’t have children. My husband’s family reminded me of that every night for a year.
At 8:15 this morning, a doctor found three heartbeats. At 9:00, fifty million dollars hit my account, along with the papers to sever our blood bond.
I signed before my hands stopped shaking.
He doesn’t know.
Neither does the rest of the vampire world, and that is exactly why I have to run.
Three days later, every Court gossip feed in the country ran the same headline: VAMPIRE KING HUNTS RUNAWAY BLOOD BRIDE AND HIS $50 MILLION.
Forty-five minutes before the money arrived, I was lying on a paper-covered table in a private clinic, cold gel on my stomach, watching a doctor’s face go pale.
She moved the wand. Stopped. Moved it again.
“Mrs. Vale,” she said quietly, “who is the father?”
My throat closed. “My husband,”
“Your husband is a born vampire. Over four hundred years old.”
“Yes.”
She turned the screen toward me. Three flickering lights, fast as hummingbird wings.
“Then this shouldn’t exist,” she whispered.
“Vampire men don’t father children. In the Court archives, it has happened four times in a thousand years. Every one of those children became a king or a queen. You are carrying three.”
I didn’t hear anything after that.