When I was eight months pregnant, I received an anonymous email.

The attachment was a security camera recording.

In a dimly lit VIP booth at a bar, my husband — a vampire who had lived for three hundred years — was holding a human woman in his arms, kissing her.

At the end of the video, the woman smiled and asked him, "Adrian, do you really love me?"

Adrian's voice was low. "Of course."

"Even though you're human, I'll make you the happiest vampire bride in the world."

He had said those exact words to me ten years ago.

In that moment, my hand rested on my belly.

The baby kicked once.

As if reminding me.

It was time to wake up.

A dull ache spread across my lower abdomen, but before I could recover, more anonymous emails flooded in. Every subject line was the same: Greetings from Adrian Blackwood's one true love.

The photos and videos were crystal clear — some secretly taken, others filmed by my husband himself.

In the darkness outside a hotel, the man stood at the entrance, his black coat hanging open, his profile sharp and striking, yet his hands gently adjusting the scarf around the woman in his arms. She rose on her toes and pressed a tender kiss to his jaw, her eyes crinkling with laughter.

They flaunted their intimacy without a shred of shame, as if they were the devoted couple — with no awareness whatsoever that what they were doing was an affair.

A chill crept through me, slow and heavy. The diamond on my ring finger caught the light, its brilliance stinging my eyes.

But what hurt the most wasn't the photos or the videos. It was the cold, clinical timestamps embedded in each email.

The earliest security footage was from two years ago.

While my husband was making out with another woman at a bar, I was at home, unconscious from blood loss after a miscarriage.

I had called him six times that day. He didn't pick up once. He only rushed to the hospital after a neighbor found me and called an ambulance. He told me he'd been in an important meeting with foreign clients and had his phone turned off.

Getting pregnant had taken everything out of me. It was already incredibly difficult for a human to conceive a vampire's child, and the miscarriage had devastated my body. We'd had a massive fight two years ago, and it was Adrian who stayed by my side, apologizing over and over, swearing I was the only one he loved, until I finally forgave him.

But the photos and videos in those emails proved that during that same period, he'd been whispering sweet nothings to another woman.

Only now did I understand — all those late-night outings weren't because of overtime.

There was also a transaction history in the emails. I opened it, and the endless rows of numbers on the screen made my eyes burn. Two hundred thousand dollars a month, wired to Clara like clockwork, without a single break. The very first transfer had started exactly two years ago.

The day I lost our baby to a miscarriage, he was busy wiring money to another woman.

My husband of ten years, the man I'd loved for twelve, the father of the half-vampire child in my belly — had been lying to me all this time. The vampire who had promised me forever, who swore I was his only one, had been playing devoted lover to someone else.

Looking back, I'd been too trusting. Too foolish.

I had been married to him for ten years. I'd seen his gentlest side. And it was precisely because I'd seen it that I understood how sickening this betrayal truly was.

Just then, my phone buzzed again.

Not an email notification — a new friend request.

The message attached was a single line: "Did you get those photos, Mrs. Blackwood?"

I stared at it, and then, unexpectedly, I laughed.

My finger came down. I accepted the request.

The response came almost instantly: "Haven't you figured it out yet? He loves me. You're the other woman."

I didn't reply. Instead, I tapped her profile picture and scrolled through her feed.

At the top was a selfie. Young, pretty — chestnut curls, red lips curved upward, eyes brimming with undisguised smugness. She wore a silk gown, clutching an enormous bouquet of roses, one hand resting lightly on her slightly rounded stomach. The caption read: Some people are meant to exit the stage.

In the background of the photo, a man's hand rested on her shoulder.

Long, pale, with prominent knuckles.

I knew that hand. It had wiped my tears in the dead of night. It had patted my back again and again during my worst bouts of morning sickness. It had held me through the night after I lost my first child.

Now it rested on another woman.

I scrolled further, finally landing on a photo from six months ago. She was leaning into a man's chest, only a sliver of his shirt collar visible. Anyone else might not have recognized it, but I knew instantly — that was the shirt I'd had custom-made for Adrian. His initials were still embroidered on the cuff.

I turned off my phone and gently touched my belly.

The baby seemed to sense my emotions, suddenly delivering a fierce kick.

I looked down, my voice barely a whisper. "Don't be scared."

"Mommy won't let you lose."

Tears fell, one by one, onto my lap.

Adrian came home past nine that evening.

The sound of the front door echoed from the foyer. I sat on the living room couch, lights off, not moving.

He paused visibly when he walked in, then quickly softened his voice, calling out to me with his usual warmth: "Emily, why are you sitting in the dark?"

A second later, the lights blazed on.

I squinted against the sudden brightness and saw Adrian standing in the doorway — suit jacket draped over his arm, shirt collar loosened, still looking every bit the picture of effortless elegance.

It was that face that had made me lose my composure at an auction gala all those years ago. That face that made me marry him even after I knew he wasn't human.

But now, all I felt was disgust.

Because when he moved closer, beneath his usual scent of cold cedar, there was a faint trace of rose.

I never went near fresh flowers because of my allergies.

