Page 84 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Two Weeks Later…

A URORA FINGERED THE delicate yellow crib bedding tied around the antique oak bars. She pinched the soft casing that would cushion the baby from the hardwood. The tiny ducks, dancing with their open beaks sewn by hand into the bedding, taunted her with their happiness.

She turned away from it. But it was useless. In every corner of her peach bedroom, he was there. Inside the little vases. In the boxes she hadn’t let them put into storage, full of the birds of prey dining set.

He’d been true to his word.

The trucks had arrived the next day.

He’d returned… everything . The smallest vase. The largest dining set. Her silk pumps she’d kicked off outside the great dining hall.

He’d sent it all back.

The last box had arrived today.

She looked down at her hand, at the twisted strings of silver forming the band around her middle finger.

The note had said it had been made for her, that it belonged to her, and he didn’t want it.

Her heart ached. Still.

He didn’t want her.

She splayed her fingers, flexed them. The weight felt foreign.

Wrong. And she supposed it was. It was on the wrong hand.

It didn’t belong on that finger. It was too tight.

But she couldn’t bear to wear it on the right finger.

The silver clawed feet holding the blue stone in the centre pinched, indented her flesh like a branding iron.

His brand.

She knew that ran deeper than the mark that would disappear when she took the ring off.

He’d changed her. Marked her as his from the first night they’d met.

And still she was his. She ached for him. In every way…

Her stomach twinged. She stroked it. But still it ached. Tightened.

‘Not yet, little one,’ she whispered. ‘A few more days, please.’

The baby was ready, she knew. But still she held on. Still she gave him time he hadn’t requested. Time she didn’t have to give him.

But he wasn’t coming.

Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.

‘Ouch!’ She doubled over, her hands clutched to her stomach. The Braxton Hicks contraction was tighter than usual. So tight it stole her breath.

It was only a practice contraction. It would pass. It had to pass. She wasn’t ready. Not without him.

He would come. He had to.

They were not over.

They were having a baby.

They were in love.

He doesn’t love you.

Pain tore through her pelvis. ‘Ahh!’

She gritted her teeth and breathed through it.

He loved her.

He loved the baby inside her.

So why isn’t he here?

The pain eased. But a pressure built in her back. A weighted thing on her spine.

She sat down on the edge of the bed.

Every day, the conversation was the same. A battle of her heart and her mind. He didn’t want her. He’d sent her away… And what had she done? She’d let him push her into a helicopter. She’d let him end them. Without a fight.

She closed her eyes.

She wanted him to fight. For them.

She wanted him to walk into her room, as he had all those weeks ago, and take her.

She opened her eyes, looked above the crib where she’d made them hang the painting of Sebastian. His eyes watching. When the baby was born, when their baby slept in a crib beneath it, it would remind her what was important.

Love.

Unconditional love.

A sharp pain shot up her spine.

‘ Oh, oh !’ she panted. Hard and deep. The pressure was so intense in her back, her temples throbbed. Her gaze misted.

The painting wobbled.

Who had ever fought for him? For the boy longing for acceptance, for love. For support.

She wished she had a time machine. She wished she could break down the doors of the basement and save him before Amelia’s birth, before he’d known such pain. And regret. And guilt.

Who had ever fought for the man?

No one.

He was still all alone in his castle, in the highest room, in the highest tower…

There they were again. Those tears she didn’t want, hot on her flushed cheeks. And she knew she had a choice.

She could wail. She could scream. Or she could accept it. The end of them. She could move on. Raise her child on her own. She would live, she’d exist with or without Sebastian.

She couldn’t make him make the right choice.

She couldn’t make him love her.

She couldn’t make him accept her love.

But she could fight. She could fight the demons he still battled for him. She could protect him with her love. She could love him. Harder than he had ever known love.

A moan slipped from her lips. And it wasn’t the physical pain crushing her hips in a vice grip. It was the pain of realizing her stupidity.

She was stupid. Blind.

She didn’t need to be rescued.

He did.

All her life, she’d accepted things. The way she was supposed to behave.

The choices she’d had to agree to. And all her life, she’d been on the outside of her own life.

Waiting. Waiting for her parents’ love and acceptance.

She’d smiled through her pain, nodded when she’d disagreed with the ugly choices she’d been made to accept because she’d been too afraid to fight for what she believed in.

But she believed in her and Sebastian.

In their love.

What was she waiting for? For permission to love him?

He’d never give it to her without a fight.

She’d been fighting for them, she realised, since the night they met. Fighting for all they could be together. In the gardens. In the castle. And all the little fights that had led to this. The final battle she would need to win.

What weapons did she have?

Only herself.

Only her love.

He was sleeping beauty.

And she would wake him.

She reached for her phone next to the bed.

She couldn’t even call him—she didn’t have his number.

But Esther would. Esther would help her.

She rang the number she’d rung so many times during the week of the gala.

