How convenient that she’d become pregnant with Peyton a few months before Mephis’s Birthright Ceremony. How well-timed was her father’s embarrassed admittance a year ago, when it was time for Peyton’s Birthright Ceremony, that the family debts had become a difficulty. The bastard had mentioned too many times how distressed Hekatah was about the family’s social status being tarnished by whining merchants who had so far forgotten their place that they’d gone to the Queen of Draega to complain about a “few” overdue bills.

He’d made sympathetic murmurs, but he’d understood the threat: If he didn’t make some effort to reestablish her family financially, Hekatah might say something in haste when it came time to acknowledge Peyton as his son and grant him paternal rights to his child.

Hekatah’s father and brothers were anxious to have their gambling debts paid off since those were to other aristos and the invitations to social engagements had declined as those debts had piled up. Instead, Saetan had paid up the accounts with all the merchants and presented her father with the receipts—and had insisted that he was simply too caught up in the celebration of Peyton’s Birthright Ceremony to deal with “minor” gambling debts. He’d assured her father that those would be taken care of after the ceremonies.

While they realized he might refuse to pay the gambling debts if Hekatah said something in haste at the ceremony, it never occurred to anyone in her family that his timing in paying off the debts that concerned them the most was as manipulative as their timing in asking for financial help.

So his paternity of his younger son was granted, the debts were paid off . . . and he gave himself a few weeks to consider if, with his sons safely under his control, he wanted to remain married to a woman who expected absolute fidelity from her Warlord Prince husband while she indulged her taste for variety by having affairs with men from the minor branches of Hayll’s aristo families.

He’d almost accepted that his hopes for this marriage had been wishful thinking and the self-delusion of a lonely man who, while receiving plenty of bedroom invitations, had been craving love.

Then Hekatah had told him she was pregnant again. And, once again, a child’s life held his heart hostage. He didn’t blame her for the pregnancy. He wanted another child, had willingly stopped doing anything to prevent conception, and had let her decide when she was ready.

But the timing had just been a little too convenient to make him feel easy, just as this request for another loan coming so close to when Hekatah would be brought to childbed was a little too convenient.

He sighed. Hekatah would punish him for not agreeing to provide the loan by staying with her family instead of being with him right now, and Zuulaman . . .