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I woke up on a bathroom floor that wasn't mine.
The tiles were cold. White marble, expensive, the kind you see in hotels that cost more per night than my rent. My cheek was pressed against them and my mouth tasted like I'd licked a ashtray. I tried to remember how I got here but my head felt stuffed with cotton and broken glass.
I pushed myself up. My hands were shaking.
The last thing I remembered was that room. The painting. Dorian's teeth in my wrist and the way the mark burned like a brand. He'd given me three months to prove I wasn't a threat. Three months before he'd decide whether to kill me.
So why did my body feel like I'd already lived them?
I looked down at myself. Same jeans. Same shirt. But they fit wrong. Tighter around my hips and my breasts, loose everywhere else like I'd lost weight and gained it back in all the wrong places. My bra dug into my ribs. When I touched my collarbone I could feel the bones too sharp under my skin.
What the hell happened to me?
I got to my feet and the room spun. I grabbed the sink and waited for it to stop. The mirror showed me a stranger. Same face, wrong body. Dark circles under my eyes. Skin too pale. My hair hung limp and greasy around my shoulders and there was a stain on my shirt I didn't recognize.
And my wrist.
I turned it over slowly. The bite marks were still there. Two small scars, silver-white against my skin. But they looked old. Months old. Not three days.
I looked at the sink. At the counter. There was a toothbrush I didn't recognize. A bottle of prenatal vitamins.
Prenatal.
The word didn't make sense. I picked up the bottle and read the label twice. Then three times. Folic acid. Iron. DHA. For pregnant and nursing mothers.
This wasn't my bathroom.
I opened the door. The bedroom on the other side wasn't mine either. Big bed, unmade. Clothes on the floor. A window with heavy curtains that blocked out most of the light. I walked through it like I was moving through a dream. Everything felt too sharp and too distant at the same time.
There was a phone on the nightstand. I grabbed it. Locked. I tried my birthday. Nothing. I tried 0000. It opened.
The date on the screen said March twenty-third.
I'd triggered the blood ritual on December eighteenth.
Three months. Three months gone. Just like he'd said.
I scrolled through the phone. No contacts. No messages. Just a calendar with appointments marked in red. Doctor's appointments. Every week for the last two months. The next one was today. St. Mercy Hospital, fourth floor, Dr. Edwin Grey.
My hands were shaking so hard I almost dropped the phone.
I didn't remember any of this. Not the bathroom, not the bedroom, not three months of doctor's visits. The last thing I remembered was Dorian's face in that room, cold and perfect and telling me I had three months to prove I wasn't a hunter. Three months before he'd kill me.
Had he done something to me? Had he taken my memories?
I went back into the bathroom and threw up. Nothing came up but bile and stomach acid. I rinsed my mouth and looked at myself in the mirror again. The stranger looked back. Scared. Lost.
Pregnant.
No. That wasn't possible. I hadn't been with anyone in over a year. Not since Marcus and I broke up. And that was—
I stopped. Thought about the blood ritual. About Dorian's teeth in my wrist and the way the mark had burned. About the pulse I'd felt that wasn't mine.
Blood magic. He'd said the bond was complete. That it couldn't be undone.
What else had it done?
I got dressed in clothes I found in the closet. They fit better than what I'd woken up in. I didn't look at the maternity tags. I couldn't. I just pulled on jeans and a sweater and grabbed the phone and walked out of the apartment.
The address on the calendar was twenty minutes away. I didn't have money for a cab. I walked.
The city felt wrong. Like I'd been gone longer than three months. Or like I'd never really been here at all. People moved past me on the sidewalk and I felt like a ghost. Like I wasn't really here. Like I'd left part of myself behind in that room with the painting and Dorian's eyes watching me like I was something dangerous.
St. Mercy Hospital was old brick and too many windows. I took the elevator to the fourth floor. The woman at the desk looked up when I walked in.
"Iris Wren?" she said. "You're late."
"I—" My voice came out rough. "I'm here now."
