Chapter 126: Seven weeks
Julian didn’t answer immediately. His jaw was a hard line of granite, his eyes fixed on the road with a terrifying, singular focus.
His hand remained clamped on the steering wheel, his knuckles so white they looked like polished bone. Before he could even begin to process the rage simmering in his gut, before he could plan how to systematically dismantle Sebastian Creed’s life, he needed the one thing he didn’t have.
Certainty.
"Julian, talk to me," Amara pleaded, reaching out to touch his arm.
"We need to know, Amara," he finally said, his voice sounding like it was being dragged over broken glass. "Not according to some phone call Sebastian staged. Not according to a ’feeling.’ We are going to see a doctor."
He couldn’t even look at her. The thought that his wife, the woman he protected with every fiber of his being, might have been violated in the most intimate, clinical way possible was a poison in his veins.
If there was a child, and if that child belonged to the man who had spent years trying to undermine her, Julian didn’t know if his world would ever stop spinning.
----
The emergency wing of the private clinic was eerily quiet, the fluorescent lights humming with a sterile, indifferent energy. Julian checked her in under a pseudonym, his influence and a quiet word to the administrator bypassing the usual wait times.
Amara sat on the edge of the examination table, the thin paper crinkling under her weight. She felt small, exposed in the oversized hospital gown. The silence between them was heavy, filled with the things they were both too terrified to say out loud.
Julian stood by the window, his back to her, watching the city lights. He looked like a man standing on the edge of a cliff, waiting for the wind to either push him back or send him over the side.
The door opened with a soft hush. A small, almost apologetic sound. Too gentle... for what it carried.
A nurse stepped in, quiet and composed, a tray balanced carefully in her hands. Everything about her was neat. Controlled. Practiced.
"Ma’am?" she said softly. "We have the results of the blood draw." Julian turned at once. Sharp. Immediate. But he didn’t move toward her. Didn’t step forward.
Didn’t reach. He stayed exactly where he was, like something had anchored him to that spot, his eyes fixed on Amara.
Only Amara. The nurse glanced down at the chart, her expression smooth, untouched by the weight of what she was about to say. Professional. Neutral. Detached.
"The HCG levels are definitive," she said. A pause. Small. Routine. "You’re approximately seven weeks along." And just like that. The air left the room. Completely.
Amara’s hand flew to her mouth, the motion instinctive, like she was trying to hold something in that couldn’t be contained. A sound slipped through anyway. A broken, choked sob. Seven weeks.
The number didn’t just register. It aligned. Too perfectly. Too precisely. That day. That room. At that moment, she had tried so hard to question... then bury.
And Julian. Not far from it. Close enough to confuse. Close enough to hurt even more.
Because now. There was no clear place to stand. No certainty to hold onto. Just a timeline that cut in two directions at once. Julian didn’t move. Not toward her. Not away. He didn’t speak. Didn’t shout.
Didn’t demand answers from the universe or the walls or the silence choking the room. He just stood there. Still.
His shadow stretched long behind him, dark against the clinic wall, like something separate from him... something heavier.
Something colder. And slowly. Quietly. The truth settled. Not loudly.
Not violently. But like a weight. A shroud. Falling over everything they were... and everything they thought they knew.
Amara looked at him through blurred vision, tears slipping faster now, unchecked.
She searched his face. For anger. For comfort. For anything. "Julian..." she whispered. Her voice barely held together, thin, fraying at the edges.
"Please... say something." The words trembled in the space between them. Waiting. Hoping. Breaking.
Amara had only said his name because she believed in him.
"Julian..."
It wasn’t just a call again; it was a reaching. A quiet, desperate reaching for the man who had always known how to steady her when everything else felt like it was slipping. He had always been the calm one.
The one who spoke softly and somehow made the chaos shrink. The one who could look at her and say it will be okay, and she would believe him, even when nothing about their world made sense.
She needed that version of him now.
She needed him to take her hand, to look her in the eyes, to remind her that whatever this was, however messy, however tangled, it didn’t change what mattered. That this child... was theirs. That no shadow from the past, no Seb, no confusion of timelines could break what they had built.
She needed him to choose her. Out loud.
Her fingers tightened slightly around the edge of the report as she turned to him, her voice barely above a whisper.
