Chapter 325 No One Gets to Decide for Us
Emilia’s POV
I decided to sit Sebastian down and lay the whole thing out, every last piece of it.
That night he padded out of the bathroom, toweling his hair. I patted the cushion beside me on the sofa. “Come here, Sebastian. There’s something I need to say to you.”
He crossed the room, still scrubbing at his damp hair. “What’s on your mind?”
“Let me.” I plucked the towel out of his hand, pushed him down onto the couch, and started drying his hair myself, rough and careless, the way he always did it.
“Sebastian. You want to be a father. Don’t you?”
His shoulders jerked under my hands. “Why are you dragging this up again?” he asked, low.
“Because I don’t want to be the one who steals that choice from you. I want to know what you actually want.”
Something clicked behind his eyes. He twisted around and pinched my forearm. “What are you getting at?”
“I talked to your parents. They want to bring in a surrogate. To carry your child.”
“That’s insane.” He knocked my hand away and shot to his feet. “You can’t be serious. Please tell me you didn’t agree to it.”
I swallowed the sting in my arm and forced the words out. “I did. At first. Before I understood what they were really asking—”
His eyes blew wide. Then he snarled, “Have you lost it? How could you say yes? We settled this. We agreed we’d adopt.”
“We did. But your parents won’t hear of it. Sebastian, just let me explain—”
“I don’t give a damn whether they’ll hear of it. If I say no, that’s the end of it. This is our marriage. It’s got nothing to do with them.”
“Yes. It’s our marriage.” I stood too. “Which means we can’t only chase our own happiness and trample on everyone else—”
He cut me off before I could finish. “So you’d rather throw away your own pride to keep other people comfortable? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Well.” I met his glare head-on. “If it kept me next to you, Sebastian, then yes, I’d swallow every ounce of grief and hurt they threw at me. Pride? I told you a long time ago. Pride is the cheapest thing I own.”
A vein stood out on his temple. “Emilia. Did they corner you? Did they wave bloodlines and pack duty in your face until you caved, so you’d give up and walk out on me? Why can they never, once, stay out of my life?”
Then he spun on his heel, out of the bedroom and down the stairs.
I bolted after him. When Sebastian’s temper caught fire, he never left room for a single word of explanation.
He’s fighting for you, Eve murmured somewhere behind my ribs. At least there’s that.
Sweet as that was, this wasn’t the moment for it.
“Are you trying to put Emilia in an early grave?”
I hit the living room just in time to hear him fling the question at his parents. Mila came forward, all color drained from her face. “Sebastian, please, calm down, we only—”
“You sent my wife to talk me into sleeping with another woman, and you expect me to be calm?” His voice cracked like a whip. “You knew she had no choice but to say yes. Do you have any conscience left at all? I hated every rotten thing you did to Abigail’s family. And it was Emilia who worked so hard to bring me home, to help me let that hatred go. Now there’s a grandson on the table and suddenly her feelings don’t count. Is that the code you live by?”
“They didn’t force me,” I tried.
“DON’T.” Sebastian rounded on his parents again, chest heaving. “Is bloodline really worth this much? Worth grinding another person’s dignity into the dirt without blinking? What’s so wrong with adoption? Who decided only blood carries a legacy?”
“A child who doesn’t share our blood is not our family.” Titus’s roar came right back at him. “A child who doesn’t belong to this house will never be one of us. Never stand with us.”
“So you’ll throw me out again.”
“Even if you leave this house, my position doesn’t change. I’ll bend on anything else, Sebastian. Not this.”
This was heading somewhere ugly.
“And if you had no son at all, what would your precious position be worth then?”
“Without a son, the bloodline dies. But as long as my son draws breath, I will never sign off on raising some stranger’s child under this name.” Titus’s face had gone to stone.
“Fine. Then as of tonight, you don’t have a son.”
Sebastian turned to go. Titus’s voice chased him across the room. “Walk out that door, and I’ll take it to mean you’ve renounced the pack. All of it.”
The words drove into my chest like a blade. I threw myself in front of Sebastian. “Sebastian. Would you just let me finish? I didn’t agree to a surrogate. I didn’t agree to hand you off to another woman.”
He looked at me, and some of the wildness drained out of his eyes. “You didn’t?”
I grabbed his hand and held on tight. “No. I brought it to you because I needed to know where you stood. I know how much you love kids. And I’m glad. I’m so glad you’re standing here beside me on this.”
The fight bled out of him. “Good,” he said. “Because I was terrified you’d gone and made another stupid decision behind my back. That you were about to hand me some speech about divorce. About leaving.”
“I took a hit a while back. I was buried under it, not thinking straight, and I hurt you,” I told him. “That’s done. I won’t do it again.”
I wasn’t about to let Sebastian face his parents’ fury alone. So I stepped past him, turned to face Titus and Mila, and lowered myself to my knees.
“Emilia. What are you doing?”