She nodded and typed something into her computer. "Dr. Grey is ready for you. Room twelve."
I walked down the hall. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else. Room twelve had my name on a chart outside the door. I pushed it open.
The man inside was older. Fifty, maybe. Grey hair, grey eyes, grey suit. He looked up when I came in and something crossed his face. Relief, maybe. Or recognition.
"Miss Wren," he said. "Please, sit."
I sat. The exam table crinkled under me. "I don't know what's going on," I said. "I don't remember the last three months. I don't remember coming here. I don't remember any of this."
He didn't look surprised. He just nodded slowly and set down his pen. "The bond can do that sometimes," he said. "Especially in the first trimester. Your body is trying to adjust to sharing space with another life. And with him."
Him. Dorian.
"I'm not pregnant," I said.
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he stood up and gestured to the exam table. "Lie back," he said quietly. "Let me show you."
I didn't want to. Every part of me was screaming to run. But I lay back anyway. He lifted my sweater. I stared at the ceiling and tried not to think about the way my jeans didn't button right anymore. The way my body didn't feel like mine.
The ultrasound gel was cold. He pressed the wand against my stomach and turned the screen toward me.
I didn't know what I was looking at. Just grey and black and white static. And then—
A flutter. Small. Fast. Too fast to be mine.
A heartbeat.
"Thirteen weeks," Dr. Grey said softly. "Right on schedule."
I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. I just stared at that tiny flickering thing on the screen and felt something inside me crack open.
This wasn't possible. This wasn't real.
But my hand moved anyway. Without permission. It slid down and pressed against my stomach, right where the wand was. Right where that heartbeat was coming from.
"What did he do to me?" I whispered.
"The blood ritual is old magic," Dr. Grey said. He wasn't looking at me. He was looking at the screen. "Older than the courts. Older than the bloodlines. It binds two lives together. Makes them one. In every way."
"I didn't consent to this."
"I know." He turned off the machine and handed me a paper towel. "But the magic doesn't care about consent. It only cares about completion."
I wiped the gel off my stomach. My hands were still shaking. "Can you undo it?"
"No." He sat down on the stool and looked at me with something that might have been pity. "The child is part of the bond now. If you break it, you break them. Both of you."
I sat up. The room tilted. "So I'm stuck."
"For now," he said carefully. "Until the child is born. After that... the bond may weaken. Or it may not. Royal bonds are different. Stronger."
Royal.
"He told me he was from the Night Court," I said. "He didn't say he was royalty."
Dr. Grey's face went very still. "You didn't know."
"Know what?"
The door opened behind me. I turned.
Dorian stood in the doorway. Same perfect face. Same cold eyes. He looked at me like he'd expected to find me here. Like he'd been waiting.
"You missed your last two appointments," he said. His voice was flat. Empty. "I thought you'd run."
"I don't remember them," I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected. "I don't remember anything."
Something flickered across his face. Too fast to read. Then it was gone.
"The bond does that," he said. "Your body is adjusting. It will pass."
"You didn't tell me this would happen."
"You didn't ask."
I slid off the exam table. My legs were steady now. Anger was steadier than fear. "You said I had three months to prove I wasn't a threat. You didn't say you were going to put a baby in me and erase my memory."
"I didn't put anything in you," Dorian said. His voice was cold. Controlled. "The ritual did. And I didn't erase your memory. The bond is protecting the child. It will return when your body is ready."
"When will that be?"
"I don't know."
I wanted to scream. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to run. But I was so tired. My body felt like it had been wrung out and left to dry. "What happens now?"
Dorian looked at Dr. Grey. Then back at me. "Now you come home."
"I don't have a home. You took it."
"You have one now." He stepped into the room. Closer. "The child is mine. Which means you are too. Royal heirs must be born in the palace. Under royal protection. It's law."
Palace. Royal.
"Who are you?" I said quietly.
He looked at me for a long moment. Those cold, perfect eyes. "I'm the crown prince," he said. "And you're coming home with me."