Chapter 165

Chapter 165: Chapter 165

Lysander’s pov

I remember everything because it was the happiest I had been, away from every other danger that lurked. I felt like a true prince in my castle.

The quiet, sunlit villa in the southern highlands. Drake holding me in the dark, his heavy, burning frame pressed against mine, his voice whispering promises of protection into my skin. Those long, uninterrupted nights where he had loved me completely, filling me with his royal essence, laying the foundation of the sanctuary he had built for us.

And two weeks later... the attack.

The cold iron doors of Darius’s compound. The suppressant collar locked around my neck. The memory of waking up on that dark oak desk, disoriented, my body heavy and paralyzed under the dark, suffocating weight of Darius’s pureblood magic.

My hands flew up to cover my face, a low, broken sob tearing from my throat.

I didn’t know.

The math was a dark, suffocating labyrinth with no way out. The hybrid biology inside my body was unique, unpredictable, adaptive, and easily manipulated by high-tier pureblood magic. A pureblood’s essence could force a conception, or a royal bond could anchor one weeks after the fact.

I had no way of knowing whose blood had rewritten my core.

If the child was Drake’s... it was the ultimate proof of our bond.

If the child was Darius’s... it was a dark, corrupted curse, a weapon forged in the shadows of that compound to ensure my permanent destruction, a living mark of ownership that would destroy Drake’s mind the second he looked at it.

I clutched my stomach, tears falling down my cheeks as I stared at the report in me hand, and let out a sob.

"Lysander?" Dr. Evelyn’s voice cut through the dark panic, her hand coming down gently onto my trembling shoulder. "Lysander, please look at me. You are in shock."

"I don’t know..." I choked out, my voice breaking into a ragged, pathetic weep as I pressed my forehead flat against the cold mirror. "I don’t know whose it is..."

"What?" she asked, her eyebrows pulling together in confusion.

"I don’t know who the father is," I sobbed, my fingers digging into the metal frame of the sink until my knuckles turned white. "I don’t know... I don’t know what’s inside me..."

Dr. Evelyn stayed quiet for a long moment, the weight of my words settling over the small room like a dark shroud. She didn’t ask questions. She didn’t pry into the dark, terrifying politics of the pureblood houses. She just reached over, turning on the cold tap, and handed me a paper towel.

"We can run a genetic essence marker test," she said softly, her voice steady. "When the gestation reaches eight weeks, we can extract a small sample of the amniotic fluid and compare the DNA signature against—"

"No," I rasped out, spinning around to face her, my dark eyes wide and wild with terror. "No! No blood tests! No records! You can’t put this in the system!"

If a genetic report was generated in a public clinic, Drake’s intelligence network would flag it within minutes. Vane’s operatives would intercept the file before the ink was dry, and Drake would read the results on his terminal in the capital.

If he saw a query for paternity, if he realized I was carrying a child and didn’t know whether it belonged to him or his worst enemy, he wouldn’t just lock me in the vaults. He would burn Darius’s compound to the ground, tear the territory apart, and execute every person who had touched my skin.

"Lysander, for your own health, we need to monitor this," Dr. Evelyn argued gently.

"Delete the file," I pleaded, grabbing her wrist with my trembling, bloody fingers, my tears falling onto her white coat. "Please... I’m begging you. Wipe the entry. If anyone finds out about this... people will die. Please."

Dr. Evelyn looked down at my hand, then at the sheer, absolute agony in my face. She let out a long, quiet breath, her shoulders sagging under the weight of a secret she clearly didn’t want to carry.

"I can archive the visit under a routine stress evaluation," she whispered softly, tapping her screen. "No essence markers will be uploaded to the central registry. But you are four weeks along, Lysander. Your body is going to change rapidly. You cannot hide this for long."

My knees finally gave out entirely. I slid down the side of the sink, collapsing onto the cold tiled floor of the examination room. I pulled my knees tight against my chest, wrapping my heavy sweater around myself, hiding my face in my hands as the quiet, violent sobs wracked my body.

I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t step back out into that rain, and I couldn’t force my legs to take a single step toward Drake’s estate.

Dr. Evelyn didn’t push me to get up. She quietly pulled a warm blanket from the supply closet, draping it over my wet shoulders, and locked the examination room door from the inside to give me privacy.

I sat there in the quiet room, huddled against the wall under the heavy blanket, staring blankly at the glowing screen on the counter.

I was carrying a life. A child.

And as I sat locked inside the small room, listening to the rain beat against the glass, the terrifying truth settled deep into my marrow: I was completely trapped, hiding from the world in a doctor’s office, carrying a secret that was going to destroy us all.

Drake would kill every one of us if he ever finds out, me more then every one else. I betrayed him countless times and I felt no remorse, only the thrill of the danger I constantly put myself in.

Without thinking, I took out my phone and dialed the one person who would come through for me no matter what, I wiped my tears and spoke in it.

"Please, come and take me away from here."

The voice replied, "I am on my way."