"Julian... say something." For a second, just a second, she thought he would. But he didn’t look at her.
His gaze stayed fixed on the doctor, like the answers were buried somewhere between the clinical words and numbers. His jaw tightened, the muscle ticking once, twice. And when he finally spoke, it wasn’t to her.
"When will it be safe to get a DNA test?" His voice was steady. Too steady. Controlled in a way that felt... distant. "I know we can perform one before delivery, right?"
The doctor blinked, slightly caught off guard by the shift in tone. "Yes... There are non-invasive prenatal paternity tests that can be done as early as..."
Amara didn’t hear the rest.
Something inside her chest folded in on itself, sharp and sudden. Her hand moved instinctively, pressing against her sternum as if she could hold whatever had just cracked into place.
He didn’t even look at me.
It wasn’t the question itself, that part, she could understand. Julian was a man who dealt in certainty, in facts. Doubt would eat at him; she knew that. Anyone in his position would want answers.
But the way he asked... Like she wasn’t standing right there. Like she wasn’t the one carrying the child. Like this was a problem to solve, instead of something fragile, they needed to hold together.
A soft, almost soundless breath left her lips. She nodded faintly to no one in particular, her fingers loosening from the report before she placed it gently on the edge of the bed.
Of course, he needed to know. Of course he did.
And of course... she would always be the mother, no matter what answer came back. That truth didn’t waver. It didn’t ask questions. It didn’t need proof. But he did.
That was the difference. Amara straightened slowly, her movements careful, as though anything sudden might shatter what little composure she had left. Julian’s voice continued in the background, low, measured, asking details, timelines, procedures. The nurse responded just as clinically.
They sounded... far away. Like she was no longer part of the conversation. So she stepped away from it. One step.
Then another. The floor felt colder than it should have. Or maybe it was just her.
She didn’t say anything as she moved toward the door. Didn’t trust her voice not to betray her. Her hand hovered briefly over her abdomen, a fleeting, protective gesture, before dropping back to her side.
By the time she reached the hallway, her vision had started to blur. She blinked it away quickly. Not here. Not now. The door slid open with a soft hiss.
And she stopped. Because he was there. Sebastian.
Leaning casually against the wall near the exit, like he had every right to be there. Like this wasn’t a hospital corridor but some stage he had chosen to walk onto at the perfect moment. His presence filled the space in a way that felt deliberate... calculated.
Amara’s breath caught.
For a split second, genuine surprise flickered across her face before it hardened into something sharper. "How did you..."
Her voice faltered, then steadied. "How did you know I was here?" Sebastian pushed himself off the wall slowly, his gaze sweeping over her face with an intensity that made her skin prickle.
"I always know where you are, Amara." The words were quiet. Certain. Too certain.
Her fingers curled slightly at her sides, her pulse beginning to pick up for an entirely different reason now.
Behind her, she could still hear Julian’s voice inside the room. But out here. Out here, it felt like the past had just stepped forward... and refused to stay buried.
"Amara... are you okay?" Sebastian’s voice came softer this time, stripped of its usual edge, almost careful, as if he already knew the answer and was bracing for it anyway.
Amara didn’t respond.
She just stood there, caught between the weight of his presence and the storm still echoing behind her in that hospital room. Her thoughts hadn’t even settled when another voice cut through the hallway.
Sharp. Furious. "Amara." Julian.
She barely had time to turn before he was there, closing the distance in long, urgent strides. His hand came around her arm, pulling her gently but firmly against him, like he needed to anchor her... like he was afraid she might disappear if he didn’t.
His body was tense, coiled tight with something dangerously close to snapping.
"I warned you, Seb," Julian’s voice came out low at first, but it didn’t stay that way. It rose, rough with restrained anger. "I told you to stay the hell away from my wife. Did I not?"
The last words cracked, his control slipping just enough to show the fire underneath.
Sebastian didn’t move back. If anything, he straightened, his gaze locking onto Julian with a cold steadiness that only made the tension worse.
"And yet," Seb replied quietly, "here I am."
Amara’s eyes moved between them. One on each side. One holding her. One is watching her. And for the first time, something inside her didn’t feel... chosen. It felt claimed. Like she had somehow become the center of a battle she never agreed to fight.
Her chest tightened, not from confusion this time, but from something deeper. Something heavier.
How did my life become this?