He seemed completely oblivious. He walked over, crouched in front of me, and placed his palm naturally on my belly, a warmth flickering in his eyes. "How's the baby doing today? You look awful — have you been skipping meals again?"

It hit me then: Adrian had always been like this. Sweet words, caring gestures — but he had never truly paid attention.

Even now, knowing full well about my allergies, he hadn't bothered to wash the pollen off himself. Eight months into my pregnancy, and every dinner in this house was still prepared to his taste — cold, rare steak, every single night. Food I couldn't stand.

Before, I would have wrapped my arms around him and told him the baby had been kicking hard, that my back ached so badly I couldn't sit, that I had no appetite.

But now, the performance made me sick.

I looked at him steadily. "Where were you today?"

Not a flicker crossed Adrian's face. His answer came without hesitation: "At the office. Meetings all afternoon, then dinner with the board. What's wrong?"

A lie.

He'd been with Clara.

Maybe he'd held her, kissed her — right before coming home to me.

My heart was numb with cold, but I let a slow smile form on my face. "Nothing. I just suddenly felt like having pizza from that place on the west side. You said once that if I ever wanted something, you'd go get it for me even in the middle of the night."

He had said that. But I'd never actually been selfish enough to make him go.

A flash of irritation crossed his eyes — so quick it could have been my imagination. But I caught it.

The next second, Adrian took my hand, his voice still soft: "It's too late now. That place always has a crazy line. I'll get it for you tomorrow, okay?"

No, it wasn't okay.

Ten minutes ago, Clara had posted a video of Adrian personally waiting in line to buy her pizza from that exact shop. In the video, she was nestled in his arms, nuzzling against him. That restaurant was far from Blackwood Corp headquarters, yet he'd gone without complaint.

When it came to me, Adrian couldn't be bothered.

I gently pulled my hand away and lowered my eyes, pretending not to notice his dismissiveness. "Forget it. It's not like I have to have it."

And you're not someone I have to love, either.

Adrian probably assumed it was just pregnancy mood swings. He leaned down and kissed my forehead. "Be good. I'm going to shower. I'll come keep you company after."

He stood and headed upstairs, but his phone screen lit up just then.

Face up, right on the edge of the coffee table.

One glance was all it took.

Clara.

The message was a single line: "My stomach's bothering me. The baby keeps kicking."

My nails dug hard into my palms to keep from laughing out loud.

So she'd planned the pregnancy, too. No wonder she'd been brazen enough to send me those photos and videos. This wasn't provocation — it was a power play. She probably figured that once she was carrying Adrian's child, his blind devotion would guarantee her the title of Mrs. Blackwood.

Too bad she'd miscalculated one thing.

I wasn't the kind of woman who'd cry and beg her husband to come back.

And I sure as hell wasn't about to hand over the Blackwood fortune to a mistress.

The shower started running upstairs.

I slowly pushed myself up from the couch, steadying my heavy body against the armrest, then walked over and picked up Adrian's phone.

I opened his messaging app and found Clara's chat at the top. Her profile picture was that smug selfie. Adrian's nickname for her was a single word: "Mine."

I stood there, bile rising in my throat.

The chat history was worse than I'd imagined.

"Miss you."

"Be good. I can't come today — she's home."

"Don't worry. I'm here. Even if you're really pregnant with my child, I'll handle everything. Emily's not going to try anything."

Every message was a blade, carving open the happiness I'd foolishly believed was real.

I took a deep breath, turned on screen recording, and scrolled through page after page. Bank transfers, hotel reservations, property transfers — I saved everything. Then I opened his email and shopping apps, screenshotting every receipt connected to Clara and forwarding it all to my own phone.

By the time I finished, cold sweat had soaked through my back. The baby kicked again — hard — as if sensing something was wrong. My heart seized. I gripped the edge of the table and carefully lowered myself back down, one hand gently soothing my belly.

"It's okay, baby."

"Just a little longer."

"Mommy's going to get us out of here soon."

The water upstairs stopped.

I quickly erased every trace, put the phone back exactly where it had been, and used the armrest to pull myself up and return to the couch. A few minutes later, Adrian came downstairs in loungewear, hair still damp, looking cool and gentle.

He sat beside me and casually pulled me into his arms. "Why aren't you in bed yet?"

I leaned against his chest, listening to the steady heartbeat his body willed into being — a body that should have had no warmth at all — and suddenly remembered a night many years ago, when he first told me what he was.

We'd just started dating. He stood in the moonlight, his face so pale it was almost translucent, and quietly admitted he wasn't human. Adrian said that because of me, for the first time, he'd considered giving up eternity.

I hadn't run.

I'd held him.

I said, "Adrian, it's not the vampire part that scares me. It's losing you."

Looking back now, the truly terrifying thing was never what he was.

It was that his love could change in a heartbeat.

I closed my eyes slowly, forcing every emotion down, my voice so docile it surprised even me. "Adrian."

"Hmm?"

"After the baby's born, will things always be like this?"

He looked down at me, his dark eyes holding mine, his voice warm and certain: "Of course."

"Emily, I'll be with you and the baby forever."

Forever.

What a beautiful word.

Too bad I didn't believe a single syllable of it anymore.