Villain's Breeding System: Evolving 999+ Harem into an SSS-Rank Legion-Chapter 263- Anger of a Soon-to-be-Mother

"’You spent the night with another man,’" he said. Flat. Informational. The prosecutor’s delivery. "’While pregnant. You think I’m going to just—’"

"’This child is YOURS.’"

Her hand.

She hit his.

The sharp, decisive, full-palm slap of her hand coming down on top of his hand on her belly — not violent, the precise, definitive, get-your-hand-away-from-this quality of it. She knocked his hand off her belly with the motherly authority of a woman who has just discovered where her last boundary was.

The sound of it.

Small. The flat, palm-to-hand sound of it.

They both looked at it — at her hand where his hand had been, at his hand now at his side, at the moment that had just happened between them.

His mouth.

Something happened at the corner of it. Not a smile — the bitter, compressed quality of someone whose mouth was moving without being told to.

"’Now you’re protesting,’" he said.

Quiet. The faintest, most devastating quality of something almost like derision.

"’You can lie on your back for a stranger all night. But I can’t touch—’"

"’THIS CHILD IS YOURS.’"

The room absorbed it.

Her voice — full volume, full force, the full, unmanaged yell of a woman who had been receiving for two days and had just found the single point where the receiving stopped.

Her face.

Wet. The tears still there. But not the passive tears of guilt anymore. The furious, bright-eyed tears of someone who was crying and simultaneously absolutely certain that they were right.

"’How dare you,’" she said. Lower. The low, trembling quality of something that was too big for the yell and had found the register below it. "’How dare you say that about this baby. This baby is yours. I know it’s yours. I would know—’"

Would you?

The thought arrived in her own head with the devastating timing of thoughts that arrive when you least want them.

Would you know?

She felt the interior warmth from the bathroom floor. The settling quality of it. The thing she had touched when she put her hand on her belly and felt something different.

She pushed the thought away.

"’This baby is yours,’" she said. Firmly. The firm, decided quality of someone who needed it to be true. "’Whatever happened last night doesn’t change—’"

"’I want a DNA test.’"

The sentence arrived in the room like something thrown.

She blinked.

"’...what.’"

"’A DNA test,’" he said. The flat, administrative quality of it. "’Of the child. Before it’s born. I want to know.’"

She stared at him.

"’Vikram—’"

"’I want to know,’" he said again.

She opened her mouth.

She closed it.

She opened it.

"’You can’t—’" The words arriving in fragments. "’You can’t just— a DNA test while I’m— Vikram, I’m pregnant, you can’t ask me to—’"

"’I’m not asking you,’" he said. "’I’m telling you what I’m going to do.’"

He turned.

That committed quality of someone who has made a decision and is now executing it, without drama, without ceremony, with the cold efficiency of a man who has decided that feelings are done being consulted.

He walked to the door.

His bare feet on the linoleum. His hospital gown. The blood on the back of his hand from the IV. He reached the door.

He opened it.

He turned. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

And he looked back at her one more time.

That final, full-look quality of it — not to say anything. Not to add anything. Just — to look. The look of a man conducting a last inventory before he closes a file.

Then he stepped into the corridor.

"’DOCTOR!’"

The full, carrying quality of his voice down the hospital corridor. The flat, authoritative volume of someone who had decided that the institutional machinery of the building was now going to be brought to bear on a personal problem.

"’I need someone in room—’"

She stopped hearing the words.

She stood in the middle of the room.

The empty room.

Her hands.

She raised them to her head — both palms against her temples, the full, two-handed grip of someone trying to physically hold the contents of their skull together.

"’Oh god,’" she said. To the room. To herself. To the baby inside her. "’Oh god, oh god, oh—’"

She tried to walk.

Her leg.

That immediate, comprehensive feedback from her leg when she asked it to move forward — the bruised, stretched, worked-all-night feedback of muscles that had been in positions they had not been in before, doing things at volumes they had never been asked to do, for durations that had not been reasonable.

She took two steps.

On the third step, her knee gave.

Not dramatically. The quiet, private giving of a single joint that had run out of what it needed to support the weight it was being asked to support.

She went forward.

Her hands out — the automatic, catching-yourself-before-the-floor quality of hands that knew the fall was coming.

An arm.

It came from behind her.

The full, encompassing wrap of an arm catching her at the hip — that gripping quality of a hand finding the curve of her hip in the possessive way of a hand that had been there before and knew the location without looking.

She was caught.

Fully, completely caught — her forward momentum stopped, her weight redistributed, the fall not happening.

She grabbed the arm.

The instinctive, don’t-fall quality of it — her fingers closing around the forearm.

She turned her head.

Raven.

He was looking at her.

The dark, level quality of his gaze — the same gaze from all night, but in the daylight of the hospital room it had a different quality. The morning quality of a face she had spent all night learning in the dark.

"’I’m sorry,’" he said.

Not performance. The same quiet, non-decorated quality of everything he said. Just the true statement of a man saying something because it was accurate.

"’It must have been hard on you.’"

She looked at him.

His arm around her hip. His hand on her hip — the familiar, claimed quality of it. The hand that knew this specific curve in the way that hands know things after extended, comprehensive contact.

Something cracked.

The thing that had been holding — the managed, guilt-braced, I-will-get-through-this quality that she had been wearing since she woke up and saw her husband on the floor — cracked, the way structures crack when a single additional load is applied to a thing that has been holding too much for too long.

She opened her mouth.

"’It’s all because of you,’" she said.

And then she was crying.

Not the quiet crying of the bathroom. Not the managed, tearful crying of standing in front of her husband. The full, wailing, chest-emptying, child-like crying of someone who had run all the way to the end of their available composure and had now run off the edge of it.

"’You destroyed it,’" she said. Into his chest. Her face against his chest, his shirt, the cotton of it against her wet face. "’You destroyed my— I had a— we had a life, we had a house, we had— and you— you—’"

She couldn’t finish sentences.

The crying was in the way. The full, gulping, body-involved crying that interrupted sentences and breathing and everything else.

"’I didn’t want this,’" she said. Into his shirt. "’I never wanted— I told you. Last night. I told you I didn’t want—’"