by Lexi Whitlow
His family is supposed to meet us—yes. But not until we’ve done it on our own terms.
But we knew this was a possibility. And we’d become complacent. I try to force the window an inch or two more, but it won’t budge. There’s a tightness, low in my belly, and I put my hand to it. It turns to searing pain, and I double over, sinking down to the dusty floor next to the window. Tears come to my eyes, and I drop the pepper spray on the floor next to me. I feel something hot and wet between my legs, and I don’t want to look. I know it could well be blood, and I close my eyes, praying, hoping that it isn’t.
The door to the apartment swings open, and two men, clad all in black and gray, walk in, peering around the apartment. One of them makes a beeline for the bedroom, and he walks over to me silently. When he sees me crouched by the window, he yanks me up by the arm. I scream, the pain reaching a crescendo and making me go blind for a moment. There’s a trickle beneath my black skirt, and a drop of crimson falls on the floor.
“Matthias!” I shout again, and I hear more commotion outside of the door.
“Mother—have your idiots let me through.” He speaks in Dutch, and I realize I can understand it now—I’ve spent enough of my time listening to him that the words are beginning to come. Another wave of pain hits, and I clutch my belly, trying to get away from the tight grip of the man holding me. I can already feel a bruise forming where he’s holding me, and I cringe as the pain in my arm meets the low pain in my belly.
The man jerks me into the living room, where the other waits, arms crossed over his chest. “It looks like the girl is here. If this is her.”
I scream again, tears streaming down my face, pain creeping into my legs.
I hear feet pounding on the stairs, and Matthias appears in the doorway, rushing across the room until the second man catches him by the arm. Matthias quickly deflects his grab and turns to punch him square in the nose. Light footsteps follow on the stairs, and an impressive older woman with light blond hair walks through the door. Just as she appears, Matthias runs to me and takes me by the waist, putting my free arm around my shoulders.
“Let her go, asshole,” he hisses at the guard. “By royal decree or whatever the fuck you people listen to.”
The man still grips my arm, and the pain coursing through my entire body becomes unbearable. The taste of bile stings my throat, and my breakfast threatens to come up with it. “Please let go,” I pant. “I’m not going anywhere.” The words are a breathy whisper, and the guard doesn’t respond to my English.
“She’s pregnant. Let her go now,” Matthias says, the words sounding almost deadly from his lips.
Hesitating and looking to the woman at the door, the man lets go of my arm slowly. I collapse against Matthias, and he walks me over to the couch, helping me sit down. “Put your feet up, lieverd,” he mutters and hands me the water bottle sitting on the cushion next to me. “And drink.”
The woman, silent until now, steps forward, her eyebrows raised in surprise. “This girl isn’t pregnant, is she? I thought you took precautions with these types of things, Matthias. Well, it can certainly be taken care of. We have doctors to attend to this type of thing.”
If I could stand, I’d leap across the room and scratch her eyes out, but the pulsing pain keeps me where I’m sitting. Matthias opens the lip of the water bottle, ignoring his mother and gesturing for me to drink.
“Mother,” he says without looking up. “This is Mallory Albring—”
“Matthews,” I mumble, grabbing his hand and chuckling slightly. Suddenly, it seems funny that I haven’t changed my name. Neither of us talked about it—it’s another one of those things that a normal couple might get sorted right away. But the whole of the scene in front of me would tell any onlooker that we’re very, very far from normal. “I’m still a Matthews, Matthias. Never changed it.”
He kisses my cheek and sits down next to me, putting a protective arm around me. “The law of the North Islands, as a very astute young woman pointed out to me, allows for me to marry any woman.” Matthias first glances to me and then over to the woman he called ‘Mother.’ The queen of the North Islands doesn’t wear a black gown with a high collar, like the old Disney villains. Her style is fresh and very European, and her hair is cut short. I can even see some echoes of Matthias in her face and the tall, willowy frame of her body. The look she gives me is the only purely evil thing about her.
“Matthias, quit joking. This girl is—what? British? American? Some sort of college student?” She waves her hand at the mounds of fabric scattered over the tables by the living room window. “You know better than to marry someone of such low caliber. Caryn is awaiting your wedding. It’s scheduled for a week from now, and her fertility tests are highly favorable. Her family is old and noble, and she’s a far more appropriate choice than this—tourist child. I highly doubt the baby is even yours, if she is pregnant at all.”
Matthias stands, showing the gold band on his left hand to his mother. “We’ve been married for a week, and the child is mine. I trust Mallory. She’s my wife.” The emphasis he puts on the last word makes my pulse quicken, but my head is nestled back into the pillow of the sofa, and I don’t raise it. Even though the pain is subsiding, I still feel like death warmed over.
“It’s true,” I mumble, holding up the finger with my platinum ring. “So sorry I’m a street urchin and not a princess, your majesty. But we’re legally married, and the law says I’m under Matthias’s protection. Whatever your laws mean, anyway—”
“Shut up, girl,” the woman says, stepping in Matthias’s direction. “Is what she’s saying true?” Her voice cracks, and I can almost hear the heartbreak in it. I’d feel sorry for her, if anything she was asking was what a normal mother might ask. But it isn’t—and she had her two bodyguards come and harass me in my own home. Or my home, as it is, for now.
