Page 76 of Empire of Dark
My breath hitched. “I can. Usually from a week or so in.”
“How?”
“I just have to set my hand on you and search for it.”
“Have you already done so?”
I met her gaze and shook my head.
I hadn’t wanted to know. Always, when breeders came to the castle, I would check them all the time. As soon as they were with child, I would send them on their way. That was always the agreement.
But with Ada, I’d stalled, never checking her. Stalled because I hadn’t wanted to know if she was pregnant or not.
For if she was, that would mean a moment of decision I wasn’t prepared to meet.
Yet now, after what I’d just realized when my blade came down on her arm, I wanted to know. Wanted to know that a piece of me was growing inside of her, binding her to me forever. A reason for her not to leave, but to stay.
“Do you truly want to know?” I asked, my breath held.
She looked off to the right of my head, staring at nothingness for a long moment before her gaze met mine. “I do.”
Adjusting along the edge of the cliff, I shifted my body towards her and set my right hand on her lower back while I slid my left hand under the front of her black tank top, my fingers grazing across her belly until my palm was flat against her abdomen. With her body sandwiched between my hands, I could feel her blood still pumping hard through her veins from our workout.
I closed my eyes and moved my left hand a little to the left. Centered. A little to the right. Repeated back and forth three times. Searching. Two more times for good measure.
Nothing.
I opened my eyes to find her stare fixed on me, fear or excitement in her green eyes, I wasn’t able to discern. “You’re not pregnant.”
Stillness, then she exhaled a warbled breath.
I still couldn’t read a damn thing in her eyes. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
She drew a deep breath, then let it seep out slowly through parted lips. “I don’t know. Both?”
“Both?”
Her lips pulled tight as her look dropped to the canyon below. “If I was pregnant, that would mean I was done. You would be done with me. I would be knocked up and sent away from the castle, as Triaten said that is how you operate.”
“He wasn’t wrong.”
She sipped a breath, her eyes dipping into sadness, then she lifted her eyes, her gaze slicing into me. “It would be a bad thing, at least for me, because you would be done with me.”
So bloody honest it cut a gaping wound deep into my chest.
“I’ll never be done with you, Ada.”
She stilled at those words. Words that slipped out before I could stop them.
The center of my bottom lip jutted upward in a smile bookended with a frown. “And the good?”
“You.” She blinked hard, her head shaking slightly. “Even if I am sleeping with the enemy—something I swore I wouldn’t do.”
A chuckle bubbled up from my throat.
Just as I was about to reply, a sudden darkness crept across her face. “Wait—we’ve been having more sex than should legallybe allowed. And I’m not pregnant. And this is what you do—you’re a master at it. Does this mean…”
Her voice trailed off, and I watched the wispy dark tendrils of doubt creep around her and then snake around her neck, tightening.