Bleakly she realised she had no answer that she could utter aloud. She licked her lips again. ‘I was nearby. I left the boundary only for a little while.’
‘You were on call at the station. You did not have permission to leave the base.’ A cold statement of fact.
She’d climbed down the cliff and gone to the bay, only metres away. She would have heard if the sirens had gone off—they hadn’t. And she knew no one had come to her room for her because surely they’d have said something later? Wouldn’t they have asked her?
‘You had your routine medical check last week.’ The General looked down at the paperwork again.
‘Yes, sir.’ Stella swallowed, nervy and surprised by the change in topic.
‘Your bloodwork showed a problem.’
Problem? Edgily she waited, only just holding her silence, knowing her superior would inform her when he was ready and not before.
But she was fine, wasn’t she? Fit and strong. Admittedly she’d been more tired than usual on her run this morning, but other than that—
‘How long have you known you’re pregnant?’
‘What?’ Stunned, she forgot to address him formally.
‘A soldier on active duty cannot be pregnant,’ he said crisply. ‘You’ve not reported your condition to your superior officer. Another rule you’re in breach of.’
Pregnant?
‘I’m not...’ She drew a shocked, shuddering breath. ‘I can’t be...’
It was impossible. There’d only been the one encounter in that one hour. And she’d used protection.
The General’s already frosty expression turned Arctic, but Stella’s blood had frozen anyway. No way could she be pregnant. It was the one thing she’d sworn would never happen.
He held up a piece of paper. ‘The test was repeated with the second sample taken. There is no question of your condition. Do not make your exit even more ignoble.’
‘My exit?’ Uncaring of proper decorum, she grasped the back of the chair beside her, her head spinning.
This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be true. It wasn’t possible.
‘You are relieved of all duties.’ He passed judgement in an expressionless drone. ‘You went off base without permission. You concealed your condition. You are discharged from the San Felipe Armed Services, effective immediately. Upon your return to the barracks you will surrender the uniform you are wearing. All other property of the San Felipe principality has already been removed from your room and your personal belongings are packed. You will take them and leave the base. You will have ten minutes before you are considered to be trespassing and escorted off.’
Nauseating dizziness swept over her and the edges of her vision blurred. She was being booted out of the army. The only place she thought of as home. The only place she had to go. And she was pregnant.
Stella struggled to process the barrage of instructions. She couldn’t be pregnant. Not by—
Bile rose, burning the back of her throat. Did they know who she’d met in that mad moment? Who it was who’d made her cast aside every inhibition as if it was as of little importance as a chocolate wrapper? Who it was who’d sparked that intensity and had her acting in a way she’d never done before? Did they know that she’d been the biggest idiot on the planet?
Pure panic threatened to derail her completely, but then her defences kicked in with a last spurt of survival instinct. She rallied, fighting to keep her thinking clear. To keep hold of her own future.
‘Shouldn’t I be court-martialled?’ she asked, ignoring the catch in her voice and hoping he would too. ‘Shouldn’t there be a soldier present, recording this conversation?’
She did not want preferential treatment. Not because of what she’d done and who she’d done it with.
Or because of who she was.
The General muttered something incomprehensible. Not a regulation response. It was his first slip in this meeting—a flash showing he might actually be human. She thought she saw a fleeting expression in his eyes before he looked down at her paperwork again.
But the expression wasn’t the one she’d wanted.
‘We thought it best to save your blushes,’ he said curtly.
His abrasiveness dashed the last of Stella’s hope.
Who was the ‘we’ who’d made this decision? And was it really to save her blushes? Or someone else’s? Someone much more important than her.
Did they want this swept under the carpet and for her to disappear quietly? For this ‘incident’ to go away? For a moment rage blinded her. She wanted to scream this betrayal to the world. This unfairness.
But she couldn’t. Because it was her own fault that her life had been totalled. Her poor choice that afternoon. But this preposterous claim that she was pregnant... It had to be false.
‘I’m not pregnant,’ she reiterated forcefully. She refused to believe it.
‘You’re dismissed.’
The blunt order stopped her cold. He’d made it clear her career was destroyed and he wasn’t interested in her reaction or her defence. He didn’t care. He just wanted her gone, quickly and quietly.
She stared at the greying, ageing man who wielded so much power. He couldn’t know who it was she’d been with, because if he did he’d be angrier than this. He would care more.
Run, her instinct screamed. She needed to run before he did find out. Before anyone found out.
But she had nowhere to go. She had no permanent home of her own. When on furlough she travelled. Often on shorter periods of leave she stayed on the base and volunteered for extra shifts. So where? She couldn’t go to him. And as for her childhood home...
She looked again at the older man who was now studiously ignoring her with that utterly impassive face. She tried to ask him. ‘Sir—’
‘You’re dismissed.’
His emotionless repetition stripped the last veneer of confidence from her. All she had left was a plea.
‘Father...’
General Carlos Zambrano, operational leader of the San Felipe Armed Services and Stella’s sole parent, didn’t respond. He merely put the paperwork back into the thin manila file that was all that remained of the military career she’d worked so long for.
She’d done the one thing she’d vowed never to do—had never done until now. She’d broken that barrier between professional and private. The barrier both she and her father had enforced.
Defeat twisted and she didn’t try to speak again. Unbearably hurt, she turned and walked to the door. With every step she hoped her father would call to her. Stop her. That he would want to help her.
But