“Yes, it’s true. And looking at her, she needs to get the doctor. So if you’ll excuse me—I’ll be taking her to the physician and then to the hospital if she needs it. Unlike you, I care about my child. And I won’t see him harmed.”
“Him—”
I wave a hand at both of them. “We only think it’s a boy. The ultrasound said—”
Matthias helps me stand. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s boy or a girl. One is just as important as the other.”
My husband, in the face of his mother and the men she brought with her, helps me to the door and brushes past the queen without a second glance. The three stunned people follow us back down the stairs and out the front door. We leave them standing at the curb as Matthias puts me in a taxi and we speed to the hospital. I bury my face in his shirt and take in the scent of his musky cologne.
Despite the pain that still sits low in my belly, I laugh. As we approach the emergency room, Matthias laughs with me, though his laughter is tinged with concern.
As he helps me out of the cab, he sighs deeply. “Everything will be okay, Mal. I don’t know how, but it will.”
“I know,” I say. And this time, I mean it.
Chapter Twenty-One
Matthias
In the hospital, Mallory sleeps while we wait for an ultrasound. I wonder absently if my family has a hand in the doctors being so slow, but I’d bet that the speed is more likely related to the entire country’s penchant for being late and inefficient. I watch Mallory’s sleeping form and look down to her belly, which is swelling for real now. I touch it lightly, and she stirs in her sleep, rustling the hospital room covers.
“Matthias,” she murmurs, without opening her eyes. “Are your parents here?”
“My father is sick, or so Adelaide said when she called earlier. Mother is staying in a hotel in the center of the city, and she hasn’t said anything to me since I brought you here.”
“What happens next?”
“I don’t know,” I say simply. “We might have to stay here if you’re sick. I might have to go to the North Islands on my own to sort out exactly how I’m going to
abdicate—”
“You don’t have to, you know,” she says, her words slurring together. The shot of morphine the doctors gave her must be working now. “Abdicate. You don’t have to do that, not for me. If you don’t want to. I know you might want to but—” Her voice drops off after her vague rambling.
“I don’t want to be king of that country. Adelaide is better off as queen. We just have to figure out how to make that happen.”
Mallory raises her lips in a half smile, eyes still closed. “Isn’t she eighteen, your sister?”
“Nineteen. And three times smarter than I am. At least.”
The doctor we saw before wheels in an ultrasound machine and sets up next to us, asking questions that neither of us can answer. Mal’s blood type, and then mine. Exactly what happened and how. Mal opens her eyes and looks at me, her eyes narrowing. She gently shakes her head and turns to the doctor herself.
“I was cooking and dropped a pan on my foot—”
“That doesn’t explain the bruising on your arm,” he says, nodding his head toward her arm.
“That’s from yesterday,” she says, not skipping a beat. “We like it rough.”
The old doctor’s cheeks color slightly, but he’s French, so he doesn’t give any more commentary. After that, he has Mallory raise her shirt. Her stomach, round now, shivers when he puts the gel on it. When the ultrasound wand touches her, she shivers through her whole body and turns her head away from the screen.
My eyes are glued to it, and I see an entire baby, full lips and a nose, a tiny mouth opening and closing, and a strong heartbeat, singing through the speaker.
“The baby’s okay,” I say, leaning into her ear to whisper. “I think you’re okay too.”
“Well,” the doctor begins, chewing on his lower lip. “There seems to be a bubble of blood beneath the placenta. It should resolve over the next few days. But I recommend your girlfriend here doesn’t run any marathons—”
“Wife. She’s my wife. We just got married.” The words come quick and sure, and I squeeze Mal’s hand. She slowly turns to look at the screen, watching in fascination as the baby kicks.
“Do you want to know the sex of the baby? Looks like we’re getting a pretty clear view—”
“Yes,” we both answer.
“Looks like you have a healthy baby boy here. You’ll need to get another ultrasound to make sure—but everything here says he’s healthy. There’s no need to worry about all this. New mothers don’t need to stress themselves about things like this.”
“Would travel be out of the question?” Mal asks, tears in her eyes. She’s still watching the screen. “We need to go see his parents and get some family issues worked out.”
“No,” the doctor says, turning off the ultrasound machine. “It should be fine to travel if you need to. Just take it easy while you’re gone. And you’ll need to decide just where you’re going to have this baby. Things start moving fast once your belly starts growing, young lady. Make sure you have a place you feel comfortable with. A city with a good hospital, an apartment or a house to bring him home to.”
Mal looks at me, eyes wide with worry. “I don’t know if we’ll be able—”
“We will. We’ll have a home together. It’s my only priority, Mallory. All the rest of this is noise. If I haven’t made it abundantly clear, I love you. And I love this child.”
The old doctor wheels away the machine, leaving us in the silent room before a nurse comes to discharge us.
“I know you do,” she says, leaning against my arm. “But it seems like there’s so much between now and then. Maybe you should just tell your mother you’ll let us go for now, and you can do this on your own. I might be a complication you don’t need—”
“No,” I growl. “You’ll be with me no matter what, Mal. I want my eyes on you every morning and every night before you fall asleep. It’s the best way for me to make sure you’re safe. And the only way I’ll feel comfortable until this is all done. You see what my mother is capable of now. She has no impulse control.”
