The sun rose over the Arabian Sea, painting the sky in shades of bruised purple and gold. Inside the master suite, the air-conditioning hummed with a clinical precision, but for Myra, the room felt suffocatingly small.
She stirred in the center of the massive obsidian bed, the silk sheets cool against her skin. Beside her, Reyansh was still asleep—a rare sight. In sleep, the harsh lines of his face softened, the "Monster of Mumbai" looking almost human. But as Myra tried to sit up, the world didn't just tilt; it performed a violent somersault.
A sudden, sharp wave of nausea hit her like a physical blow to the stomach.
She bolted from the bed, her hands clutching her throat. She barely made it to the marble bathroom before she collapsed onto her knees in front of the toilet. Her body racked with violent tremors as she retched, her stomach churning with an intensity she had never experienced.
The sound of her sickness echoed against the expensive tiling.
"Myra?"
The voice was low, laced with the gravel of sleep and an immediate, sharp edge of concern. Reyansh appeared at the doorway, his silk robe hanging open, his hair disheveled. He didn't look annoyed; he looked alert, his eyes scanning her trembling form with the intensity of a man who noticed every structural flaw in his world.
He walked over and knelt beside her, his large, cool hand pulling her hair back away from her face. "What is it? Food poisoning? The stress of the merger?"
"I... I don't know," Myra whispered, leaning her head against the cool porcelain, her skin the color of ash. "Everything just... started spinning. I feel like my body isn't my own."
Reyansh gripped her chin, forcing her to look at him. His thumb brushed over her pale lips. "You've been pale for three days. I thought it was just the exhaustion of the project. I'll call the private physician. He'll be here in twenty minutes."
"No!" Myra snapped, more sharply than she intended. She saw the flash of the "Ice King" return to his eyes at her defiance. "No doctors, Reyansh. Not yet. I just... I need a moment. It's probably just the coffee on an empty stomach."
Reyansh watched her for a long, silent minute. "I don't like things I can't calculate, Myra. If you're sick, I'll fix it. If you're hiding something, I'll find it."
He stood up, his presence towering over her. "I have a meeting with the liquidators. I'll be back by noon. If you aren't better by then, I'm calling the clinic."
Once the elevator chimed and the penthouse was empty, the silence became deafening. Myra stood up, her legs feeling like water. She walked to the vanity and stared at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were sunken, and there was a strange, radiant translucency to her skin that hadn't been there a week ago.
Her mind raced back to the night of the "Ruining." The night he had tied her to the bed. The night the sheets were soaked with their combined heat and juice. The night he had claimed her without restraint, his body pouring into hers until there was no beginning or end to them.
It's impossible, she told herself. The stress... the revenge... it's just my body reacting to the chaos.
But the thought wouldn't leave. It sat in the back of her mind like a ticking clock.
She dressed in a hurry, throwing on a trench coat to hide her trembling frame. she slipped out of the penthouse, avoiding the main security, and walked to a small, nondescript pharmacy three blocks away—the same one where Reyansh had once bought a mountain of chocolate and "ergonomic" cushions.
She didn't look at the clerk. She simply grabbed a small, white box from the back of the shelf and paid in cash.
Back in the penthouse bathroom, the air felt thick enough to choke her. Myra sat on the edge of the tub, the plastic stick sitting on the marble counter.
She thought about Reyansh. She thought about his dark past—his mother's betrayal, his father's suicide, his hatred for the concept of "family" and "love." He had called her his Queen.But he had built his world on the ruins of people he couldn't trust.
What happens to a monster when he realizes he's no longer the only one in the room?
She looked at her watch. Two minutes had passed.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic, rhythmic sound that drowned out the noise of the city outside. With a shaking hand, she reached for the stick. She didn't look at the window yet. She held it against her chest, her eyes squeezed shut, a single tear tracing a path down her pale cheek.
If she was right, the war wasn't over. A new, far more dangerous contract was about to begin—one written in blood and DNA, one that Reyansh Khurana might not be ready to sign.
She turned the stick over.
Author's Thought
THE SILENT CRISIS! 😱🤰 Just as they won the war against their enemies, a new life enters the fray! Myra is terrified—how will the man who hates "family" react to the ultimate tie? 🚩⚖️