Paid to Leave, Pregnant With the Vampire Kings Heirs novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Three Heartbeats
A doctor finds three heartbeats at 8:15, and at nine the king's family hands Linnea fifty million dollars and the papers to end her bond; she signs, and in the car finds her husband's text telling her not to.
At 8:15 on Tuesday morning, a doctor turned her screen toward me and pointed at three flickers.
"One," she said. "Two. Three."
I lay on the clinic table with cold gel on my stomach and couldn't speak.
Every night for a year, at the Tempest family dinner table, someone had told me the same thing.
Vampires can't have children, dear. Don't set your heart on it.
One aunt said it most often, with a smile, while she passed me the bread.
"Triplets," the doctor said. "Nine weeks. I've been doing this twenty years and I've never seen this."
"My husband's family says it's impossible," I whispered.
"Then your husband's people are wrong."
I paid in cash and made her promise to write the results on paper only.
She asked if my husband knew.
"He's at the Northern Court until the new moon," I said. "He calls every night at eleven. I'm telling him tonight."
I meant it.
I walked out into the cold with one hand flat on my coat and did not feel the pavement.
The driver was waiting at the curb with the grey car, the way he waited every morning.
I got in and told him to take me home.
Tempest House stands on a bluff over the Hudson, an hour north of the city.
I walked in through the front hall at ten to nine.
The hallway to the breakfast room is lined with portraits of every Tempest back two hundred years.
Ambrose has none from before he was nineteen, because the court keeps no records of childhood.
I had never thought about it before.
The breakfast room was full.
Cressida, the aunt with the smile, sat at the long table with four other aunts.
Two members of the Council in grey suits sat beside them.
A lawyer stood at the end with a leather folder.
At the head of the table Ottoline looked up and smiled at me.
She is Ambrose's great-aunt and regent of the house while he is away.
She is also the only person in that house who ever brought me anything.
Every morning for a year, she had carried my tea up herself.
"There you are, child," she said. "I kept your pot warm."
She poured it.
I didn't pick it up.
"Sit, Linnea. This is the kind way to do it, and I wanted you to have it in front of people who love you."
Nobody at that table had ever loved me.
The lawyer set the folder in front of me and opened it.
The title page read: Severance of the Blood Bond.
Beneath it was Ambrose's seal in black wax, and below that, a signature line with my name already typed.
"He couldn't face you himself," Ottoline said softly. "He asked me to spare you the call."
"Ambrose asked you?"
"Last night, before the Council. Look at the seal, dear."
It was his seal.
The grandfather clock in the corner began to strike nine.
My phone buzzed in my bag, and I knew without looking that it was my bank.
The lawyer turned a tablet toward me.
Fifty million dollars, in my own name, in an account I had never opened.
"A generous settlement," Ottoline said. "The bond ends at the new moon. After that you're free, and rich, and nobody will bother you."
Cressida looked into her cup and smiled.
"It's for the best," she said. "Vampires can't have children, you know. We tried to tell you."
I looked at the paper.
The ink on it was dry, and the date at the top was today's.
I had left the house at seven, and nobody here knew where I had gone.
I had walked in from the clinic six minutes ago, and these papers were already printed.
The doctor's results had not left her hands.
Somebody had told this house about the heartbeats, and this was the answer.
Not a threat, not a shout.
A check, a seal, and a warm pot of tea.
If I fought, they would take the babies from me the first night I slept.
If I took the money and went quietly, I could be a long way from here before anyone looked twice.
My hand was shaking so hard the pen rattled on the table.
I did not look at Ottoline.
So I signed.
I signed before my hands stopped shaking.
The lawyer capped the pen.
Ottoline folded her hands. "The driver will take you wherever you like, child. Anywhere at all."
I stood up and walked out.
Nobody stopped me.
In the grey car, I put my head back and shut my eyes.
My phone had been on silent since the clinic.
I took it out to call June.
There was one message on the screen, from Ambrose, sent at 8:58.
Two minutes before I signed.
"Whatever they put in front of you, do not sign."
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