All Chapters of Pregnant for the ruthless billionaire vampire: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

ELENA'S POV I felt his grief before I felt my own. That was the first thing the life bond gave me. Not warmth. Not love. Not anything convenient or comfortable. Just his grief, arriving in my chest through the thread between us like something that had been traveling a long distance and had finally found the right address. It felt exactly like mine. Nobody asked us to move from the lobby floor. Dax held the perimeter. Kyle appeared at some point and stood quietly near the entrance doing what Kyle does, watching everything and saying nothing until saying something was necessary. Ryker's wolves were outside, covering the street, making sure whatever Morgana had left behind didn't regroup. Lucian sat beside me with his hand still over mine on my stomach and neither of us spoke. The life bond sat between us like a third presence. Not intrusive. Not demanding. Just there, the way something was there when it had always been meant to be there and had finally arrived at its corre

ELENA'S POVI didn't wait for them to move first.The gold power came up before anyone in that corridor finished processing what they were looking at and I drove it forward in a controlled sweep that hit the nearest four council vampires simultaneously and put them against the walls before they could deploy whatever response they'd been briefed to use against a Nightshade.Seraphine was already moving through the gap I'd created.Lucian went right. Dax went left. Kyle covered the stairwell door behind us.The remaining eight council vampires were better prepared than the first four. They'd felt the power surge and adjusted, spreading out to reduce the effectiveness of another wide sweep, moving to individual positions that required individual responses.Fine.I gave them individual responses.I took the nearest one with blood manipulation, found his blood through the chaos and closed my hand around it, directed and precise. The one beside him I hit with a focused gold burst that had e

ELENA'S POVNobody moved toward me.They understood, all of them, that moving toward me right now was the wrong call. So they stood in the cold night air around Thomas's body and they waited and the children who had seen it happen were being quietly guided away by Kyle and the wolves and I stayed on the ground with my hands flat against the earth and breathed.Lucian crouched beside me.Not touching. Not speaking. Just there, close enough that I felt the warmth of him against the cold air, and through the life bond I felt what he was doing. He was simply present. Not managing the situation. Not calculating the next move. Just refusing to let me be alone in it.I didn't tell him to move away."I caught it in two seconds," I said. My voice came out completely flat. "The surge lasted two seconds and he was standing right there and I caught it in two seconds and it wasn't enough.""No," Lucian said. "It wasn't.""He had a sister," I said."I know.""He survived four months in that buildin

ELENA'S POVI was out the door thirty seconds after her.The street was cold and empty and Viviana was already at the corner, moving fast with the particular efficiency of someone who had planned this before she sat down at that table and had been waiting for the right moment the entire time we were building the framework.I almost called her name.Then I heard footsteps behind me.Ryker.He came through the safe house door still pulling his jacket on, his amber eyes already locked on the corner where Viviana had turned. He hadn't stopped to wake anyone. He hadn't left a note. He had heard the door the same way I had and made the same calculation in the same second.He looked at me."Go back inside," he said."No," I said."Elena….""You can't follow her alone and I can't let either of you go without someone who can actually do something if it goes wrong," I said. "We follow together or I wake Seraphine and nobody goes."He looked at the corner.Then at me."Move fast," he said.We mo

CHAPTER 40ELENA'S POVWe sat around the table in the safe house with Kyle's phone in the center of it and the forty seconds of video playing in everyone's head on a loop and nobody suggested sleeping because nobody was going to sleep and pretending otherwise would have been an insult to what we'd all just watched.Seraphine was at the window. Lucian was standing. The pack wolves in the corner had the particular stillness of people waiting for direction and trying not to show how much the waiting was costing them.I was still at the table with my hands flat on the surface and my mind running through every variable in a situation that kept producing the same answer no matter how many times I ran it.Forty-eight hours.Viviana in a chair with her hands bound.An unborn child that Morgana was prepared to use as leverage without hesitation."Logan is still in the vault corridor," I said."My people will have him by now," Lucian said. "I sent word when you came back.""I want to talk to h