“He would have no one to protect him there,” Drake said. “No place to go should he be injured or in need of refuge.”

Elena was contemplating what Drake had said when there was a ripple in the air, like lightning before a storm, and Liliana appeared in front of the hearth. She looked like an ice princess in a long white gown, her blond hair streaming down her back, her pale face like something carved from ivory.

She glared at Drake. “This is all your fault!” she cried. “Had you accepted your responsibility to Katiya and the Coven, Stefan would not have run away.”

“He ran away because he is still grieving for a woman my father refused to allow him to wed,” Drake retorted. “Had my father been less of a tyrant, Stefan would be here now.” Even as he spoke the words, he wondered if Katiya had the truth of it, and that Stefan had left the Fortress because he couldn’t abide being around Katiya and Andrei because they were constant reminders of what he had lost.

“Your father knew what was best for our people, best for the Coven. You have changed our laws, laws that made our people strong. You are nothing like your father,” Liliana said, her voice dripping with malice.

“Well, thank goodness for that,” Elena exclaimed, then clapped her hand over her mouth.

Andrei grinned, then quickly covered it with a cough.

Drake laughed out loud.

Liliana glared at Drake. “If anything happens to Stefan, it will be on your head.” Her voice was every bit as cold and unforgiving as her expression.

“So be it,” Drake said, his voice equally cool. “Go home.”

Tension flowed between Drake and his mother, so strong that Elena was surprised the room didn’t burst into flame.

Liliana scorched them all with a final glance and then, with a wave of her hand, she was gone as if she had never been there.

“Well, she is going to be loads of fun to live with now,” Andrei muttered.

“If you hear anything of Stefan, you will let me know immediately,” Drake said.

“Sure.” Andrei smiled at Elena. “Good to see you again, sister. Married life seems to agree with you.”

“It does indeed.” Rising, she slipped her arm around Drake’s waist. “Tell Katiya hello for me.”

“Will do,” Andrei said, and then he, too, was gone.

“Must be fun, being able to zap yourself wherever you want to go, just like that,” Elena said with a snap of her fingers.

“It has its advantages.” Drake kissed her cheek. “I hope Stefan will be all right.”

Elena nodded. “Are you really worried about his safety?”

“I am confident he can take care of himself.”

“But you’re still worried.” She sat on the sofa, one leg curled beneath her.

“Yes.” He dragged his hand over his jaw, his expression thoughtful. “Stefan has spent most of his life at the Fortress. He has never had to defend himself, never had to make any effort to hide what he is, with one exception.”

“When he fell in love with a mortal girl?”

“Yes.”

“Was she one of the sheep?”

“No. He had gone to Bucharest with my brother, Ciprian. Stefan met Cosmina in a nightclub. When Ciprian returned to the Fortress, Stefan stayed behind. I do not know the full story of all that happened, only that Cosmina became pregnant and passed away. It never should have happened. Stefan was not old enough to father a child.”

“Maybe he was just mature for his age,” Elena mused.

“Perhaps. He has not been with a woman since then.”

“Hmm.”

“What does that mean?” he asked, taking a seat beside her.

“Have you been with a lot of women?”

Drake stared at her, taken aback by the question and wondering why she hadn’t asked it before. And how he was going to answer it now.

“Well?” Elena asked.

“Define a lot.”

“More than . . . ?” She paused. He was five hundred years old, handsome, virile, charming. A chick magnet. If he’d been with just one woman a year . . . the number was staggering.

He laughed softly as he drew her into his arms. “I do not remember any of them.”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Believe me,” he said, his finger tracing the curve of her cheek. “I have not looked at any other woman, or wanted any other woman, since you came into my life.”

She gazed into his eyes, those deep, dark, penetrating eyes, and knew he was telling her the truth.

The next few weeks passed without incident. With the nursery ready, Elena went shopping for baby clothes. With Drake’s money behind her, nothing was out of reach. She bought fluffy pink blankets, diapers, nightgowns in a variety of colors, booties and socks, hooded towels and washcloths. Baby shampoo and soap and powder. And dresses. Dozens of pink dresses in varying sizes. And one delicate lace dress in white for the baby’s blessing.

