I signed at the gates of a silent estate because every other road was worse.
The contract buys me protection until the claim is complete. Then it stops.

Philip took me on his own terms and his own deadline, with a rival closing in.
Last week he set his hand flat against my back on the stairs and I felt his whole intention.
He did not take it away. I did not ask him to.

That is the shame of it. Not the contract. That the possession is the part I want and the protection is only what I signed for.
He says my name in that quiet house and my defiance loses its footing.

The deadline is close and the terms are plain.
Tied to him until it takes. Bred until I am carrying his heir. His hand claiming the curve of my belly afterward with the same weight.
My safety expires the hour the claim is finished, being left behind is the wound I arrived here carrying, and I go to him every night.
The grief he carries makes this feel permanent. The paper says otherwise.
What is left of me once I am carrying? What is left of me if he opens those gates?

A full-length dark knotting, breeding, and pregnancy possession erotic novel featuring a woman under contract and the alpha who wrote the terms.