Chapter 3

Elena's POV

When I found out I was pregnant, Adrian and I had been together for several years.

That day I took the results back to the estate and sat alone in my room for a long time.

The doctor told me that carrying a vampire's child is dangerous for a human.

The child takes a great deal of blood and nourishment from the mother, and the further along you are, the weaker you become.

The birth itself can go wrong.

I was frightened.

But when Adrian found out, he was far happier than his usually composed self.

That same night he proposed.

I said yes without a moment's hesitation.

After that, I never again considered ending the pregnancy.

I knew my own life might be in danger.

But I trusted Adrian.

I even thought that if it came to the very worst, he wouldn't stand there and watch me die.

If he turned me in time, I would still have a chance.

So I didn't feel I was gambling with my life.

I simply felt that the man I had loved for years and I would soon become a family.

After the baby was born, we would build a happy family together.

Then, not long after the engagement, my mother fell ill.

It began as frequent abdominal pain.

It got worse quickly and she was moved into intensive care.

I emptied my savings.

When that money ran out, I borrowed from relatives and friends.

I rarely asked anyone for help.

In those months I went through practically every name in my contacts.

But I was still nine million dollars short of what my mother's new overseas treatment would cost.

The day the hospital pressed me for payment, I sat alone in the corridor until dark.

I knew that nine million dollars was nothing to Adrian.

Even so, I felt humiliated when I took the bill to him.

I explained repeatedly that I only needed him to help me this once.

Once my mother was stable, I would pay it back a little at a time.

Seraphina was there.

When Seraphina heard me ask for nine million dollars, she said nothing openly cruel. She merely watched me for a while and smiled.

That look alone was enough to make me uncomfortable.

Then, half joking, she asked Adrian whether human girls were all this clever.

A pregnancy, an engagement, and then a request for money—it all seemed perfectly calculated.

My face burned, and I immediately explained that my mother really was in the hospital.

Every bill and treatment record could be checked.

Adrian didn't take the medical file out of my hand.

He only looked at me.

I still remember that look.

It was the first time I saw doubt in his face.

In the end he didn't lend me the money.

He said he could contact doctors and arrange a hospital, so the surgery could be scheduled as soon as I had the money.

But he could not simply give me nine million dollars.

He said we were about to be married and he didn't want anyone thinking his money was why I stayed.

Hearing that hurt.

I didn't argue.

It was his money.

Whether he lent it was his choice.

And he had said he would find better doctors for her.

All I could do was tell myself that Adrian had no choice but to be that careful.

He was the Prince's heir.

Every day, countless people around him wanted something from him.

There was nothing wrong with him being cautious.

That night I cried alone for a long time.

When I woke up the next morning, I went back to raising the money.

I began accepting commercial commissions I had once turned down.

Anything I could sell, I sold.

The only thing I left untouched was the ring.

I worked in the day and went to the hospital at night.

Sometimes work ran so late that she was already asleep when I arrived.

I would lie on the cot in her room for an hour or two and go back to work the next day.

Carrying a half-blood had already made me tire more easily than before.

The doctors warned me several times to work less and rest more.

I agreed every time.

But after leaving the hospital, I carried on with everything that had to be done.

My mother's treatment could not stop.

The hospital would not charge me any less because I was pregnant.

All I could do was tell myself to hold on a little longer.

Once she improved, I could rest.

But before my mother could leave the hospital, I collapsed first.

That afternoon, I was working on an exhibition at the gallery.

There had been a dull ache low in my belly since morning and I hadn't paid it much attention.

By the time the pain got bad, I found my hem had gone dark with blood.

When I woke again, I was lying in a hospital bed.

The doctor told me the baby was gone.

For a long time I didn't react.

I only put a hand on my stomach without thinking.

A few months earlier I used to lie awake at night with my hand in that same place.

I'd thought that before long I would feel a heartbeat.

Now there was nothing, only an empty ache in my belly.

I lay there and cried for a long time.

By the end my eyes were dry and sore and my head was empty.

After the nurse left, I was alone in the room.

I thought I would at least get a few quiet days to grieve on my own.

Not long after, the nurse on my mother's ward called.

The treatment fees were running out again.

I held the phone for a long time before answering.

Then I wiped my face and started counting what I had left.

I had no time even to imagine what my child might have looked like. I could only bury that raw grief, numb myself to the pain, and force myself to stay strong.

When I was discharged, I went to see her every day.

I never told her the baby was gone.

Her own body was failing, and when she was lucid she would still ask how the baby was.

Before going into her room I'd stop in the bathroom and look at my face.

If my eyes were too red, I applied a cold compress for a while.

If I looked too bad, I'd sit outside and rest.

Only when I looked more or less normal did I go in.

She always believed I was doing well.

She knew I was about to marry Adrian, and it made her happy.

So when she asked about the baby, I smiled.

I told her that everything was fine.

Several times she even told me to go home and rest and stop coming to the hospital so much.

I always agreed.

But I still returned the next day.

I didn't know how much longer I would have with her.

I did not want her to spend her final days worrying about me.

So no matter what had happened the day before, I walked into that room and acted as though nothing had happened.

I thought Adrian would understand.

He knew what my mother meant to me.

It was only later that I found out.

In his eyes, my going straight back to work, going to the hospital every day, even managing to smile in front of her, was strange.

I had only just lost the baby.

Yet I seemed not to feel any grief, as though I had already returned to normal.

It was around then that Seraphina began appearing at his side more and more often, on the strength of having known him since childhood.

I don't know how much she said to him.

I only know that one day Adrian suddenly asked me.

Whether I had really wanted to be pregnant. Whether I had really wanted to bear his child.

I was stunned for a long time, unable to understand how he could ask me that.

Only when he mentioned that we'd got engaged after the pregnancy did I understand.

He had started to think that the pregnancy, and my keeping the baby, had been a way to make him marry me.

Now that I had secured the engagement and the baby was gone, he thought I had achieved my goal, no longer cared whether the baby lived or died, and had therefore recovered so quickly.

I stood in front of him and couldn't produce a word.

Everything I'd been holding down came up at once, and I was too numb for any of it to show.

I hadn't even had time to cry properly.

Every day I woke up worrying whether the money would hold, whether her treatment could continue.

And to Adrian, the fact that I wasn't lying in bed crying meant I had never cared about that child.

And for the first time I couldn't help wondering.

Had it never occurred to him why I dared keep the baby in the first place?

I am human.

I knew better than anyone what giving birth to a half-blood might cost me.

I dared to keep the baby because I trusted him.

I thought that whatever happened, he would be beside me.

And after I put my life in his hands, he began to suspect that everything I did...

was for his money.