Four Months Later
The war didn't start with a gunshot, an explosion, or a declaration from a rival family. It started at 3:12 AM in the absolute silence of the master bedroom.
I woke up with a gasp, my fingers instinctively clutching my stomach. It wasn't the usual sharp kick of a restless elbow or the rolling turn of a knee that I had grown used to over the last eight months. It was a tightening, a squeeze that wrapped around my entire midsection like a steel vice, crushing the breath from my lungs.
I froze, waiting. Maybe it's just a cramp, I told myself. Maybe it's nothing.
Then came the pop—a sensation like a rubber band snapping deep inside me. And then, the flood. Warm fluid soaked the expensive Egyptian cotton sheets in seconds.
Panic, cold and sharp, spiked in my chest.
"Cassian," I whispered, reaching out to shake his shoulder.
He grunted, deep in the kind of exhausted sleep that only comes to men who spend their days running an empire. He didn't stir.