Mallory makes a small noise, nuzzling in close.
“Just promise me again we’ll be okay.”
“We’ll be better than that. I’ll figure out a way.”
In a move that defies reason and logic—at least the faulty kind I relied on in my youth—my mother sends a car for Mallory. I help her in and hold her hand as we take the route back to her Parisian apartment. After I tuck her in bed to sleep off the morphine shot, I call my mother and tell her what’s going to happen next. I won’t know for weeks on end if any of this will work, and Mallory will be caught in the middle of it.
To my surprise, my mother just listens. Late into the night, after Emilie comes home and pours me a hefty glass of red wine, I book tickets to the North Islands. I’ve long refused trips on the family’s private jet, but I have enough money for first class, and this way, I avoid having Mallory anywhere near the people who put her in this situation.
“You better take care of her when you take her to your little fascist country,” Emilie says, perching on top of the couch across from me. “Mal just lost her sister—”
“I know. I do know her, Emilie.” I think Mallory’s friend expects me to scowl at her or say something sharp about my country and its colorful past. “I thought I could make her life better when I met her. She said she wasn’t looking for an adventure, though. And maybe I should have believed her. I could have stuck to being what I was forever, and I could have just let her go.”
Emilie is silent for a few seconds, and I can feel her eyes on me. I sip the wine and then gulp it. The alcohol pours through my veins, making my head swim. There wasn’t time for food today, so the effect takes me by surprise. I close my eyes.
“No. She needs you. I saw it when she first said your name. But you need to get this shit tended to quick. She’s no princess. She’s an artist. She’s independent and strong. She kept away from you because she thought that’s what you wanted. And now that you’re back—she’ll go to the ends of the earth to make you happy. You need to ask yourself if you’re taking advantage of that or if you can turn this around so that she’s not at the center of a total fucking crap show.”
“Such colorful language.” I take another swig of wine, sorting through all the things Emilie just said. I keep quiet for a while and finish my wine. Mallory has changed in so many ways—the path of her life, the level of her maturity, the way she views the world. When I watched her look at the ultrasound screen today, I saw a fierceness I’ve rarely seen before. “I know all of that. And I might be taking advantage of her. But the only way to have a life with her is to take the throne.”
“And then what?”
“I’m not entirely sure.”
“She’d die living there. Not physically, you know. I’m sure it has plenty of creature comforts,” Emilie says. “But raising a kid under the watch of your family—never being able to do what she wants. That’s not her. She says she’s this meek girl who always lived in her sister’s shadow. She had shit parents too. Her father is nowhere, and her mother doesn’t even speak to her.” Emilie pauses and looks at me, her blond eyebrows furrowing. “She doesn’t need another shadow to live in. I never thought you’d show up here, but you did. And now everything is worse for it. I’m glad you say you’re protecting her, but you need to figure out if you really are.”
I sit with Emilie’s words as she draws and later gets up to sew. Sometime around midnight, things start to fall in place in my head. Emilie goes to bed and leaves me with my thoughts. I peek into Mallory’s room, where she sleeps. There was blood today, scaring us both.
And I’d caused that.
Not directly, no.
It might have happened without my mother’s henchmen.
But it did happen.
I walk into Mallory’s bedroom, and I wake her up, fingers brushing her cheek.
“I have an idea,” I whisper. Her long-lashed eyes flutter open, and she props herself on one elbow,
bringing one hand instinctively to her belly. “What is it?”
I climb into bed with her and tell her, whispering in her ear for a long time, until we both fall asleep.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mallory
“You okay with everything?” Matthias leans over and kisses me, putting a hand to my belly. I can’t help it—each time he does that, the same heat comes back. The thing I felt when I first saw him, when he first sat down with me at that coffee shop, when he told me to come upstairs with him. I lean into him and throw one leg over his hips.
“Yeah. I am. Emilie’s going to be pissed at you. But she’ll get over it. When we have a real wedding—” I stop before I say anything else, blushing. It still pains me that I want something like this from Matthias. It’s like it still doesn’t feel real that he wants me—not because I have some low opinion of myself. But because it never seemed real, even from the beginning. And it all happened so fast.
“When we have a real wedding, we can do what we want. And Emilie can come wherever we are.”
“She can be my maid of honor. Or we could just have a honeymoon.” I toy with the idea in my head. Last night, Matthias told me that he’d like to take me somewhere warm, somewhere far away from anyone we knew, at least for a little while. “It could just be us, before the baby comes.”
The warmth of his bare skin presses into mine, and I feel safe for the first time since this ordeal started. It might be a false sense of security, gently lulling me into the dream that I might be with Macklin for the rest of my life. Until the baby is born. Until he grows into a toddler, and a little boy, and beyond. In a spacious apartment somewhere we decide, without anyone telling us what to do.
“It could be.” He brushes my hair back from my ear and kisses it gently. I can feel his hands, gentle at my waist. His cock is hard against my thigh, but he stays still.