Page 20 of Unleashed (Dark Sovereign #11)

EVERLY

The waiting room smells faintly of lavender and lemon polish, an attempt at comfort layered over the sterile tang of antiseptic. The walls are a pristine pale cream, the chairs upholstered in soft sage and gray, arranged in neat rows with glossy magazines perfectly fanned on the low tables.

A flat-screen plays a muted loop of parenting tips—swaddling, nutrition, smiling babies in soft-focus lighting. Every detail, every carefully placed painting and plush cushion, is a mirror image of every expecting couple’s dream.

A perfect family. A perfect baby. A perfect life where nothing is out of place.

Where sudden midnight cries are only charming interruptions, and messy spills are memories to be cherished.

It's a picture-postcard version of parenthood.

A far cry from the chaos, the confusion and the crippling, overwhelming love that reality brings.

I know it’s supposed to feel calming, serene. But it also feels like salt in a wound. My wound.

Everywhere I look, pregnant women sit with their husbands at their sides, fingers laced together, heads bent close in quiet conversations.

One man presses a kiss to his wife’s temple, whispering something that makes her laugh.

Another rests his palm reverently on the swell of his wife’s belly, and his eyes go wide when she flinches and grins—he felt the baby kick.

His answering laugh is pure joy, unguarded and bright, and it slices right through me.

I fold my hands over my stomach, protective, aching. My baby is growing strong inside me, and yet I’ve never felt the absence of Isaia more than I do in this room.

When my name is called, I rise on unsteady legs and follow the nurse down a hushed corridor, my palms damp against the folds of my dress.

The exam room is bright and orderly—white walls softened by framed prints of watercolor flowers, counters lined with neatly stacked supplies. The crinkle of fresh paper greets me as I sit back on the table, my pulse racing ahead of everything else.

A moment later, the door swings open and a woman in a navy coat steps inside. Mid-forties, maybe, with kind eyes behind square glasses and a streak of silver through her dark hair. She offers a warm smile that reaches all the way to her gaze.

“Ms. Beaumont?” she says gently. “I’m Dr. Henderson. It’s nice to meet you.”

Her handshake is firm but not clinical, a touch that steadies me in a way I didn’t realize I needed.

“Let’s take a look at how baby’s doing, shall we?”

I nod, throat tight. She snaps on gloves, smooths gel onto the wand, and the cold shocks me when it touches my skin. I tense, then exhale as she guides it across my stomach with practiced ease. A silent prayer echoes in my mind. Please, be strong…be okay.

And then the sound comes, a soft pitter-patter that fills the room, rhythmically steady. Alive.

I close my eyes, tears stinging as I just listen to the sound of the heartbeat.

Right now, I don’t need to see it; I don’t need to search for the shape on the monitor.

All I need is the sound. The rhythm. The proof.

That steady rush that says I’m not alone.

That there’s life inside me—tiny, fragile, fierce.

My baby. My miracle.

The sound is music, a song written just for me, for us, and I drink it in like oxygen. Because no matter how much the world tilts, no matter how many pieces of me are missing, this is real. This is mine.

“Everything looks good,” Dr. Henderson says. “At two point three inches, your baby is growing as expected. Really strong heartbeat, too.” The wand leaves my stomach, and she wipes the excess gel from my stomach before snapping off her gloves. “Any nausea?”

I shake my head, still half-dizzy from the sound that just filled the room, that heartbeat that feels like the only thing tethering me to this earth.

“Good. If you’re tolerating food well, go ahead and start your prenatal vitamins. I’ll let the nurse write down some good options for you to choose from.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

She squeezes my hand before she leaves, the kind of gentle touch people offer when they think you have someone waiting for you outside.

A husband, a partner, a family. Someone to wrap you up in arms and promises the second you walk out that door.

But I don’t have that. Everything—everyone I have is right here in this room.

The doctor leaves, and the quiet is deafening. The hum of the fluorescent lights, the faint rustle of paper under me, they’re nothing compared to the sound missing from this room, his voice, his heartbeat pressed to mine, his vow that I’ll never be alone in this.

