The second Lylas returned her to London, Alana made note to book a doctors appointment. Before he had left her, Alana still couldn't fully grab his attention. It was obvious his mind was focused back to his realm.

Alana wanted to inquire whether he was going to let Natan's father into his lotus spring. However, seeing as how the presence of Natan had literally disarmed him. She thought otherwise.

Besides it was none of her business, his relationship with the fairie realms was sorely between him and that woman.

Before he left, Lylas promised he will be back the next morning. And so the minute he left, Alana made sure her appointment could allow two people in one room.

The next day however, he didn't come back as promised. Alana waited for him until the very last few minutes before she had to drive to the NHS.

One would think by now she would be used to waking up in disappointment, because of his absence. However, the last few months Alana had become accustomed to waking up with his arms around her and hearing his breath beside her. She became used to the feeling of his embrace.

Alana didn't think his absence would affect her as this much, but it really took a toll on her. He broke his promise.

Alana finally realised how she threw her guard away because of him. It only took his touch to virtually dismantle that guard and make her heart hope again. Even by showing a slightest of kindness towards her, her heart would run amok because of him.

And yet each time her heart grew with love for him, it subjected itself to an agonising heartbreak.

Because of the hormones, everything felt sensitive and so Alana cried that morning. She truly and finally realised that despite his caring ways for her recently, she will never become his. She will never occupy his heart.

Pull yourself together! She begged herself. She'd always known there wasn't room for her in his heart. Didn't she decided she didn't care? Didn't she decide she will still love him? Besides, there was something important she had to give him. Something she had to be strong for in the next nine or ten months in order to fulfil this gift to him.

***

"So your test result came back positive, Alana. Congratulations you are pregnant...We'll now have to move to the ultra sound scan room and see exactly how far along you are...If you'd follow me." Alana's doctor, although seeming to be in a rush, confirmed her pregnancy that morning.

Not that Alana hadn't believed Mena or Lylas before, but having a doctor—someone's who used methods she was used to—to confirm this to her made her feel overwhelmed suddenly.

As she followed the doctor, it truly and finally hit Alana that she was pregnant. Her body was actually carrying a human being inside her. Yesterday Lylas had said to her it was one baby she was carrying so far. Their baby.

Alana was overwhelmed with emotions. One part felt exhilarated that she had made a child with Lylas, while the other part felt anguished that she will never meet this child.

Once they got to the ultrasound scan room, the doctor instructed her to lie down. She did as instructed and pulled her shirt up to reveal her small budding stomach from her shirt.

The doctor then squeezed the cold liquid on her abdomen and began probing with the scan.

"How is he, doctor?" She asked curiously.

"It's bit early to tell the gender, Alana." She told her.

"I know, I just have a hunch." Alana smiled at her doctor.

The doctor smiled too, probably amusing her for the sake of it. Then she concentrated on the scan, typing some measurement and readjusting the probe.

"Ah there, as you can see, the black matter is your amniotic fliud and right here over here is your baby." The doctor pointed to the screen.

Alana stared at the black and white scan, following the direction the doctor pointed. She gasped when she saw the dark shaded grey matter the doctor had pointed.

That was her baby? That kidney bean looking thing was her baby?

"Let me zoom in a bit so that you can discern the head and heart." The doctor typed something on the scan machine.

"Hmmm, judging by these measurements, I'd say you are about eight weeks along your pregnancy." She told Alana.

Alana was shocked at seeing the flickering movement where the heart was. That bean had a heart. It was alive inside her.

"Would you like to hear the heartbeat?" The doctor asked.

Alana was too shocked to respond. The doctor somehow took it as consent and turned on the sound.

The raucous noise of accelerated thumping filled the room and echoed around Alana's ears. Alana didn't know what made it real. Seeing the heart beat or hearing the sound of it. It truly overwhelmed her. Her bean sized baby was alive inside of her.

As the thumping sound continued, Alana slowly began to fall in love with it. She didn't know she had been crying until the doctor handed her tissues. She accepted the tissues and wiped her eyes. Even as she wiped more tears soon replaced those she dabbed away.

The feeling was overpowering and Alana suddenly felt very protective of her small bean. That was her baby. Her eight week year old bean.

The doctor then printed her the images of her womb. Left her alone to bask in her emotions while she ran off to prescribe Alana some antenatals.

