This used to be a link, a direct tether between her and her father—a device through which his voice, sharp and calculating, once echoed in her mind. It had carried his orders, his lessons, his silent expectations. A connection that had once been unbreakable. Until she shattered it herself.
The moment she submitted her body to Björn, forsaking the past for the future growing inside her, she severed the link. She could not risk it. Not for herself. Not for her unborn child. Her father was a man who operated in shadows, a being who viewed sentiment as weakness and ties as nothing more than tools to be exploited. If he knew of her pregnancy, if he deemed it relevant to his grand design, she had no doubt he would try to reclaim control—over her, over the child, over everything. And so, for the past decade or more, Yuki had waited.
