Page 170 of Cruel Demands

“Was there an abduction?”

“Who fired the shots?”

“Is Governor Korolev safe?”

Another tightening grips my stomach. I grab Nikita’s arm.

She stops immediately. “Taylor.”

“I’m fine.”

“You keep saying that.”

“It keeps being mostly true.”

She looks down at my stomach. “How far apart?”

“I’m not timing them.”

“You should be.”

“This feels like a bad time to start.”

Arkady turns back. “What is wrong?”

“Nothing,” I say.

“She is having contractions,” Nikita says.

“Nikita,” I say. Arkady looks alarmed in a way I have never seen before. “I am thirty-seven weeks pregnant. My stomach does things.”

“We need a doctor,” Nikita says, ignoring me.

“Yes, Mikhail wants her to see one,” Arkady agrees.

“Can everybody please stop discussing my uterus while men with guns are escorting us through a crime scene?”

No one says anything after that. For approximately thirty seconds. Then Nikita squeezes my arm. “You will tell me when it happens again.”

I sigh. “Yes.”

We pass through a set of unfinished doors. The smell changes. Dust. Plaster. Antiseptic. Blood.

Mikhail is standing in the middle of an unfinished treatment room. For one second, I see only him. His shirt is untucked at one side. Blood marks his cuff. There is dust on his coat and a darkening bruise along his jaw. His hair has fallen forward across his forehead. Relief floods my body, and tears fill my eyes. He is beautiful. And he is alive.

Then he sees me. Everything in his face changes.

He crosses the room so quickly that I barely have time to release Nikita before his hands are on me. His palms close around my face. “Where are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.”

“That is not an answer.”

“Nowhere. My knee. Nothing serious.”

His hands move down my arms, over my shoulders, as though he cannot trust anything I tell him until he checks for himself. “The baby?”

“I think the baby is okay.”