Chapter 7: Joanna's POV

"Joanna?!" The moment Diana opened the door and saw me, her eyes went wide.

I must have looked absolutely terrible.

Barefoot, hair knotted into a tangled mess of a bird's nest, the hem of my dress torn, two fingernails broken — but none of that mattered.

"Diana, he's going to hurt my puppy — my father is going to hurt my puppy!" I grabbed the doorframe and said urgently.

Diana's pupils contracted sharply. She hesitated for a moment, then seized my wrist and pulled me inside.

"Come in, quick." She shut the door and turned the lock. "Tell me what happened."

She led me down a short hallway that smelled of rubbing alcohol and old linoleum, past a curtain printed with faded sunflowers, and into a room barely large enough for a desk, a rolling stool, and a narrow examination bed.

"Lie down." Diana patted the examination bed.

She squeezed coupling gel onto my lower abdomen, and the cold, sticky sensation made my muscles instinctively tense up.

I stared at the side of her face, trying to read the answer from her expression. But she watched the screen with no expression at all, her lips pressed together, her wrist moving the probe slowly and steadily.

Every second felt like a century.

"Diana?" My voice came out thin and tight, as if someone had their fingers around my throat. "My baby — is he okay? Please tell me."

Diana finally turned her head and looked at me.

"The baby is a lot stronger than you think," she said, her voice level and warm. "Heartbeat is normal. Growth markers are normal. Your little pup is tough, Joanna." I couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief.

Diana pulled a handful of paper towels from the dispenser on the wall and began wiping the gel off my stomach. "No one is going to hurt your baby."

I sat up and swiped at my face with the back of my hand, smearing tears and snot across my cheeks, but I couldn't be bothered to care.

Then I started talking, telling her: my father had locked me in the attic, and he had put something in the milk. My stomach had suddenly seized with violent pain, there was blood on my underwear — he wanted to hurt my baby.

"I know it was him. He put something in the milk. He wanted me to miscarry, Diana. He wanted to kill my baby." My voice seemed to have just sprouted wings, trembling nonstop.

Diana did not interrupt me. When I finished, she spoke.

"Joanna, listen to me." Her fingers gave my hand a squeeze.

"If your father really put something in that milk — something capable of inducing a miscarriage — given how many days you were locked up there, drinking it day after day, your baby could not possibly still be fine right now."

I opened my mouth to argue. "But there was blood on my underwear —"

"The blood on your underwear was a sign of threatened miscarriage. Vaginal bleeding in the first trimester is actually quite common, especially after you've endured the kind of physical and emotional trauma of a severed mate bond. Your body was already overwhelmed, Joanna. No one needed to slip you any poison for this to happen."

I sat there, perfectly still, the fear gradually receding as her words echoed inside my mind.

So... it wasn't my father? It wasn't the milk? It was my body — the aftermath of the severed bond, all those days of accumulated fear and despair destroying me from the inside?

Guilt surfaced for one second — I had wrongly blamed him. But just one second later, the guilt was gone.

So what?

He had locked me in the attic. He had made me lie on the witness stand. He had used my mother's life to threaten me. He had personally destroyed everything between Sebastian and me. He had arranged for me to marry a man I didn't love at all.

Even if the milk had been perfectly clean, which of those things deserved forgiveness?

"Joanna, you need to tell me — what exactly happened?" Diana's voice pulled me back.

I quickly told her everything.

Diana listened to it all in silence. Then she opened her arms and held me tight.

She smelled of disinfectant and cheap laundry detergent — nothing like Sebastian's scent of pine and rain-soaked earth — but in that moment, this embrace felt safer than anything.

"Joanna," she said close to my ear, "you and your baby are both safe now."

I buried my face into the crook of her neck, my words muffled: "Thank you, Diana."

She held me a while longer, then let go and looked me straight in the eyes. "You need rest. Go take a shower first — the bathroom is at the end of the hall. Then sleep in my bed. I'll go squeeze in with Lily tonight."

It was only then that I truly realized how presumptuous it was to come disturb her so late, even though I'd had no other choice.

"I'm sorry..." I said quietly, dropping my gaze to my knees.

"Please don't say that." I saw Diana's eyes filled with such concern that it made my throat ache. "We're friends, Joanna. Please don't apologize for this."

The next morning, I was woken by birdsong outside the window.

Sunlight crept through the gaps in the thin curtains and laid stripes of gold across the blanket. The air carried the smell of frying eggs and bread, drifting in from the direction of the kitchen. I was lying in an unfamiliar bed, breathing in the scent of someone else's home, and for a few disoriented seconds, I had no idea where I was.

I turned over, got out of bed, and walked out of the bedroom.

Diana's brother Tommy and her sister Lily were sitting at the kitchen table eating cereal. Tommy looked about ten, his expression deliberately grown-up. Lily was smaller, six or seven at most, with two lopsided pigtails — clearly her own handiwork, because no grown-up would have allowed them to sit that crooked.

Lily saw me come out and didn't even bother to put down her bowl. She bounced off her chair and ran straight at me, grabbing my hand. Her fingers were small and sticky — probably from touching honey.

"Sister! Diana says you have a little baby in your tummy!" Lily tilted her face up and asked, "Can I touch it?"

I let her press her small hand against my belly, over the oversized T-shirt Diana had lent me. She tilted her head, leaned in, and pressed her ear against my abdomen, listening for a long time. Then she solemnly announced: "It's snoring in there."

"Lily, babies that small don't snore." Tommy didn't even lift his head, scooping cereal as he corrected her. "That's her stomach growling."

I couldn't help but laugh, and it startled even me. I quickly clapped my hand over my mouth. Diana was leaning against the kitchen doorframe with a mug of coffee, watching us, a smile at the corner of her lips.

Eight days had passed since I'd escaped the Ashford estate.

Diana checked the baby every day, confirming its condition. Her clinic was small and the equipment limited, but her hands were steady and her judgment accurate. She was the best doctor I had ever known, even though this world wouldn't give her a legitimate license.

But her home was too strapped for money. Raising Tommy and Lily was already the limit. The refrigerator never had more than just enough, eggs were counted and divided individually, and milk was bought in the cheapest brand after careful calculation. And now there was one more pregnant woman.

I couldn't keep going like this. I had to find work — anything: washing dishes, scrubbing floors, mopping hallways at some little restaurant. It didn't matter what, as long as it paid enough to buy my own groceries, so Diana wouldn't have to carry everything alone.

I was turning all of this over in my mind as I walked down the two blocks toward Diana's clinic, the morning sun warm on my arms, the secondhand shoes she'd given me treading on the rough pavement.

I was rehearsing in my head how to bring it up so she wouldn't argue with me, when I reached the clinic door and my feet stopped dead.

"Joanna needs proper medical care, not to be stuck in a little clinic like this." My father's voice leaked through the crack in the door, and every drop of blood in my body turned to ice.

He had found this place. Of course he would. He was Roger Ashford.

"Better medical care — is that what you call locking her in an attic?" I heard Diana say angrily.