Page 136 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

He understood what they must do now.

He’d taken her. He’d brought her here. To keep her safe. To protect her from the monsters who lived out there.

And there was only one way to do it.

He’d give Aurora and their child what his mother and his sister had never known.

Commitment.

His commitment to protect her, to become her protector.

‘You will stay here, with me.’ He turned back to her and met the determined thrust of her chin. ‘Forever.’

‘Forever?’A chill feathered down Aurora’s spine. ‘What does that mean?’

‘What is it you don’t understand?’ He stepped closer. The intensity of his eyes pinned her to the spot. ‘The definition offoreveris for all future time,’ he said, and the tiny hairs on her body stood to attention. ‘For always, you will stay with me, and I will protect you and the baby inside you.’

Her body responded to the possessive statement. To the undeniable truth of what grew inside her. A part of him. But…

She looked at the closed door, at the key still in the lock. All she needed to do was twist it, open it, and walk through it. Buthehad locked it. He wanted to keep her inside with him.Forever.And the commitment of his words, the confidence from him that she wouldn’t object, that she’d stay with him,always, lit a coil of longing inside her to do just that.

She lifted her gaze to his. ‘I’m to be your prisoner?’ she asked, and her heart raced.

Despite the meaning of the wordprisoner, her body hummed with the definition her mind conjured for her. It was not of bars and locked doors, but to always be in the presence of a man who looked at her with such power, and made her feel things she shouldn’t.

But why shouldn’t she?

He was the father of her child.

He was a man proposing forever.

‘You are to be the mother of my child,’ he countered. ‘You are no prisoner.’

She flushed. ‘So what do you mean to do with me?’

A pulse tattooed frantically on his cheek. ‘I will do my duty to you, and the child.’

She frowned. ‘Your duty?’

‘I will give you both shelter. I will provide food. I will keep the fires burning. I will keep you both warm, and the cold world outside. Iwillkeep you, and the baby I put inside you, safe, by whatever means necessary.’

‘I’ve never been unsafe.’

‘In New York, you were reckless.’

‘So were you,’ she countered. ‘Butthatisn’t my life. That night was different. It was…’

It flashed in her mind. The night that changed everything. The warmth of him. The hardness. The fullness of him inside her. But also, she remembered the softness of his hand claiming her wrist. She remembered the swipe of his open palm on her spine as she sat astride him, unravelling. The warmth of his jacket, being cocooned in his scent as he draped it over her shoulders.

‘Life-altering,’ he finished for her.

‘Yes.’ Heat gathered in her abdomen. ‘But I’ve never been cold, Sebastian. I’ve always had food,’ she told him. ‘I have shelter.Safety.I can provide all of those things for the baby. On my own. So these things you offer…’ She shrugged. ‘They mean nothing to me.’

‘And yet these things meaneverything,’ he growled, ‘to me.’

The image of Michael, all alone under a winter’s sky, hungry, cold and alone, kicked Aurora in the ribs.

‘Was it so very hard to be without those things?’ she asked. ‘How did you survive out there? All alone? Without food? Shelter?’ She shivered. ‘Warmth?’