And she waited.

‘Aurora.’

‘Can you get me a helicopter?’

‘Why are you so breathless?’ Esther asked.

Was she?

‘I need to go to him…’ Her head swam. ‘Now.’

The line went silent, and Aurora’s heart throbbed.

She could get herself a helicopter. She’d never used one for herself. She didn’t have one in the garden. Esther could arrange it faster.

‘Please,’ Aurora sobbed. ‘He’s all alone. He shouldn’t be alone.’

‘No, he shouldn’t,’ Esther agreed. ‘I can get one for you. Are you at home? At the manor?’

The tears were back, but her smile was new. And it felt good to smile. To know that soon she would be with him. Where she belonged.

‘Yes.’

‘Stay on the line,’ Esther said. ‘I’ll tell you how long it will be.’

‘Make it soon,’ she said.

‘As soon as I can,’ she promised, and Aurora almost jumped for joy, but she was too tired, too swollen and pregnant to do so.

She needed to get ready. She put her hand on the side of the bed and pushed—

Aurora’s blood ran cold.

‘Esther…’

‘I’m still here.’

She sat back down on the bed. Reached for the part of her light blue dress now stained a deep red.

She lifted her fingers to her face. ‘I’m bleeding.’

‘ Bleeding ?’ Esther demanded. ‘Where from?’

She couldn’t breathe. Her head was fuzzy. A deep fog was falling over her, making everything heavy. Everything weak.

‘The baby,’ she breathed, and it trembled from her lips. ‘The baby, Esther…’

And then she could speak no more words.

The phone fell.

And so too did Aurora.

Sebastian was cold.

He knew he’d never be warm again.

He deserved to be cold. To sit here in the abandoned great dining hall, all alone, and freeze.

He probably would.

He turned up the collar on his brown winter fur. The same one he’d laid Aurora’s head upon as he’d kissed her. Found pleasure in her, made love to her.

He closed his eyes. Shut out the empty tables. The empty room.

He’d sent them all away. And they had gone. Esther had taken all his art. All of it had sold the minute he’d left the stage with Aurora.

She’d taken his sculpture, too. It was placed inside the entrance to the building Esther had acquired for him for the headquarters of the charity he was now the face of. And her face would be the symbol for it. A symbol of hope for all those who needed it.

Amelia’s Wish would be a success. A charity he should have set up the moment he’d been able to. He realised that now.

He realized it because of her .

Aurora.

It didn’t matter how tightly he squeezed his eyes shut. She was always there. Burnt onto his retinas since the first time he’d turned his head and laid his gaze upon her.

She did not bring him hope.

She was his torment. His endless torture. His punishment.

And this was hell.

His heart hurt. It had not stopped hurting since she’d left. Since he’d forced her to go.

And he endured the hurt, because it was his to endure.

He’d spared her from sharing his fate. He’d saved her, and their child, from living this life with him. They did not deserve to share in his life sentence in this desolate place where nothing lived but pain.

It was the one good thing he’d ever done.

He had not done what he’d wanted to. He had had not crushed her with his love. Suffocated her with his greed to have her, hold her, always.

He had set her free.

And he could barely breathe. The air was too thin without her. His lungs strained for just a single breath of her. His skin ached for her softness. Her closeness.

He’d never be close to her again. He’d never touch her. He’d never again breathe in her scent.

The reckoning was over.

Her job was done.

She had made him acknowledge all of his misdeeds. Brought them back into his present, and he had faced them. And now he would pay for what he’d done.

She had woken him from a deep, dark slumber of self-pity.

But now he was always awake. Would always be aware of what he’d done.

What he had almost done to her too. Locked her away, like he’d locked himself away. Kept her in the dark with him. But she deserved the light. So much of it.

He deserved the dark. He did not know how to live amongst other people with her.

His back pocket pulsed, vibrated furiously.

Again and again.

Sebastian pulled his phone free of his pocket.

‘Esther,’ he said, holding the phone to his ear.

‘Don’t panic,’ she said.

‘Why would I panic?’ he replied. ‘I do not panic.’

‘She’s okay,’ she said, ignoring him. ‘Or she will be. She was bleeding heavily. She’s at the hospital. I’m on my way now.’

His blood roared. ‘Where is she?’

‘Cirencester. Private Hospital.’

He stood, his body moving on instinct to get to her. To be with her.

‘I am on my way,’ he said, and his voice was tight, weak.

He had been too weak, hadn’t he?

Too afraid to fight for her.

For her love.

And now…

His throat squeezed. Threatening to crush his airways.

He burst through the entrance doors. They banged open. And he left them that way. Wide open as ran down the stone steps.

‘The helicopter should be landing now,’ Esther said. ‘Can you see it?’

He could.

He could see it all.

His fear. Her strength. Their love. Rare and divine. She was everything he’d ever wanted.

And now he could lose it all.

He could lose her.