"Please… save my baby."
The words didn't just leave her lips.... They broke out of her.
Shattered.
Raw.
Stripped of every layer of strength she had been desperately clinging to since the moment she woke up in this nightmare.
Varek didn't move.
Not immediately.... He simply looked at her.
At the tears sliding unchecked down her temples, leaving wet trails across her pale skin.
At the dark blood slowly spreading beneath her like a quiet, merciless truth staining the sheets.
At the way her body trembled against the restraints that had never been meant to hold something so fragile… something so human.
Something shifted in his expression.
Not concern.
Not even curiosity.
Calculation.
Slow.
Measured.
Detached.
"…Your baby?" he repeated softly, almost thoughtfully, as if tasting the words. Then, a beat later, more precise, more clinical.
"You're pregnant?"
As though the idea had only just settled into place for him.
