He pushed the door back open with a creak, though never in his life had he ever recalled a palace door creaking.
He stood silhouetted in the door because as low and gentle as the hall lighting was, it was still brighter than the dark of the bedroom.
The dark from which Rita’s disembodied voice emerged to say, “I’m pregnant.”
He had been worried about the wrong threat all this time. He had been worried that the tendrils of warmth and homecoming he felt when he was around her, the threads of connection that had only grown, exponentially, since he’d made love to her, were the thing to watch out for.
But no. It was the one that should have been the most obvious from the beginning.
He was no different from Vin, nor Rafael, nor Zeus.
Undone by the oldest side effect in the known universe.
Rita was pregnant.
She had obviously become so the night they made love in the desert. The timing and the circumstances made sense, after all.
She had never been with anyone else. They had not used a condom, could not have, as in his undress he’d been in the rare state of not having one. There you had it.
As a healthy modern male, he maintained excellent sexual health, getting the appropriate tests and checkups regularly enough to ensure that he posed no risk to the partners he took, and still, he was typically very careful to ensure that he was protected in return.
Making love to Rita had been the most transcendent experience of his life, and one that he had been patently reckless regarding the possible consequences of.
But for this to happen.
He was undone. And what about his plans? Should he change them now, the risk of unrest not just a matter of the comfort of his people but the safety of his child?
This was almost to a T the exact situation he had taken such great pains to avoid.
To have things unravel at the end like this, because of this, was just so, so primitive. For it to have come down to a condom was so damnold-fashioned.
“You’re not on the pill? You said you didn’t care about a condom. What does that mean, if not that contraception is taken care of?” he asked, his tone sharper than he had a right to, unthinking to the fact that those would be the first words he would say in response to the first time he found out about his impending fatherhood for eternity.
He could think about that later.
Right now he wanted to know why the woman who created the world’s leading electric vehicles and was passionate about the future and technology and machines was not on the pill.
She was all that was modern and liberated from natural cycles. Shouldn’t she be on the pill?
“Excuse me?” Rita asked, outrage lifting the volume of her voice.
Belatedly, Jag realized that she had likely played out a number of scenarios in preparing to deliver the news to him. She had likely feared his reaction and worried that he would be angry with her, and the edge in his voice and immediate interrogation were not likely to be dissuading her from those notions.
But he couldn’t seem to find the control he was famous for to do anything about it.
He was angry.
But not at her.
He was angry at himself. How could he have let this happen? Because far more fairly than his words implied, he knew it had been his fault. He should have had greater self-control. He should have resisted.
None of that, however, stopped him from digging his hole deeper. “The pill,” he repeated. “Aren’t you on it? Aren’t all women on the pill these days?” he grumbled, recognizing that the answer was obvious.
Lifting to her elbow, she cocked her head to the side and lifted an eyebrow. “Are you done?”
Sighing, he closed his eyes and answered his own question. “Obviously the answer is no. If you’d been on the pill, you would not be pregnant.” He was being an ass. He was being an ass because if there was any fault to be had, it was primarily his own. He had let desire drive away logic, assuming far more than she’d ever implied. A man in his position knew far, far better than that. Opening them again, he said, “I’m sorry, Rita.”
Only now did he realize she wore an ice-blue silk nightgown beneath the sheet that draped over her hips, hugged her curves, while the gown framed her cleavage.