Alana was stroking the scan image when the doctors returned with the prescription and some brochures with information of what would happen to her body and baby for the next few months..

"Now, you're on your first trimester so I suggest taking these everyday. You also need to watch out for your health and avoid telling people as of yet. We can book your ten week scan to see the growth of your baby in two weeks. And I would say around the twelfth week mark you would be able to tell the world the news." Her doctor advised.

The doctor then instructed her on the major things to avoid in this pregnancy and to note down any symptoms she had and was curious about.

Alana returned to her apartment feeling very perplexed and very bewildered. After seeing her little bean, something inside her had shifted. It was as if every nerve ending and every hormone inside her body were begging her to protect this life she created. To cherish it and it never let it go.

Alana wasn't so keen anymore on sacrificing this life. She wasn't so keen to share this life with anyone else.

"What to do little bean? I've fallen in love with you. I don't want to let you go anymore." Alana spoke to herself as she cradled her stomach.

"What to do? Your father wants to put your brother's soul inside me. Your brother wants to take your soul inside me. Your brother wants to replace you." She cried suddenly, as she realised the extent and consequence of what she had agreed into.

*

***

*

For the next two weeks Alana lived feeling as if she was slowly going crazy. Lylas had yet to return to the mortal realm. For those two weeks, Alana lived with the constant guilt about not wanting to sacrifice her sons life and at the same time missing his father like crazy.

After she lived through that guilt, the fact that Lylas was not coming back for her, raised alarms. She was reminded again about his lack of care for her. He didn't truly love her as she did him. His love was only reserved for that woman.

Alana wondered what could be taking him so long as to forget that she was literally pregnant with his child in the mortal realm.

Surely the fairie realms' matter would be sorted by now. Or had Natan managed to persuade him to let his father use the lotus spring bath? If it was so, had Lylas then decided monitor the use of the spring bath because of his distrust on the royal fairie family?

Surely he would spare even just minutes to stop by the mortal realm to see her and find out how she was doing. Surely he would want to know how the baby was doing?

Alana had even went to the second scan for her tenth week mark by herself again. Her little bean had developed limbs and his face was so discernible now. All these significant growth spurt and Lylas had missed them. He missed it all.

That person doesn't love you Alana. Why wait for him? He's going to kill your baby anyway. Why don't you run away! A reasonable part of her would whisper deep within her subconscious, tempting her to run away each night she spent alone.

Alana would find herself going over the reasons of why she should run away and why she shouldn't. However, it seemed that she had many reasons of why she should run away. The only reason she could think of that she should stay was because she loved him. She wanted to give him the world he lost. Everything he has ever wanted.

However in doing so, she would have sacrifice her life and her baby's.

Alana felt like she was slowly losing mind. The more absent he was, the more she was convinced to run away. Alana would constantly dream of the horror of what would happen to her if she stayed. The nightmares of losing her baby were sometimes so real, she would wake up each night in cold guilty sweat.

Even if you leave, he will find you! No matter where you run to, he will always find you and demand his right to the baby. She imagined all the scenarios.

The fact she was overthinking about these scenarios didn't help her at all either. After two weeks since she last saw him, Alana has came to a conclusion that her pregnancy was the odd rare kind. She didn't suffer any pregnancy related symptoms at all. There was no morning sickness, no fatigue, no constant nausea, no pain whatsoever.

The only changes she noticed were of her expanding chest and hips. There was some mood swing in which aided her constant debacle of Lylas' neglect. Her hormones were constant overdrive, making her all the more sensitive and unreasonable than she used to be.

By that time it had been two weeks and five days without his return, Alana had gone from: worrying that something happened to him, anxious that he didn't want her anymore, to finally angry he wasn't taking responsibility.

And somehow when she reached that stage of anger, she submersed herself into her studio and vented aggressively through her art. She painted many things she couldn't decipher and yet the result had looked very loud and destructive as to mirror her mood.

Alana was in the studio this afternoon, replacing the newly piece of her angry painting in the storage room. As she was retrieving for a new canvas, something sparkling caught her attention. It was the bright silver colour on a stark black canvas. Alana pulled out this painting that caught her attention and felt as if it electrocuted her upon touch and recognition.