Isaia should be here. He should be the one clutching my hand so tight it hurts, grounding me with his grip the way only he can.

He should be leaning close, his voice rough in my ear, whispering that he hears it too—that wild, racing heartbeat that belongs to us.

He should be crying with me, his tears falling into my hair as he swears he’ll never let anything touch us, never let anything near our child.

He should be here. Instead, there’s only silence.

An empty chair where he should’ve been sitting.

A blank space where his presence should’ve filled the room, too big, too consuming, too Isaia to ignore.

But he’s not. So much time has passed, and I no longer know the real reason he’s not here.

Is it because he lied? Is it because I didn’t phone him that first night?

Or is it—God, the thought claws into me—is it because he no longer…

He no longer wants me? Does he know I’m pregnant and he doesn’t want…us?

The thought horrifies me, so sharp it carves down my ribs and hollows me out from the inside.

Isaia not wanting me—that’s a world I’m not sure I can survive in.

The man Luna got tangled up in, the stranger I stumbled to the ground with, the meet-cute that turned into an obsession that became my oxygen—is now a silence I can’t outrun.

A shadow I can’t touch. The thought that the same man who once swore he’d burn the world for me could choose not to want me anymore—it unravels something vital inside me, thread by thread, until I don’t know what’s left.

Sadness drags at me, pressing me deeper into the crinkling paper until it feels like the table itself is swallowing me.

Fear creeps in right alongside it, insidious and cold.

What if this is it? What if this is my life now?

Appointment after appointment, milestone after milestone, nights awake with a crying baby, and no one beside me.

No Isaia’s hand gripping mine. No anchor. No storm. Just me.

Alone.

My fingers curl harder over my stomach, like maybe I can promise this child more than I can promise myself.

Maybe I should call him. Maybe I should reach out, just once, and bridge the silence before it swallows me whole. But the thought sears sharply through me; What if he doesn’t want me anymore? Because if he did…wouldn’t he be here? Wouldn’t he have already come for me? Wouldn’t he have called?

The ache in my chest is too much, the room too small, so I shove the thought down, slide off the table, and tug my dress down, hands trembling.

The hallway feels endless as I walk it, each step echoing with what’s missing.

By the time I reach the elevator, my throat is raw and jaw tense from trying to keep myself from crying.

I can’t break down here in front of all these people.

Keep your shit together.

It's already crowded when I step into the elevator, bodies pressed too close in the small space, the scent of antiseptic and perfume mingling in the stale air.

I squeeze between a man in scrubs and a woman clutching a manila folder, my back rigid as the brushed metal doors slide shut with a soft, final click.

The hum of the motor fills the silence, the low murmur of doctors and patients nothing but background noise to the riot inside my chest.

At the next stop, the doors hiss open and a prickle of awareness floods me as bodies spill out in a rush, shoes scuffing, voices trailing, until the space is nearly empty. I move to step forward—freedom just inches away—when a sharp tug jerks me back. A finger hooked into the belt of my dress.

Breath slams into my throat as my spine collides with iron heat, a chest so solid it steals the air from my lungs.

And then—God—then the scent hits. Clean leather.

Smoke. Power. The darkness that has stalked me in every dream, every nightmare, every lonely breath since the moment I was taken from him.

I gasp, the sound breaking sharp in the small metal box as the doors slide shut, sealing us in, and the air thickens, dense with him.

His breath drags against my neck, lips brushing so lightly I almost think it’s not real—until shivers ripple down my skin, the familiar crackle of electricity sparking everywhere.

My body melts backward, helpless against the heat of him. “Isaia,” I breathe out, his name a plea, and he responds to it like he always did—like a moth to a flame. A soft moan drips from his lips, and his hand curls over my belly, fingers clutching the floral fabric, a touch that tells me he knows.

He knows…

A tear slips down my cheek. “I miss you,” I whimper, and I sound absurdly desperate for him.

I should ask questions. I should demand answers.

I should be fury and anger, but instead I’m soaking for him, trembling for him, desperate for the man who wrecked me.

I hate myself for it almost as much as I burn for him. “I need you.”

