Vito pauses. He wants to discuss their child with her, but she looks so happy now, he doesn’t want to ruin that. Perhaps he should have mentioned this first.
“Aefre, the child that you lost…it was ours,” he says, needing to get the words out quickly.
Her confused look breaks his heart. He really had hoped that she knew deep down. “No,” she says, shaking her head. “That’s not right. It was Xane’s. Xanthe said she found that out.”
“No,” Vito says, shaking his head sadly. “She lied. I don’t know to what end, but that baby was mine.”
“How can you be so sure?” she asks, tearing up. He doesn’t want to cause her sadness, but she has to know.
“I knew it the second I laid hands on you, when you came to the Fae Kingdoms alone for a break. We laid on the bed and I felt the magick. I felt the connection.” He places his hands on her belly and shakes his head. “I feel nothing with this child because it isn’t a part of me. Trust me, Aefre, I know it was mine.”
“She,” Aefre croaks out, the tears pooling in her eyes. “She was a she. And she was so powerful.”
She grabs his hands tightly, biting her lip. “I wondered,” she whispers. “I could feel the Dark Fae part of her so strongly…”
His heart soars when he hears this. She knew all along.
“…but then Xane said it was his. I don’t understand why Xanthe would make this up. It’s cruel,” she says, agitated.
Vito pushes her back as she is struggling to sit up. The wound on her chest oozes blood and he can’t help the flare of his nostrils as he smells it. “We should tell him,” Vito says.
Aefre gives him a look that he can’t quite place. It is somewhere between sadness and determination.
“I’ll go and get him,” Vito says and stands up.
“No,” she says, dragging him back down by his hand.
“No?” he asks.
“Vito, I need you to keep this quiet,” she says with a guarded tone. “The others won’t accept this.” She wrings her hands as he just stares at her.
“You want me to let another man think that my child was his?” he asks slowly, not understanding why she would take this away from him. “He is grieving for something that isn’t his. He lost his mind while you were away. He burned down his house! He needs to know so that he can move on.”
“He burned down his house?” she asks and with a slow, painful process, gets to her feet. She staggers to the far side window, clutching at her chest and peering out. “Jesus! He razed it to the ground?”
Vito avoids going to her as she wavers on her feet. She has ripped out his heart with her words. He needed this, he wanted it so badly, and she has taken it away from him. “As I said, he is grieving,” he says stiffly.
Aefre looks over at him still sitting on the bed and gives him a sorrowful look. “Vito, I’m sorry, but they cannot know.”
“They need to know,” Vito says angrily, standing up. “I need to tell them that the child was mine.”
“Why?” she asks desperately. “What difference does it make?”
“Every difference!” he roars at her. She flinches and lurches across to lean heavily on the carved, wooden bedpost. “You cannot take this away from me, Aefre. I have already lost something that I never even knew I could have.”
“That’s my point,” she says quietly. “They will be scared.”
That catches him off guard. “I don’t understand,” he says after a pause. “Scared?”
She takes in a deep breath and places her hand on her belly. “Constantine and I have been through Hell to conceive this child. Rituals and magick and blood, sweat and tears. You and I, Vito. Once. It was so easy. And not only us, but…” The look on her face breaks his heart.
“You and Aelfric,” he says tenderly, going to her so that he can hold her now.
“It will scare them to know how easy it was and to know that it could happen again. I don’t want to put Constantine through that. He has been through enough,” she says, stroking his face. “He will do anything to prevent it from happening again.”
“You shouldn’t be so protective over him,” Vito says irately. “He can look after himself. Besides, this isn’t even about him. It’s about me.”
“It will hurt him,” she says.