She realised she had completely forgot about this specific painting. The twin painting to the one that she had sold two years ago. The twin painting to one that made her meet Lylas in the first place.

Obviously that other painting no longer existed. She clearly remembered that Lylas had collected all her "otherworldly beings" only to order one of his guard to incinerate them to ashes. Alana suddenly laughed hysterically as she realised Lylas had missed destroying one.

She'd completely forgotten about the two dreams she had of this fairie woman in the painting.

As Alana returned to her studio room with the canvas, she then placed it in the stand where she viewed and admired the painting once again. She had not seen it for two years. She remembered how weird she felt after painting it.

Seeing it again, Alana felt even more strange.

The painting she had sold and was reunited with from X gallery the first time she met Lylas, had depicted this woman in a field of snow. In that painting the woman had crouched down to reach out for a flower that sprung in the snow. Alana suddenly recalled how vivid that dream had been prior to painting it. In the dream, she had chased after this woman and for some odd reason she could never reach her. Only observe her actions.

This painting she was looking at now consisted of the same woman. She was almost like Snow White. She lay on a huge bed with white sheets and her form was surrounded by pinkish white blossoms.

As Alana studied the blossoms, back then when she painted them she hadn't paid attention to them. Right now viewing those details again, she suddenly realised how those petals bore the striking resemblance to the rana Apple blossoms in Lylas's forbidden garden.

Alana followed the lines of light in the painting and her eyes landed on the woman's pair of hands which were clasped together on her stomach. There was silver white pinkish flowers hovering over chest and the light from those flowers moved upward to cast shadows on her features.

Alana studied her distorted features, it was as if she was viewing the woman's glossed features through glass. Her silver hair, the colour of the moon crowned around her head. Her dark brown skin was flawless and clear with lips the coloured of dark burgundy. Shinny white pearls trailed around her forehead, as if marking her royalty. And her form was shaped in a silky dress which were of the same hues of her silver hair.

(I really tried my best to illustrate this description, I hope at least this gives a depiction on what I was trying to convey. The app I used for this digital art is procreate!)

There was something familiar about her. And as Alana looked at the painting, the more her head seemed to be clearing. The more her head cleared, the more her eyes focused. The more her eyes focused, the more she could see.

Then finally as if lightning had struck her, Alana came to a stark realisation of whom this woman was.

Alana let out a shocked gasp, her hand in her mouth as she finally placed why this woman looked familiar. She had seen the exact same long silver hair on that dream she had when she first found out about Lylas's wife.

The brown skin, the silver hair was also in stark resemblance to that man that kept harassing Mena. The fairie realm's king, Natan whom had also claimed to be her twin brother.

How is this posisble?

How could Alana have painted this woman before she'd known who she was? She had painted many otherworldly beings of these realms she had yet to become acquainted with. Many fairies, goblins, ghouls, demons and yet when she painted this woman, she clearly remembered how special that painting had felt.

Now as Alana realised why she had been so special, Goosebumps peppered her skin. It freaked her out completely.

The other version of her best seller.

And yet she had kept this specific painting stored away.

Alana remembered that in that second dream, this woman had been in glass box and no matter what she did, Alana wasn't able to crack through the box. The woman had slept on and on, while Alana had tried many means to wake her up.

Was this what people called a premonition? Or was it metaphor for something she couldn't understand. It was a mystery to Alana. A terrifying mystery. Because somehow, it meant her fate has been connected with this woman all along.

"Naala, are you alive? Did you direct me to Lylas..." Alana found herself questioning the air.

As if somehow this woman was right there listening to her.

"...I really don't know how the universe works and how exactly your immortal philosophy works, but if it was you that inserted yourself in my dreams. What were you trying to say?" Alana asked.

"Or am I just overthinking about this weird connection? Are you mocking me now? Are you reminding me that he doesn't belong to me? That I shouldn't have hopeful feelings?" Alana found herself glaring at the painting in resentment as her mood shifted back to her earlier anger.

Just as she was contemplating destroying the painting, a loud banging noise crashed into her living room. Alana startled in fright as her head whipped toward the noise.

Her hand automatically grabbed what felt like a weapon in her hands as she slowly but carefully exited her studio to investigate the noise.

Alana was holding her sturdy fat paintbrush like a baseball bat when she skidded to a stop at whom she saw.

***