Page 153 of His Darkest Desire

With panic gleaming in her eyes, Emily said, “Kinsley, please. Please tell me what happened. If someone raped you—”

Kinsley yanked her face away. “No! He didn’t hurt me!”

Emily’s eyes widened. “He?” Fury contorted her features as she stood. “So there was someone? What did he do to you?”

“He loved me!” Kinsley cried. “He loved me, mum, and I loved him. But he…he…” God, why had Vex done this? Fresh tears trickled down her cheeks. “He let me go so that I could be free.”

“Would you like me to call the constables back in here?” Dr. Ames asked carefully.

Kinsley shook her head. “No. I have nothing to tell them. He didn’t hurt me. Nothing happened that I didn’t want.”

Emily’s brow creased in worry. “If you’re pregnant, what…what about the risks?”

“I don’t care. I’m keeping it.”

The danger to her life didn’t matter. If there was any chance that this baby could survive, this precious life created by love, she would take it. And if it lived…

Vex would be free.

“Kinsley…”

“Mum, please.” Kinsley caught her mother’s hands. “I know what you must be thinking, and I…I don’t know what I can say to make it better. But I need you, okay? I need your trust, and I need you.”

Emily frowned, eyes welling with moisture. “Oh, love…”

She leaned down and hugged Kinsley just as fiercely as she had when they’d first been reunited in the woods. Kinsley closed her eyes, and for that little while, she was able to set aside her conflicted, tumultuous emotions and simply take comfort in her mother’s presence, her mother’s love.

When Emily finally pulled back, the doctor spoke. “If you’re up for it, Kinsley, I’d like to get you in for an ultrasound. That way we can get an idea of how far along you are and discuss appropriate prenatal care.”

Lifting a hand to wipe her leaking eyes, Kinsley nodded.

* * *

The return trip to the cottage was quiet. She knew her mother still had lots of questions, and her father and aunt even more so, but they respected Kinsley’s need to process everything that had happened.

The sun set while they drove, leaving the Highlands dark. But that darkness was not as complete as it had been on the night of the accident. The night when Kinsley’s life should have ended…

The night when her life had truly begun.

Her hands cradled her belly. The ultrasound had confirmed that she was, in fact, pregnant—nine weeks along. Which meant Kinsley may well have conceived the first time she and Vex had made love.

Nine weeks. In the past, Kinsley would’ve been fretting, terrified that something would go wrong. But nothing would happen to this baby. She had to believe that. And she would make it so, no matter what it took.

I’m carrying Vex’s child.

Kinsley smiled, brushing her thumb across her belly.

The ultrasound had given Kinsley her first glimpse of her baby. Just a little white thing on the black screen, with the teeniest arms and legs. Thankfully, it was too soon to tell whether the baby had wings.

When she’d heard its heartbeat, she’d bawled all over again.

Though the doctor had warned that pregnancies after tubal ligation ran a much greater risk of being ectopic, the ultrasound had shown the baby in Kinsley’s uterus, exactly where it was supposed to be.

“Sometimes,” Dr. Ames had said, “the human body is far more resilient than we give it credit for. Sometimes we heal even when medicine says it shouldn’t be possible.”

Kinsley knew it was more than that. When Vex had saved her, when he’d shared his immortal life force with her, she’d been healed. What if it had done more than heal her injuries? What if that binding had restored her, inside and out?

Fate. This had to be fate.

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