Page 12 of The Chains that Bind
"I've had you watched," he interrupts calmly. "Not just for security, but for your health. My people reported the symptoms. It's why I moved up my timeline. Why I couldn't let you marry him."
"My timeline?" Outrage momentarily overshadows shock. "You were planning this all along? To what, kidnap me eventually?"
"To bring you home," he corrects. "The method depended on how stubborn you were being. The pregnancy simply forced my hand."
I wrap my arms protectively around my middle, mind reeling. It can't be true. It can't be. And yet…and yet part of me knows he's right. Has known, perhaps, for weeks, in theway women throughout history have known when life takes root inside them.
"If—and that's a hugeif—I am pregnant," I say carefully, "that doesn't give you the right to imprison me here. In fact, it makes what you're doing even worse."
"I'm not imprisoning you," Knox says with maddening calm. "I'm ensuring the safety and well-being of the mother of my child. Of my family."
The word 'family' hits me like a physical blow. Knox and I, parents. A baby with his dark eyes and imperious manner. A permanent, irrevocable connection to this man who both thrills and terrifies me with his intensity.
"This changes nothing," I lie, my voice shaking despite my best efforts. "I'm not staying here. I'm not yours to keep."
His smile is slow and certain, the smile of a predator who knows his prey has nowhere to run.
"It changes everything, angel. And yes, you are."
Chapter Eight
Knox
My hands aresteady as I watch her face cycle through shock, denial, and the first creeping edges of recognition. But inside my chest burns a fire that has nothing to do with anger and everything to do with fierce, primitive possession. She's carrying my child. The knowledge hums through my veins like the most potent drug, feeding a part of me I never knew existed until I put the pieces together three weeks ago. The symptoms reported by my security team. The subtle changes in her body that even my long-range surveillance photos captured. My woman, growing my heir. Nothing in my life—not building my empire, not closing my first billion-dollar deal, not anything—has affected me like this certainty that Seraphina Vale is pregnant with my child.
"You're lying," she whispers, but I can see the doubt in her eyes, the mental calculations happening behind those green irises. She's putting it together—the delayed period she's surely noticed, the morning sickness she's probably dismissed asstress, the sensitivity I can see in the way she's unconsciously crossed her arms over her breasts.
"I never lie to you, Seraphina." I keep my voice steady despite the tornado of emotions tearing through me. "Especially about something this important."
I knew something had changed the moment I reviewed the security report from three weeks ago. My team has kept me apprised of her movements, her health, her habits—not to control her, as she seems to believe, but to protect what's mine even from a distance. The operative noted that she'd rushed from a gallery meeting to the bathroom, emerging pale and shaken. Had documented her falling asleep at her desk twice that week, unusual for someone as disciplined as Seraphina. Had photographed her leaving a coffee shop without drinking her usual cappuccino after staring at it with a faintly nauseated expression.
One incident might be nothing. Two could be coincidence. Three made a pattern that sent my mind immediately to the night she'd come to me three months ago.
That night is seared into my memory like a brand. The surprise of seeing her at my door after fifteen months of absence, the hunger in her eyes that matched my own, the way we didn't even make it to the bedroom before I had her pinned against the wall, her legs wrapped around my waist, her dress pushed up to her hips. We'd been animals, devouring each other with a ferocity that made a mockery of her claims that what we had wasn't special.
I'd used protection, but in our frenzy, who knows how effective it was. And if some primal part of me had wanted to mark her as mine in the most permanent way possible? If some ancient instinct had driven me to claim her so completely that she could never truly leave me again? Made me ensure the damned thing slipped off at the perfect moment?
I won't apologize for it.
The moment I suspected, I'd mobilized every resource at my disposal. A discrete employee replaced her regular cleaning service, collecting samples from her bathroom that a private lab analyzed without her knowledge. Unethical? Perhaps. Necessary? Absolutely. I needed to know.
When the results came back positive, something shifted in me. A sensation I'd never experienced before—like the ground beneath my feet had simultaneously solidified and dissolved. Like I'd been waiting my entire life for this moment without realizing it.
My child. My blood. Growing inside the only woman I've ever truly wanted.
It took every ounce of my considerable self-control not to go to her that very moment, not to crush her engagement to that inadequate substitute, not to bring her home where she belongs. But I forced myself to be strategic. To plan. To ensure that when I did reclaim her, it would be permanent.
Then I received that wedding invitation. The thought of Seraphina standing at an altar, promising herself to another man while carrying my child inside her, was the final trigger. No more waiting. No more planning. No more respecting boundaries that shouldn't exist in the first place.
"How did you—" She falters, her hand unconsciously moving to her stomach. "You had no right to?—"
"I have every right," I interrupt, moving closer, my eyes locked on the slight tremor in her fingers. "That's my child you're carrying. Mine, Seraphina. The moment you created a life with me, any notion that we aren't connected for eternity became a fantasy."
She backs away, but there's nowhere to go in the confines of the kitchen. "One night doesn't erase eighteen months apart,Knox. One mistake doesn't negate all the reasons we can't be together."
"Mistake?" The word fuels the fire in my chest. "Is that what you're calling our child now? A mistake?"
Her eyes widen. "That's not what I meant. The night was the mistake, not—not any potential pregnancy, which I still don't fully believe?—"
