Page 80 of The Alliance Bride

Her head whips around.

The second our eyes meet, hers widen in shock, and her whole body freezes like she’s been caught stealing. “Vihaan!” she squeaks, scrambling up so fast she nearly trips over the box of fairy lights. Her hands fly to her dupatta, then to her hair, as if that will somehow erase the fact that I’ve just caught her in the middle of this.

“I—you weren’t supposed to see this yet,” she blurts, voice shaking.

I blink, confused, still taking in the room, the details, the effort. “Why?”

Her face crumples. Just a little, but I see it—the way her lips tremble, the way she blinks too fast. She presses a hand over her chest and whispers, “Because… I wanted to surprise you.”

The rawness in her voice nearly knocks me off my feet. She isn’t just embarrassed. She’s… scared. Scared I’ll laugh, maybe,or not understand why this mattered enough for her to put so much of herself into it.

And I hate that. I hate that she even thinks for a second that I wouldn’t see the love stitched into every corner of this room.

I step forward, closing the space between us. My hand finds hers—warm, fidgeting—and I squeeze gently. “Poorvi,” I say, slow, deliberate, making sure she can hear the steadiness in my voice, “I love it already.”

Her eyes fly up to mine.

I mean it. God, I mean it more than anything. This room—these lights, these flowers—it’s not about aesthetics. It’s about her heart, laid bare in the form of fairy lights and candle flames.

She laughs, shaky, wiping at the corner of her eye. “You’re not supposed to see it until it was perfect.”

“It’s already perfect because you did it,” I answer without hesitation.

Her shoulders drop, the tension melting out of her little by little. She leans into me then, resting her forehead against my chest. I wrap my arms around her, pulling her close, breathing her in. Her hair smells faintly of sandalwood and something sweeter, something uniquely her.

For a while, we just stand there, her heartbeat thudding against my ribs. My hand strokes her back slowly, up and down, until she exhales a long sigh, like she’s been holding her breath for hours.

When she finally tilts her head back, her eyes are softer. Nervous still, but softer. There’s a weight in them, somethingunspoken pressing at her lips. I can feel it in the way she hesitates, biting down on her bottom lip.

“What is it?” I ask quietly.

Her fingers twist in the fabric of my kurta. She looks down, then up, then down again. Her mouth opens, closes. My chest tightens with every second she doesn’t speak, because I know her. I know the storm of thoughts that come before her words.

Finally, she whispers, almost too low to hear, “I… I wanted this to be special.”

“Special?” I echo, brushing a loose strand of hair away from her face.

Her throat bobs as she swallows. She grips my wrist suddenly, holding on like she needs the anchor. “Vihaan,” she breathes, her voice trembling in that way that makes my heart stutter, “I’m… I’m pregnant.”

The world stills.

For one second, I swear everything—air, time, sound—just halts. Her words hang in the air, delicate and enormous all at once. Pregnant. My wife. Us.

My lips part, but no sound comes out. My pulse is a roar in my ears, drowning out everything else. I look at her, really look at her—her trembling hands, her eyes glistening, her face caught between fear and hope and the purest kind of love—and something inside me shifts so violently it’s almost painful.

She thinks I’ll take a step back. That I’ll falter. That I’ll… what? Be scared?

But all I feel is an ache so strong it drives me forward, crushing her against me, my arms wrapping around her like I could shield her from the entire world.

“You—” My voice cracks, rough, unsteady. I press my face into her hair, inhaling her, grounding myself. “You’re serious?”

She nods against me, and I feel the dampness of her tears soaking through my shirt.

A laugh bursts out of me then, broken and disbelieving, but filled with something that feels dangerously close to awe. I cup her face, tilt it up, and kiss her—hard, desperate, full of every emotion clawing its way out of me. She tastes like salt and sweetness, like home, like the beginning of something I never knew I wanted this much until now.

When I finally pull back, my forehead rests against hers, our breaths mingling. “You’ve just given me the best surprise of my life.”

She sniffles, her laugh shaky. “I thought you’d be… shocked. Or… or upset that I told you like this.”

“Upset?” I pull her closer, shaking my head. “Poorvi, I—God, I don’t even have words. You’re carrying our baby.” My hand slides down instinctively, pressing gently against her stomach, even though there’s nothing to feel yet. But still. The thought that our child is growing there… it wrecks me in the best way possible.

Her hand covers mine, small and steady. “I wanted this to be beautiful,” she whispers.

“It already is,” I say, and I mean it with everything in me.

We sink onto the bed together, surrounded by the glow of the fairy lights, the faint hum of the city outside, and the soft rhythm of our breaths. She curls into my side, her fingers tangled with mine, and I stare at the ceiling, my chest so full it feels like it might burst.

For once, I don’t think about tomorrow, or responsibilities, or the weight of the world waiting outside this room. I think only of her, of us, of the tiny heartbeat we’ll hear someday soon.

And I know, without question, that this—her, me, our child—is the only future I’ll ever need.