Page 36 of Pregnant After One Forbidden Night

“No. It’s not. They belong in that world. They understand the rules and where they fit. I thought I did too, but I was wrong.”

“Aren’t you the one who refused their calls?”

“Because they would only try to get me to come back,” she said.

“Because you belong there,” he pressed.

“I don’t, Sebastian,” she insisted. “Helene belongs there. She was born there and couldn’t be invisible if she tried.”

“And the queen?”

Jenna waved the point away. “She’s the queen. She belongs wherever she wants.”

“She wants you at her side.”

“To be her friend on a payroll. What kind of friendship is that? What kind of real life? I wanted to join the rest of the world when I left my home for the capital, to find a place for myself amidst the bustle and noise. Well, the place I found was a background fixture and I don’t want to continue consigning myself to that kind of echo of an existence. I thought I could have both and it turns out everyone else was right and I was wrong. I can live in the foreground of my life and be seen as a woman with value and skill if I’m willing to give up a career and get married like my Priory friends, or I can go back to the capital and return to being an interchangeable body in blue, only one that is pregnant with a new blemish on my record. That doesn’t sound like belonging to me.”

Like anyone in a spiral of shame and self-loathing—a mental and emotional cocktail Sebastian was intimately familiar with the signs of from the rare visits he’d had with his father throughout his childhood—she was painting a cherry-picked picture of her life to date, but he knew better than to point that out directly. “Being only the second woman appointed to the royal security force and graduating at the top of the military academy can hardly be considered an echo of an existence, Jenna.”

“Of course, they can. Achievements don’t constitute a life rich with love and warmth and laughter. Honors don’t make a family or a home.”

He raised an eyebrow, eyes darting pointedly to her abdomen. “Your condition contradicts that.”

She made a noise in the back of her throat, hand once again protecting her belly, as if to shield their child from her next whispered words. “Pregnancy doesn’t make a family, Sebastian.”

He resisted the urge to laugh. She was correct. Pregnancy did not make a family. Attachment and dedication to one’s children made a family, and—based on her self-censoring for the sake of baby ears that had not yet formed—he’d say she was more than halfway there already. To her, he said, “As I understand it, it does.”

She shook her head. “Love makes a family.”

Sebastian scoffed, mildly surprised to hear a woman as intelligent and down-to-earth as Jenna utter such a clichéd line. “Love makes people selfish and weak. A mother and father committed to their child’s future make a family.”

Distaste feathered her face. “That sounds like a business arrangement.”

“We’d be lucky if more people took parenting so seriously,” he countered, not exactly sure how they had gotten here from discussing her illusions.

“Well, why don’t we get right to it then? Okay. I’m to assume you’ve got a number of proposals regarding the future of our offspring, then.”

Irritation flared Sebastian’s nostrils as he reminded himself that she would have no way of knowing that she mocked one of the great lessons of his life. As cherished and adored as Jenna must have been, she had no sense of what it was like to have parents with no plans, proposals, or even thoughts for their child.

“I do, most of which I’m sure we’ll get to. We were, however, talking about your inane notions of not belonging.”

She gasped in outrage. “Inane? Pardon me for noticing and caring when the people around me consider me a set piece.”

“A set piece? I recognize the general cluelessness of most of the capital’s citizenry, but that’s a bit theatrical, Jenna.”

Jenna scoffed. “Outside of the king and queen and Hel, I think you were the first person in the capital to ever see me.”

Her words stoked his ego, but that would not soothe the hurt inside her, a hurt that was clearly older than the ones that lay between them. “I have to disagree, Jenna. Your work is admirable and noted. You were personally selected by the king to safeguard the queen. Your name is regularly cited as an example for the young girls of the nation. Put simply, you are remarkable, and it does not go unnoticed.”

“I am not. I’m too Priory for the capital, and too capital for the Priory. To return to the palace is to accept a life without love and family and ordinary companionship. A life in which my most important relationships live and die at the whim of my employment. I want to build my own real home, rather than simply visit the one I grew up in on leave. I want to know the families of my closest friends and have their children call me Auntie, not Sergeant Moustafa. When I packed up my quarters alone after I was dismissed, I realized how truly little I had to show for the past decade of my life. My entire life fit into three boxes and there was no one there to say goodbye to me when I left. I don’t want a life like that, where my presence or absence makes no difference. Even if leaving means giving up everything that I’ve dedicated myself to for the past two decades. All this time I thought I was following my dreams when it turns out I was merely living for the crown. I want a life for myself, as well. A life for our baby.”

“Ah yes. A life for our baby.” He spoke softly, not wanting to prod the tender feelings radiating from her. He could have argued, of course, pointed out to her that her absence had made more than a difference, that she had kings and queens and dukes and duchesses begging for her return, that she even had the head of intelligence engaged in the effort, but he didn’t.

Like in any operation, finesse was required in dissolving illusions.

If she was determined to remain blind to the impact she had on the lives around her, he wasn’t going to force the issue. Inevitably, she would come to the realization on her own.

For now, he was content to let the subject fade as they got to the grittier matters at hand.

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