I was staring at the long white stick, trying to convince myself that I was still dreaming. Two tiny lines in the small box had just told me that the test was abso-lutely positive and there was no going back. My heart began racing away, but this time the realisation of what was about to come hit me harder than any other time. I exhaled sharply and glanced back at about a dozen other white sticks that were spread on the bathroom floor.

Now I was suffering the consequences of my stupidity. Ricky, my best mate, had warned me to be careful countless times, but I chose not to listen. I never truly believed that I would ever be ready for this moment, and now it was the begin-ning of my end.

In the past three days I had taken at least twenty pregnancy tests and each one of them came back positive.

It was official—I didn’t even have to go to the doctor—I was expecting a baby; there was a tiny creature growing in my stomach, a brand new life.

The father of this child was unknown.

My long-winded affair with the royal prince was done and dusted. Arthur and I hadn’t slept together for exactly twenty-two days, two hours and seven seconds. He was away when I got fired, but that didn’t matter. I didn’t expect him to find me. I was only someone that filled his time.

What happened was in the past now. My new life was slowly falling apart. I had no job, no stable home, and on top of that I was going to be a mother.

The white stick fell out of my hand, down to the tiles. I slid down, covering my face with my hands, forcing myself not to cry.

Once I got fired from the royal court, I went through a partying phase. I had de-cided to travel for a bit and stopped in a few cities around the UK. I was sleeping around, first with random humans and then with even more random demons. Most of these past few weeks seemed blurry. I was high on magic, lost in sorrow and despair. Despite everything that I promised to myself, I had fallen in love with Arthur, the man that could never be mine.

Now I was regretting the fact that I ever thought working for the royal family could change my life for the better.

The space around me was dirty, dated, and bugs were crawling out of the sink. It smelt like someone had left a dead body in here and forgotten about it. My head started spinning, and before I knew it, I began throwing up. The darkness was creeping to the edge of my vision.

Ronan already knew what was happening. Now I finally understood that look on his face. He must have felt the shift of energies in my body, the new waves of magic.

Once I was done emptying my stomach, I sat back and took a few deep breaths, resting my head against the wall. Ronan had settled down in this small fishing village up north several years ago. We had been corresponding in the past, and a couple of days ago I showed up on his doorstep out of the blue, hoping that he could keep me safe for now. Ronan was the only demon that lived in this area, amongst retired humans and people that desired a quiet life, away from the crowded city.

A moment later there was a knock on the bathroom door. I exhaled sharply and told him to come in.

In the past twenty-two days I thought that I was invincible, that I could sleep around with anyone and not worry about the consequences. This was the only way that I could shut down the voices in my head, shut down the pain. Arthur’s face faded away as I lifted myself back on my feet.

“What are you going to do, Maxine?” Ronan asked, staring down at me with his gleaming demonic eyes.

I couldn’t feel my limbs all of a sudden. My energy was boiling inside me and my skin felt like it was burning. Maybe this had something to do with the fact that I was carrying a mongrel baby in my stomach. I needed to get used to the fact that I would be feeling like this for the next eight months and a bit.

“I don’t know,” I mumbled back, unable to think about the future. In my short life I never even considered being a mother; it wasn’t something that ever crossed my mind. Work had filled most of my time, and then Arthur came along. I lost my head for him and fell into despair when it ended.

Ronan frowned and stepped aside, like he was letting me know that I couldn’t keep hiding in the bathroom forever. This situation had to be dealt with, sooner rather than later.

“Maxine, if this child has even a drop of royal blood inside it, then your life is in grave danger.”

His statement sent a chill down my spine, but I knew that it was true. The de-monic world wouldn’t accept the fact that Arthur slept with me willingly. The faction would believe that I had planned this from the very beginning in order to change the way mongrels were portrayed in the demonic world.

I got up and left the bathroom, knowing that I only had myself to blame for this. I didn’t use any contraception. I wasn’t even trying to be careful, so now I had it. The pregnancy was expected, and Ronan was right. If this child was Arthur’s, my days on earth were numbered. Hell fully controlled royals. Any demons that had any kind of relationship with them were fully vetted beforehand.

An illegitimate mongrel royal baby would cause havoc on earth. The child would be taken away from me straight away and I would be sent down to hell. My op-tions were limited, and I knew what Ronan was thinking, but I couldn’t bring myself to even think about it.

There was a living being inside me and even though this creature could cost me my life, I wasn’t prepared to kill it.

“Yes, you don’t need to say it. I realise what might happen to me, but I have no idea who the father is. Before I got here, I went through a crazy phase,” I told him, knowing that he most likely already suspected that.

The morning sickness had triggered my need to find out what was wrong with me. I never believed that mongrels could reproduce with humans. Okay, maybe I had been very naive, not thinking about protection, but my heart was shattered. I was ready for anything, just so I didn’t have to experience this agonising pain day by day.

“That’s why you’re still drinking liquid magic? Do you know that this stuff is addictive? Besides, you have to start thinking about your options,” he reminded me.

Ronan lived on the outskirts of the village, in an old cottage that he bought when he moved here after leaving his service at the royal palace. After I was nearly locked up by human police I decided to come here. Arthur had been deployed to Afghanistan a couple of weeks ago, and I needed a place to hide. There was a possibility that he hired someone to look for me, to find out if I was all right.

