The days that followed the night Rohan and Belle made love in the parlor room were completely uneventful, except for the few days when Belle was consud by pain after she ran out of the dicine in the container, and Rohan had to get her more.
Ti began to move fast. Weeks turned into months, and her pregnancy finally began to make its presence known, visibly showing through every dress she wore.
However, with the growing pregnancy ca many other symptoms that made it clear she wasn’t carrying a human baby. It didn’t just give her intense mood swings, it also gave her a massive appetite that could compete with even Rohan’s, who was known to enjoy food.
But with the appetite ca sothing far worse: the bloodlust. The small doses of blood Rohan mixed into her dicine barely dulled the pain when the cravings consud her. Sotis, he had to take her to the piano room and play soft lodies for her while speaking directly to the little demon inside her—pleading, coaxing, trying to make it understand the suffering it was causing its mother.
At tis, the baby listened. A week would pass in peace, without demands. But when it returned, it did so with fierce hunger, and no amount of his words or pleading made any difference. The baby refused to listen.
There was one night Rohan found himself threatening his own unborn child when it kicked her so violently in the womb that she woke up crying in pain. The attack left her unable to walk for a week, unless Rohan carried her up and down the halls and stairs himself.
He had thought he could continue to keep her in the dark about what he had been mixing into her dicine—but in ti, he realized there was no other choice. If she didn’t start taking the blood directly, undiluted and in its purest form, he would be risking her life.
Hence, one morning, when she woke up in pain, sweating and groaning—thankfully, Rohan had learned since the ti she began to show not to dare close his eyes and sleep at night, he had taken up the position of watching over her from the wingback chair beside the bed, which had beco his permanent place of sitting through the long hours.
Even before she woke up in pain that morning, he had already caught sight of the dark veins forming on her face and neck, veins that appeared and disappeared in strange pulses before she stirred. Then ca the groans, the clenched teeth, the rage twisting her face. One of her mood swings. The anger was always severe.
He had tried to feed her the dicine, but her expression, so unlike the gentle woman he had married, changed by the pregnancy, turned wild. With a burst of strength he didn’t know she possessed, she struck the dicine away from her mouth with her fist and grabbed his collar, yanking him toward her.
Then, to his shock, she wrapped her hand around his throat and tightened her grip around his windpipe.
"Get sothing to eat! I am starving and the pain won’t go away with that filthy dicine, do you understand?! The baby you put inside is hungry!" she gritted out furiously, her eyes flashing between black and hazel as they bore into Rohan’s with a murderous intensity.
He could do nothing but stare at her in astonishnt, at the terrifying strength in her hand, and the look in her eyes that no longer seed entirely hers.
Nobody had ever strangled him before—he was usually the one doing the strangling. So to find himself at the rcy of his petite wife, who had suddenly grown strong enough to rival his strength, left him stunned. He couldn’t pry her fingers from his windpipe. Of course, he could have escaped, but doing so would have ant hurting her, and that was sothing he could never do.
So he allowed her to strangle him, allowed it until his life quite literally began to flash before his eyes, until her grip suddenly loosened just enough for him to speak.
"...Calm down, sweetheart. I’ll get you food. Let go of first. I’ll feed the baby," he said gently, not even sounding alard despite the fact that she was squeezing the life out of his throat.
He reached up with one hand and touched her face, which was contorted with pain and rage. He coaxed her softly, stroked her cheeks with love, and slowly, almost dazedly, she released him. That savage look faded from her face as realization dawned in her hazel eyes, and she noticed the red marks forming around her husband’s neck.
Remorse filled her gaze. She fell back onto the bed, scooting away from him and clutching her large stomach as tears stread down her cheeks.
"The baby is controlling . It’s not my doing... I’m sorry..."
For months now, she had realized that whenever she got hungry for things, the baby always acted up and took control over her strength. And this wasn’t the first ti she had hurt her husband when he failed to get exactly what she craved. She could not tell what exactly the baby wanted, but whatever was given to her was not enough to keep it from causing her this intense pain. And even now she bit back a pained cry as a stinging, sharp pinch ca from within her, like a needle was being pressed into her flesh from inside.
"I don’t think I can do this anymore, Rohan... what does it want to give it?" she cried to her husband, who quickly ca to her side as she fell to the side of the bed in pain. "It’s not satisfied with anything I have been eating lately... ugh..."
Rohan knew at that mont that he could no longer waste ti on what to do. He knew what the baby wanted.
"Stay right there, don’t move, I will be right back." He left her side, even though she told him not to leave her. Rohan ran out of the chamber and just like always, he grabbed the first human he found outside the hall of their room. It was a maid who was cleaning the hall and dusting the glass, humming a song to herself. He grabbed her, compelled her, and pulled her with him into their chamber.
By the ti he reached the chamber, his wife was wailing so loudly that it tore at his heart and made him swear right then and there that he would not have another baby after this troubleso one was born. He dragged the maid to where Belle lay on the floor, crying and holding her bulging belly with both hands, and then he helped her into a sitting position.
"I know you won’t like this, my love, but it is the only way to stop this," he told her urgently as he grabbed the maid and made her kneel before his wife. Then, using his claw, he cut her wrist and held the hand towards Belle’s pale lips that were trembling.
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