Vampires Can't Have Children, So I Left Carrying the King's Triplets novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Three Heartbeats
A doctor finds three heartbeats at 8:15, fifty million dollars and severance papers arrive at 9:00, Elspeth signs, and the king texts: do not move, I am coming.
The first rule of the vampire world is that vampires cannot have children.
For a year, my husband's family reminded me of it at dinner every night.
At 8:15 this morning, a human doctor in a town twenty minutes from the estate turned the screen toward me.
"Three heartbeats," she said. "Triplets, about ten weeks."
"That's not possible," I said. "My husband is a vampire."
"I'm only telling you what's on the screen."
She pointed at three tiny flickers, side by side.
I laughed, and then I put my hand over my mouth so I wouldn't cry on her paper sheet.
I asked her not to write my last name anywhere.
She looked at the diamond ring, and at the faint silver scar on my neck where the king's bite ceremony had been.
"Nobody will hear it from me," she said softly.
I took the staff shuttle back to the estate with the ultrasound printout folded inside my bra.
My husband had not slept in my bed for nine weeks.
Bastian, the king, had a tower study now, and a door he kept shut.
Tonight I was going to wake him up and put the picture in his hand.
Eileen, the only human maid in the house, caught me on the back stairs.
She was carrying a stack of folded linen and she looked at my face.
"You look like you just won something," she whispered.
"Later," I said. "I'll tell you everything later."
She squeezed my arm and let me go.
It was nine o'clock exactly when I opened my bedroom door.
The room was full.
Honoria, the king's aunt, sat on the edge of my bed with her gloved hands folded.
She had been at the Winter Court since August, and I had not seen her in ten weeks.
Her tea tray used to reach my door every night at ten, for my bond headaches.
It had stopped the day she left, and I had slept better ever since.
Gerard, her son, leaned against my dresser with his arms crossed.
A thin clerk from the Court Registry stood by the window holding a leather folder.
"Elspeth, darling," Honoria said, and her voice was so gentle. "Sit with me."
"What is this?"
"Something kind," she said. "Something we should have done months ago."
The clerk laid the folder on my vanity and opened it.
There were two documents on top.
The first was a transfer notice from a bank in New York.
Fifty million dollars, in my name, with a timestamp from a minute ago.
The second was titled Petition to Sever a Blood Bond.
At the bottom of the second page, in black ink, was the signature of my husband.
Bastian Ravenhurst, King of the American Court.
"He signed," I said.
"This morning, in the tower," Honoria said, and she put a hand over mine. "He couldn't face you, dear. You know how he is."
I did not know how he was.
I had not been told anything in nine weeks.
Gerard stepped away from the dresser.
"Fifty million is the standard settlement for a bride who gives up her claim," he said. "A fair price for a year of nothing."
"Gerard," Honoria said sharply, "be kind."
"I am being kind, Mother. The rule is the rule."
He looked right at me.
"A king needs heirs. Vampires can't have them. So a king needs a human he can let go of."
It was the same sentence he had said at the long dinner table last night, and the night before that.
I put my hand flat on my stomach, behind the vanity where nobody could see it.
Three heartbeats, under my palm.
The Court nursery takes every child a king fathers, and the mother is paid and sent away.
Gerard had told me that rule too, one dinner, laughing, as a joke about something that could never happen.
Fifty million dollars was the price in his joke.
If I didn't sign, they would keep me in this house, and sooner or later someone would hold a hand against my stomach.
If I did sign, I would be a free woman with a fortune, a pen in my fist and a secret nobody in the Court could guess.
I had to decide in front of three people, and I did not let my face move.
"Where do I sign?"
"Here, dear," Honoria said. "And here."
My hand shook so badly that the pen skittered across the first line.
I signed before it stopped.
The clerk stamped the page, folded it, and nodded to Honoria.
Then the bond broke.
Something in my chest snapped, and I gripped the vanity.
Every night for a year I had felt Bastian at the back of my mind, a steady weight on my shoulder.
Now there was nothing there at all.
"There," Honoria said, patting my shoulder. "Isn't that better?"
"Yes," I said.
They left together, Honoria's heels clicking down the hall.
Eileen was in the doorway before it closed, her linen still in her arms.
I handed her the printout without a word.
She read it, and her mouth fell open, and I put a finger to my lips.
My phone buzzed on the vanity.
It was Bastian, the first message in nine weeks.
*Elspeth. Whatever they told you, don't leave the house. Don't move. I'm coming.*
I read it twice.
He had signed the papers himself, and now he was coming.
I could not tell if it was to say goodbye, or to say something worse.
Either way, I had the printout, the money, and three heartbeats nobody else knew about.
I dropped the phone into the washbasin, turned on the tap, and followed Eileen out through the laundry door.
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