In addition to baby clothes, she bought maternity clothes for herself. It seemed she grew hungrier and heavier with every passing day, and even though she told herself she was eating for two, she began to worry that she would outgrow her smocks.

Drake had laughed when she’d told him that.

“Well, it could happen,” she lamented. “I’m as big as a horse.”

“Nonsense.”

“Well, I feel as big as a horse.”

“You are beautiful, more beautiful than ever. And I shall love you whether you weigh a hundred pounds or a thousand.”

She stuck her tongue out at him. “I’ll hold you to that.”

She was happy, happier than she had ever been. She loved the castle, loved being pregnant, loved her husband.

Life was perfect, she thought as she drove into town to buy groceries. Better than perfect. It was paradise.

She nodded at people she knew on the street, took a few minutes to chat with the owner of the grocery store.

She was walking back to her car when she saw the headline in the local paper.

FORMER CHIEF OF POLICE ESCAPES BORSA CASTLE

Elena pressed her hands over her swollen belly as she read the headline again. And then again.

Paradise was gone, she thought numbly.

The snake had returned.

Chapter 33

“You don’t think he’ll come here, do you?” Elena asked.

“He will regret it if he does,” Drake assured her. “Stop worrying.”

“The newspaper said he killed a patient and a doctor before he escaped.” She worried the hem of her skirt. “He’s been gone for three days.”

“It would not make sense for him to come back here,” Drake said, taking her hands in his. “This is the first place they will look.”

“Of course. You’re right. I know you’re right.” She folded her arms protectively over her womb. She couldn’t forget the barely veiled threat in her uncle’s cold gray gaze when he’d looked at her in the courtroom, the hatred in his eyes when the judge handed down his sentence.

“I think you should stay close to home until Dinescu is apprehended,” Drake said. “I will drive you into town when you need to go.”

“I thought you said he wouldn’t come here.”

Drake shrugged. “He will not, if he is smart, but I would rather be safe than sorry.”

In the days that followed, nothing else was heard of Tavian Dinescu. The newspaper speculated that he had left the area, and then other stories, more current, took over the front page.

Elena told herself there was nothing to worry about, that Drake would protect her, that her uncle wouldn’t dare come to the castle after what had happened the last time.

Still, she spent her days inside the castle or in the garden. She took up knitting, intending to make a blanket for the baby, but it kept getting bigger and bigger, until she had an afghan.

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t shake a sense of impending doom, and she began having nightmares. Sometimes her uncle showed up in the castle, intending to do her harm in ever-changing ways that grew increasingly grotesque as time went on. Sometimes he destroyed Drake before coming after her. Sometimes he waited until her baby had been born, and then he murdered her little girl first.

She tried to hide her worry from Drake, but that was impossible. He could read the anxiety in her eyes. And in her mind. Nor was there any way to hide her nightmares from him, not when she woke up screaming or crying every night.

One night, after a particularly horrible dream, Drake suggested they return to the Fortress until Dinescu was caught. The idea held a certain appeal, except that Elena didn’t want to have her baby there, didn’t want to be anywhere near Liliana’s corrosive influence.

As the days slipped into weeks and then became a month, Elena’s fears gradually subsided. Worry over her uncle receded into the background as the reality of the baby she carried grew more real with her growing waistline. She could feel the baby moving now and thought how awesome it was that she carried a new life beneath her heart, a child born out of her love for Drake. Although the idea of being a mother was a little frightening, she could hardly wait to hold the baby in her arms. She’d had little to do with babies. Never taken care of an infant, only held them on rare occasions when she was growing up.

Sitting in front of the fire one night, with Drake’s arm around her shoulders, she gave voice to her fears. “I don’t know how to be a mother,” she said, gazing into the flames. “I’ve never even changed a diaper. How will I know what to do? Babies are so fragile and need so much care. I scarcely remember my own mother.”

“Elena, you will be a wonderful mother. You have a tender heart, a generous nature. You will love our child and that will be enough.” He brushed his knuckles across her cheek. “You should be more worried about the kind of father your child will have.”

“What do you mean?”

“I come from a family where expressions of love and affection were rare. My father ruled the Fortress with an iron hand. He had little time for us, or for my mother. His neglect made her bitter and she took it out on us. Once we reached maturity, we saw little of our parents. I know nothing of children. You have given me the only real love I have ever known.”