Abruptly, he spins me, my palms slapping against the metal as he presses my front against the back of the elevator, air leaving my lungs in a rush, my core throbbing as he slides a thick, muscled thigh between my legs, pressing upward until I’m practically straddling him.

He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have to. His silence is louder than anything, charged with sex, with possession, with every unsaid word, and I want to drown in it. In him. I want to suffocate in his scent, his heat, the raw power that radiates off him, now stronger than ever.

Soft, hungry lips kiss along the curve of my neck, and I lean to the side, wanting more, shivering when his tongue strokes skin.

Without taking his hand off my belly, he slides the other under my dress, up my thigh, slow, deliberate, heat trailing higher and higher.

My skirt rides up with each inch, until his fingers find the thin cotton of my panties.

One brush—light, almost reverent—and I gasp, clamping a hand over my mouth, rewarded by a groan that ripples from his throat to my shoulder’s flesh.

I’m already wet. Pathetically wet. The kind of desperate slick that betrays me instantly, coating me for him, because some traitorous part of me has been waiting for this—aching for it—since the day I woke up in Anthony’s apartment.

He inhales sharply, the sound guttural in my ear, as though he can smell how badly I want him.

And his cock—Jesus, his cock…it’s impossibly hard against my lower back, pressing into me like punishment, like promise while his fingers tease lower, barely grazing the damp fabric, the whisper of touch more obscene than if he tore it all away.

I can’t breathe. I can’t think. All I can do is feel—his breath scorching my neck, his body caging mine, his hunger vibrating through me like some fierce electric current that screams of need and want, sex and sin.

And I’m completely swept up by him, consumed and caught in a high that drowns out all reason.

The elevator dings softly, sounding so far away, an indifferent reminder that the world still exists outside this heat. But inside, it’s only us, and I don’t want it to stop. I want time to pause, lock us both in this exact moment forever.

His teeth nip at my earlobe, sharp enough to make me gasp, and our eyes meet in the warped reflection of the elevator’s brushed metal.

The image is distorted, hazy, but unmistakable—his dark gaze locked on mine, burning even through the blur.

My breath stutters. It’s raw, obscene, intimate, like the reflection itself is a secret we’re both caught in.

His eyes hold me there, pinning me open, while his mouth ghosts over my skin like he’s committing it to memory—or maybe playing back every time he’s already had me like this.

Maybe he wants me to remember, too. To see the hunger in his eyes and know nothing has changed.

My thighs tremble and my hips arch into him as he grinds his cock against me.

I can feel how close he is to snapping—I know him.

I know the tells, the flex of muscle in his chest against my spine, the way his breath saws in and out like he’s one heartbeat away from losing control.

And if I weren’t so desperate for air, breathing heavily, I’d be begging for him to do just that.

The elevator climbs, each ding a countdown, each second another lash of torment.

And still he doesn’t speak, just claims me with silence, hungry yet patient lips, panting breaths and the slow hands of a man who’s both holding back and barely hanging on.

His finger prods at the seam of my panties, and my entire body ignites for him.

My breath splinters as I bite down on a moan, hips tilting, begging without words.

Just one more inch and I’d break for him.

Just one touch and I’ll combust. Shatter. Give him everything.

The elevator dings, and his rasp brands me to the bone. “You’re still mine, baby girl. Both of you.”

In a blur of movement, he’s gone—vanished into the swarm of strangers outside before I can even gasp his name.

My knees nearly buckle, and I sag against the mirrored wall, lungs heaving, heat pooled between my thighs. Another chime, another floor, but I can’t move. Not yet. Not when my whole body is trembling, wrecked, desperate, undone.

He was here.

My pulse still pounds where his mouth grazed my neck, my skin still humming where he touched me, my pussy still throbbing where his fingers almost—almost—claimed me.

I can taste him in my breath, feel him like he’s still pressed against me.

But he’s not. I’m left standing here, alone, soaked with want, hollowed with need, but beneath it another ache gnaws deeper.

Because the truth is, it isn’t just my body that’s starving.

It’s me.

I miss him. The storm, the fire, the madness of Isaia. And for one brutal heartbeat, I know…I’ll never stop chasing after the ghost of his touch…

Even if it ruins me.