Ownership

POV: Matteo

"You can't go to the eastern market today," Rhys said, not looking up from the papers spread across his desk, his tone light, almost casual, like he was mentioning the weather. "I've had the household staff pick up whatever you need instead."

"I wasn't planning to go alone," I said, frowning. "Sofia was going to walk with me."

"I know," he said. "I mentioned it to her already. She understands."

Something small and cold settled in my stomach. "You talked to Sofia about my plans before you talked to me."

"I didn't want you worrying about it," he said, finally looking up, his expression warm, reasonable, utterly unbothered. "There's no reason for you to be out in crowded places right now, given everything. It's safer for you here."

"I'm pregnant, Rhys, not made of glass."

"I know that," he said, standing, crossing to where I sat, taking my hands in his with the same gentle certainty he'd shown since the night I told him about the baby. "I just want to be careful. Is that so unreasonable?"

It wasn't, not on its own. That was the trouble with all of it, I was realizing, day by day, incident by incident. Nothing he did could be pointed to individually and called unreasonable. Each choice wore the shape of protectiveness, careful and loving on its surface. It was only in the accumulation of them, one after another, that something colder began to show through.

The first week after the announcement, he'd asked me to stop taking the stairs in the east wing, insisting on the elevator instead, though I'd used those stairs every single day for two years without incident. The second week, he'd quietly moved several of my council responsibilities onto other staff, explaining it as reducing my stress, never once asking whether I wanted the work reduced at all. By the third week, I'd noticed my afternoon walks in the garden had somehow become accompanied walks, a member of the household staff always finding some excuse to be nearby, watching.

"I appreciate you wanting to keep me safe," I said carefully now, choosing my words the way I'd learned to over two years of navigating this man's moods. "I just want to still feel like myself while you're doing it."

"You are yourself," he said, kissing my forehead, the gesture warm and completely sincere. "I would never want to change who you are. I only want to make sure nothing takes that away from either of us."

Us. Not just me. Both of us, tangled together in a way I hadn't fully understood until this moment. Whatever fear was driving this, it wasn't only about my safety. It was about something he was protecting in himself too, something I still hadn't found the courage to ask him about directly.

The letters were what finally cracked the careful surface of my patience.

I found Sofia in her workroom three days later, later than I'd meant to visit, apologizing before I'd even finished stepping through the door. "I'm sorry, I meant to come sooner. I've been—"

"Busy," she said, though something guarded crossed her face that made the word land strangely. "I know. I got your letter."

"What letter?"

She blinked, studying me carefully now. "The one explaining you'd need a few days before visiting. Sent Tuesday."

"I never wrote you a letter, Sofia."

The room went very still.

"It came through the household correspondence," she said slowly. "Signed with your name. I assumed—"

Cold understanding began crawling up my spine, slow and inevitable. "Show me."

She retrieved it from a drawer, and I read it standing in her doorway, my own name signed at the bottom in handwriting close enough to mine that it might have fooled anyone who wasn't looking carefully. Close enough to fool Sofia. Not close enough to be mine.

"I didn't write this," I said, my voice tight.

"Then who did," Sofia said, though something in her expression told me she was already circling the same answer I was.

I didn't wait to find him. I went straight to the study, the letter crumpled in my fist, my composure fraying with every step down the corridor.

"Did you write this," I said, dropping the letter onto his desk without preamble.

Rhys glanced at it, unhurried, and something in his lack of surprise told me everything I needed to know before he'd said a single word.

"I asked someone to draft it on your behalf," he said. "You'd mentioned feeling overwhelmed. I thought a short break from visits might help."

"I never mentioned feeling overwhelmed by Sofia," I said, my voice rising now, two years of careful restraint finally cracking under the weight of this specific violation. "You had someone forge my name and send my closest friend a letter I never wrote."

"It wasn't forged," he said, calm, reasonable, utterly unmoved by the anger radiating off me. "It reflected what I believed was best for you at the time."

"That's not your decision to make."

"Isn't it," he said, standing now, his voice still gentle but carrying an edge underneath that made my skin prickle. "You're carrying our child. Every decision affecting your wellbeing affects them too."

"I want to see my letters, Rhys. All of them. I want to know if this is the only one."

He was quiet for a moment, and the silence told me everything before he finally spoke. "There have been a few. Delayed, mostly. Nothing kept from you permanently."

"How many is a few?"

"Matteo—"

"How many?"

"Several," he admitted, and something in the flat, unbothered way he said it frightened me more than any raised voice could have. "I've also asked the household staff to route visitor approvals through me directly, for now. It's not permanent. Just until things feel more settled."

I stared at him, the man who'd held me two weeks ago with such reverence I'd nearly wept, the man who'd sworn he'd never let our child feel unloved the way he apparently had, standing in front of me now explaining away my restricted correspondence with the same calm certainty he'd used to explain everything else since the pregnancy.

"You've been controlling who I talk to," I said, the words coming out slow, disbelieving. "Deciding what mail reaches me. Making choices about my own body's timeline without asking me first."

"I've been protecting you," he said.

"From what? From Sofia? She's the closest friend I have."

"From anything that might raise your stress at a critical time," he said, his voice still perfectly, maddeningly reasonable. "I know it feels restrictive. I understand that. But I would rather you hate me and be safe than love me and be gone."

The words landed soft, almost tender, delivered with the same gentle conviction he'd used to promise me devotion two weeks ago. And underneath that gentleness sat something immovable, something absolute, a message dressed up in kindness that left no room for negotiation at all.

I stood there in the study, the crumpled letter still between us on the desk, and understood with sudden, sinking clarity that whatever version of Rhys had woken up gentle and searching in that hospital bed, this was the shape his devotion had actually been growing toward the entire time.