Page 23 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

And she was singing.

He knew he recognized the song, though he couldn’t have said how. He was mesmerized by the way she moved, holding her belly as if she were dancing with their child. Her eyes stayed shut as she swayed and swirled, letting her voice and the song she sang move her around the floor.

Until suddenly she stopped, as if she sensed him the way he did her, though he did not wish to examine that possibility or admit that he did exactly that. Then she opened her eyes, and stared straight at him.

It was their wedding night.

Suddenly that was the only thing he could manage to think.

And it seemed that she could read his thoughts, or she shared the same bright images of whatnormalwedding nights looked like, because he stood there watching—in no little awe and too much desire—as her cheeks flushed red.

He was suddenly aware that he was not dressed as he normally was, in one of the suits he wore as his armor, to distinguish himself from his barbaric relatives. Instead, he was wearing little more than a pair of soft trousers suitable for late nights of privacy and a T-shirt to match. He could see that she noticed. But then, he could hardly pull his eyes away from the nightgown she wore, a slinky, silken affair that highlighted how much her breasts had ripened, how round she was, and how unearthly her beauty was.

How his friend had ever let her out from under lock and key was a mystery to him.

Not that he wished to think of Apostolis at a time like this.

“You should be in bed,” he told her, and his voice sounded harsh as it echoed back at him.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she replied. “Perhaps the curse of our marriage has already set in. I will admit that I was not expecting it to take root in the form of insomnia.” But she smiled as she said it, rubbing at her belly. “Or perhaps I’m extremely pregnant. One of the two.”

She did not tell him to approach her, and he meant to leave—and yet somehow he found himself crossing the floor until he was there before her.Right there, looking down at her as if this was a different sort of marriage altogether.

When he could not allow it. When he knew better.

“You should not look at me like that,” he scolded her, his voice too rough.

But her smile only widened. “Like what?”

“So wide-eyed and innocent, as if anything good can come of this.”

He growled that out, but even that did nothing to shake her. If anything, her eyes softened more, and that led him to imagine what else might also have softened, and that was precisely why he needed to wheel himself around and quit her presence immediately.

But he did not move.

“Good has already come of it, Alceu,” Dioni said quietly.

She reached out then, the ring he had given her yesterday catching the light of all the chandeliers above and sending it spinning, turning,dancingin all directions. And he felt that same whirling kaleidoscope inside of him when she took his hands, pulled him forward, and then settled his palms on her belly.

“Dioni—” he began.

But she didn’t let go of his hands.

He was fairly certain she actuallyshushedhim. And in the next moment he couldn’t remember either way, because he felt her belly move beneath his hands.

Alceu had never felt a sensation like it before. But he knew what it was.

The doctors’ report had been unequivocal about the thing he’d already known. This was his child. She was carryinghischild.

His son.

And here, now, on this wedding night that should never have happened, his son was kicking at him. Saying his own kind of hello.

As if they were truly a family, after all.

Alceu felt an immense wave crash through him. Sensation. Emotion.

An ocean of longing, regrets, and something as acrid as grief.

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