He could never know about this child, even if it was his. I was ready to sacrifice myself in order to protect him. My world wasn’t his, and I needed to remember that.

“I appreciate everything that you have done for me, you need to stop judging me. I’m in agony and the magic helps. Right at this moment I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said, wondering if there were any elixirs that could tell me who fa-thered my child.

“No, Maxine, we both know that there isn’t such a thing,” Ronan replied, reading my mind. “Get it together and start thinking about your future.”

I began chewing my lips, dismissing everything he’d said.

Ronan and I met in one of the bars in London, when I was still a mouthy teenager with an attitude. At the time Ronan had a job in the palace. He was a butler for Princess Catherine. I tried to steal from him and nearly succeeded. Ronan cor-nered

me in the alley and told me that I didn’t have to waste my potential. He offered to give me some lessons so I could tame my wild energy. We had been friends ev-er since. To this day I have no idea why he decided to give me a shot. Maybe he pitied me. A young orphan that never had a real role model.

I felt embarrassed that I didn’t know who fathered my child. It could have been that red-haired human from the nightclub, or maybe it was that good-looking demon that outplayed me in the poker game. There was also that dark-haired bartender from an obscure pub around the corner from the Brixton tube station. I hated myself that I became so weak, so lonely.

My life had spun out of control.

After I rinsed off my face, I went back to hide in my room. Ronan had kindly of-fered me the spare bedroom that he’d used for storage in the past few years. We had a mutual understanding and I was truly lucky that I had a friend in Ronan. Everyone who’d ever spent any time with me knew that I wasn’t very maternal, so my decision was supposed to be easy. Yet, I couldn’t bring myself to ask Ro-nan to create that one potion for me that could solve all my problems. I still had a bit of time.

I shook my head and started counting the days from my last period. It’d been more than six weeks and I’d been so focused on my misery that I hadn’t even re-alised what was going on. I sat on the bed, pulled my knees forward, and began to wonder about my future. This child was a blessing, but for me it was a death sentence if it turned out that Arthur was the father. Either way, my future was already doomed.

***

I didn’t sleep much that night, well like most nights. Ronan was busy with his potion business. Humans from the village believed that he was an eccentric quack. He made friends over the years and people liked him.

Ronan was a full-blooded demon, part of Asmodeus faction, and he never em-braced technology.

After being stuck in his remote cottage for days, I decided to go out and get some fresh air.

I kept thinking about Arthur, about our time together, about his dreams and as-pirations. All my thoughts were about him and I was so desperate that I was ready to stalk him online.

The village had two pubs, a shop, and there was a coffee shop with internet ac-cess. I arrived here in order to forget, and instead I was prepared to cyber stalk someone that could ruin me.

It was strange knowing that I was now responsible for another being, another creature.

The sea breeze ruffled my long ponytail. I tucked my jacket tighter around my waist, feeling cold as I walked along the country road. The dramatic cliffs soared in the distance. My stomach was rumbling, but food wasn’t on my list of priori-ties right then. I needed to find out what Arthur had been up to. I had to know if he tried to look for me.

Minutes later I passed two elderly ladies. They greeted me like they knew me, but I could read in their thoughts that deep down they wondered if I was the girl that Ronan was talking about a couple of nights ago.

I managed to locate the coffee shop, paid five pounds to the owner, and sat down with a stale scone in front of the laptop several minutes later. Mr. Gordon offered to show me a quick drink that I politely declined. I wasn’t particularly tech sav-vy, but I knew how to use the computer. I didn’t like technology, but this was the only other way of keeping up with the outside world.

I typed Arthur’s name into Google and stopped breathing for a second. My palms began sweating as the energy stirred around me when an article about him popped up on the screen. The months of living like we were in a fairytale were finally over. Now I was sitting here, hundreds of miles away from home, stalking him online and telling myself that this was normal. After scanning the text a few times, I found out that Arthur was due to be back to London in three months, and that he was all right and safe. Part of me was relieved, the other pissed off that it came to this.

I had never been in love, well, I never thought that it was possible for me to get attached to anyone, especially a human, but it happened.

The endless nights that I had spent with others changed me, shifted my perspec-tive of love. Sleeping around wasn’t something that I wanted or planned, but when I was in someone else’s arms, intoxicated on magical tequila, Arthur wasn’t part of me anymore.

My throat was raw and I was heartbroken, but I chose not to drink anymore when I found out I was pregnant.

The owner brought me a warm cup of coffee ten minutes later. The internet was filled with information about royals in general. Apparently young Prince Georgie was partying hard in Dubai, not caring about his reputation at all.

I took a bite of the scone, hoping to tame my rumbling stomach for the time be-ing, when another article caught my eye. I opened the page feeling the rising ex-citement. As soon as I started reading it, something inside me snapped and anger blinded me for a second. The source claimed that Arthur was planning to pro-pose to Natalie Morgan as soon as he was back from Afghanistan.

My breathing became laboured and my limbs went slightly stiff. Arthur had gone out with Natalie on a number of occasions, and Princess Layla had always hoped that eventually they would end up together.

I shut down everything, knowing there was no point in reading on. The tiny voice in my head reminded me that he was never mine in the first place. This article was the final nail in the coffin.

I had to forget about him and concentrate on my future. The child was mine and I needed to make a difficult decision. I was ready to tell Ronan that I had made up my mind.