Two Lines

POV: Matteo

"You've barely touched your breakfast," Sofia said, appearing in the kitchen doorway with a stack of ledgers under one arm, eyeing the untouched plate in front of me. "Third morning in a row."

"I'm not hungry," I said, which was true, though it didn't explain the way my stomach had been rolling since I woke, or the exhaustion sitting behind my eyes like something physical.

"You've been through a lot this week," she said, setting the ledgers down. "Dave. What he told you. It would put anyone off their food."

I hadn't told her everything Dave had confessed. I'd told her enough, the shape of it, the horror of it, but I'd kept the sharpest edge tucked close, the part where he'd made clear he knew exactly how to keep me silent too. Some secrets, I was learning, multiplied the moment you spoke them aloud, and I didn't yet know what to do with the weight of this one.

"I'll eat later," I said.

She studied me a moment longer, something assessing in her gaze that I recognized from years of her checking on patients rather than friends. "You look pale, Matteo."

"Stress," I said. "I imagine that's normal, given everything."

"Probably," she said, though she didn't sound entirely convinced, and left it there, gathering her ledgers and heading off toward the archive with a backward glance I felt on my shoulders long after she'd gone.

I sat alone in the kitchen a while longer, my stomach twisting again, and it was only then, staring at the cold eggs on my plate, that I actually let myself think about it. Not the stress. Not the fear.

The nausea had been here longer than Dave's confession. Longer than the greenhouse, longer than the flicker of panic on Rhys's face. I'd been chalking it up to everything else, the wedding night two years ago, the ambush, the vigil, the fragile tenderness and its rotten foundation, one crisis stacking on another until my body's own warnings got lost in the noise.

But counting back now, quiet and cold in the empty kitchen, I realized how long it had actually been going on. Weeks. Since before the ambush, if I was honest with myself. Since the last time Rhys had touched me before everything changed, back when he was still cold, still distant, still performing devotion only for cameras.

My hand went to my stomach without my permission.

No, I thought. Don't. Don't let yourself think it until you know.

I stood so fast the chair scraped hard against the floor, and I was moving before I'd fully decided to, down the corridor, past staff who nodded politely and had no idea what was rattling apart behind my composed face, into the private washroom off the east wing where I kept things nobody else needed to see.

There was a box in the cabinet. I'd bought it weeks ago, in a moment of quiet dread I hadn't let myself examine too closely at the time, tucked it away and told myself I was being paranoid. I pulled it out now with hands that weren't quite steady.

I sat on the edge of the tub afterward, the test face-down on the counter, staring at nothing, my heart hammering loud enough that I could hear it in my own ears.

If it's positive, I thought, everything changes. Not just for me. For the pack. For the succession. For whatever fragile, dishonest thing Rhys and I have built out of a lie he's still telling.

If it's positive, I thought, there's no version of this where I get to walk away quietly, even if I wanted to.

I thought of Dave, sitting across from me in his study, calm and unbothered, telling me he wasn't worried I'd expose him because he knew exactly what it would cost me to try. I thought of the western tree line, thinned on purpose, an attack he'd let through knowing Rhys might not survive it. I thought of Rhys's face in that hospital bed, pale and diminished, and the flicker of real memory I'd caught behind his eyes days later, proof he'd been lying to me with the same ease Dave had lied to the entire council.

Everyone in this house is keeping something from someone, I thought. And now I might be carrying the one thing none of us can keep hidden for very long.

The minutes passed slower than any I could remember living through. I counted them anyway, watching the small clock on the wall, unable to look at the test yet, terrified of both answers in equal measure.

When I finally turned it over, my hands were shaking so badly I nearly dropped it.

Two lines.

I sat there for a long moment, staring at the small plastic window like it might change its mind if I looked hard enough, my whole body gone strangely still and strangely loud all at once, every thought I'd been holding at bay crashing forward in a single overwhelming wave.

Pregnant.

I pressed a hand to my mouth, not sure if the sound trying to escape was a sob or something closer to a laugh, hysterical and disbelieving. Two years of cold mornings and careful distance, and this was how it happened. Not in some tender, planned moment, but in the fragile, dishonest days after an ambush, conceived in a lie neither of us had said out loud yet.

A child, I thought, my free hand pressing flat against my stomach, something fierce and terrified and entirely unexpected rising up beneath the fear. There's a child. Ours.

The political weight of it arrived a beat behind the personal shock, cold and immediate. A child cemented the bond in ways nothing else could, in the eyes of the council, in the eyes of the pack, in every legal and ceremonial sense that mattered to people who'd spent two years watching my marriage from the outside and wondering how real it actually was. A child made the succession undeniable.

A child also made me a target, in ways I hadn't fully let myself consider until this exact moment, sitting on the edge of a bathtub with a positive test clutched in trembling hands. Dave had already shown me exactly how far he was willing to go to destabilize this pack. A pregnancy raised the stakes for everyone circling this marriage, myself included.

I can't tell anyone yet, I thought, wrapping the test carefully in tissue, hiding it deep in the cabinet like something dangerous. Not until I understand what it means. Not until I know what Rhys actually remembers, and what he's planning to do about any of it.

I splashed water on my face at the sink, staring at my own reflection, pale and hollow-eyed, trying to find some version of composure steady enough to carry back out into the household. My hands still trembled faintly against the porcelain.

This changes everything, I thought. And I have absolutely no idea how to hold it.

A sharp knock sounded at the washroom door, startling me so badly I nearly knocked the whole cabinet open.

"Matteo?" Rhys's voice, closer than I expected, urgent in a way I hadn't heard from him since the day he first opened his eyes in that hospital bed.

"One moment," I called, my voice not quite steady, scrambling to wash the last traces of panic from my face before opening the door.

He stood in the corridor when I finally pulled it open, and something about the look on his face made every thought of the test, the pregnancy, the fragile secret I'd just discovered, scatter instantly to the back of my mind.

He looked shaken. Truly shaken, in a way that had nothing to do with the soft, searching uncertainty he'd worn since waking. This was sharper. Real fear, unguarded, cutting straight through whatever careful performance he'd been maintaining for days.

"I need to talk to you," he said. "Now. It's important."

"Rhys, what's wrong," I said, my own dread rising fast to meet his.

"Not here," he said, glancing down the corridor like he was checking for anyone listening, his hand finding my wrist, gripping it with an urgency that startled me. "Come with me. Please."

I looked at him, my own secret still burning fresh and unspoken in my chest, and felt the ground tilt beneath me one more time, uncertain whether whatever he was about to say would collide with what I now knew, or simply add one more weight to a night already buckling under the strain of everything neither of us had said aloud yet.

"Alright," I said, and let him pull me down the corridor into whatever came next.