His legs felt numb. He didn’t trust himself to walk, even though all he wanted in that moment was to leave. He opened his mouth to say something cutting, but bleak tears welled already threatening to overflow her lashes, and her shoulders hunched, expecting ugly words.
“It’s Rodrigo’s?” It had to be. She wouldn’t be telling him like this if she planned to end the pregnancy.
“Well...” The tears did spill then, starting as fat droplets and continuing as a steady stream. “We considered lying to you, but we don’t know. It doesn’t matter either way, does it?”
Doesn’t matter? She was supposed to be the fucking voice of reason, but the woman had lost her damned mind. If it was his, there was no way she could go ahead with this. They’d talked about this. He’d thought she’d agreed. And wasn’t she on the pill? They’d been careful.
Maybe she’d forgotten to take them when she’d been gone with Rodrigo. It had to be his for sure, right? Because if it wasn’t Rodrigo’s, that would mean adding another screwed-up generation to his already screwed-up family.
He closed his gaping mouth with a snap then opened it again when he could string some words together.
“Of course it fucking matters,” he bellowed. “If it’s mine, it’s going to be all...fucked up. Why bring that into the world when we have the chance to end it now? Before it ends up like me or Loïc or Martine. There are tests you can do beforehand to find out, I’m sure.” He made a chopping gesture, so she’d know he meant it. “If it’s mine, it’s gone.”
She spread a hand over her belly. “Fuck you, Leduc.” Her small body bristled with an aggression he’d never seen in her. She pushed herself to her feet, glaring up at him, teeth bared. “This baby is mine. Not yours. Not Rodrigo’s. Mine! If you think for one second you get to make this decision on my behalf –”
“I’m your dominant,” he growled back.
Her hand went to her throat, and she unclipped his leash then threw it at his feet. “Tattoo.”
She was safewording?
She stalked into the house, leaving him standing there, completely at a loss.
After a few minutes he realized he was standing on his steps staring at the front doors as if Minnow would pop back out again and tell him she was joking.
The doors stayed shut.
Feeling lost, he wandered into the backyard and found himself sitting in front of the fire pit. The ground was still scarred from where he’d burned Sutton’s dresser. He picked up one of the metal drawer pulls and cleaned the ash from it. The metal was cool in his hand, and he turned it over, wondering what Sutton would say if she was here. Probably that he w
as being an ass. What the fuck else was he supposed to do? Pretend he was happy? Excited?
The idea of Minnow having his baby had appealed to him the first time it had come up – even now he could feel the siren’s call of it. To have something between them that important and mind-blowing. A Minnow/Severin hybrid. But that was before he realized the kid would either inherit his issues, or he’d inadvertently mess the kid up, just by virtue of who he was. He wasn’t parent material. If the kid was Rodrigo’s there was a chance things could work, but if it was Severin’s there was just too much to overcome.
How could Minnow not understand that? Rodrigo could fill in the gaps where he’d suck as a husband – but as a parent? That was a lot to make up for. Maybe they should just leave and make a normal family – maybe at Rodrigo’s house where Severin wouldn’t screw the kid up worse.
When Ilse had the girls, he’d made it clear he wouldn’t be doing fiddly things like holding babies or cleaning up after them – but Minnow wasn’t going to tolerate that from him. And what if he lost his temper or something? He was doing fine with the dogs, but they could run if he ever flipped out. A baby was too helpless. Babies were small and floppy if they weren’t held right. He was too big to deal with delicate shit.
No. No way.
He’d promised not to make her leave, but if she was going to breed here maybe he had to get the fuck out.
*
The knock at the forge door made Severin grit his teeth. After weeks of living in the outbuilding, his damned submissives didn’t fucking knock anymore. That meant the only person it could possibly be was Church, who’d arrived with Ilse and the girls the day before.
Even though he ignored the knock, the door swung wide.
“Aren’t you going to get dressed?” Church asked, his low voice grating.
“I am dressed.”
“For your fucking wedding, asshole.”
He kept going with his weld. “They can marry each other. They don’t need me.”
“They don’t need you for your own wedding?”
“It’s their wedding, I’m just ugly window dressing.”