“Enough,” he snapped. “Everything you’ve done lately has been a disappointment. If this continues, maybe the mate bond should be reconsidered.” The threat was clear: lose him, and the child might be fatherless.
The old vows—murmured beneath the moon, the promises that used to feel like warm armor—crumbled. He had made the room, chosen each toy, and now handed it to the woman he had kept separate from his life for years. It felt like sacrilege.
I left the room without an argument. I held my belly and whispered, “It’s okay. We will make our own space.”
Back in the master bedroom, my phone buzzed. Voice messages from Alice bloomed in a line—Carson’s voice tender, doting, focused on her, not on me. I listened. Each message was an evidence tape of the intimacy I’d been denied. He murmured about late-night cravings, soft reassurances, little jokes—an intimacy I had thought was mine.
My throat tightened. He had used me, I realized—not only my body but my pregnancy—as rehearsal. He’d practiced being a father on me, learned tenderness on my skin, only to transfer those lessons to Alice’s unborn child. I had been a safe practice dummy for him—and the nursery, every careful detail, had been the stage.
I played the messages again and again until the room stopped spinning. I laughed then, a sound that hurt. Not because it was funny, but because the truth was so absurdly cruel it had become unmoored from pain.
The fetus kicked, a tiny answering presence. “We’ll be okay,” I whispered to my belly. “I promise.”