Chapter Text
Satine Kryze, Duchess of Mandalore, stared out over the fledgling city of Sundari. It had only been a month since the war had ended, but already progress was beginning to rise from the ashes. The biodome to keep the harsh elements of the Mandalorian desert was up, and the skeletons of buildings rose all around the city. In the center of it all, the beginnings of the royal palace stood magnificent. For too many years it had remained unfinished, but it would be finished first.
The architects and constructors had estimated that it would take a year to be completed, and that couldn’t be too soon.
Self consciously, she brushed her fingertips over her abdomen, looking for the reassuring flutter that she knew to be there. It had been a matter of days that she’d first begun to suspect, but she was almost certain of her condition. There would be no tests, no medic visits--there could be no evidence. Only time would remain to give her confirmation.
She wouldn’t lie to herself and say that she hadn’t thought of conceiving as a possibility. There had always been that voice, nagging at the back of her mind, telling her that what she was doing was reckless and would doubtlessly have consequences. Yet and still, she’d ignored it.
She had yet to decide what her feelings were on the subject. Having a child by the man she loved had long been a dream, though not one she’d ever thought to be a possibility. As a Mandalorian--royalty, nonetheless--she’d been expected to one day beget an heir by a Mandalorian. It wasn’t that she found all the men of her culture distasteful--there had been ones that she’d found attractive over the years--but she’d despaired of ever building a lasting relationship with any of them. She’d wanted someone with comparable ideals, someone who’d love her without consideration for the position she held or the power she possessed. To be found attractive by that same person was also something she’d wanted, for it appeared that Mandalorians only found beauty in anger.
When she’d met Obi-Wan, she hadn’t liked him, and she’d suspected he hadn’t liked her either. Yet, somehow, they ‘d both found comfort in each other’s company, and she’d even come to care for him. Scratch that--she’d loved him, too much to ask him to stay.
She was beginning to regret that decision.
Being a single mother didn’t fit anywhere into her plans for the future. If raising children had been an impossibility, raising them alone had never even crossed her mind.
What choice did she have now?
Not for the first time, the little voice of self-preservation whispered in the back of her mind.
Just give it up. No one will ever know .
She gripped the railing a bit more tightly, bile rising in her throat. The very thought of getting rid of a child, no matter how small, was distasteful to her.
Satine had grown up in a household as cold and unloving as the toxic deserts of Mandalore. Her mother had despised her father for his less than Mandalorian ideals, and had in turn hated her for being the product of him. Adonai Kryze had been just as unhappy with his choice of wife as she was with him, and had spent most of his time at the Capitol city while his family resided at their residence on Kalevala. Surrounded by the bitterness of their warrior mother, her younger brother and sister had soon also embraced the gruesome Mandalorian ways, and by doing such, set themselves as her enemies.
Her son--for it would be a boy--would never know what it was to be hated by the person who should love him the most, she promised herself that. Even if he may never earn the title as her ad’ika , she wanted him to know that he was loved.
For he would be loved, like his father before him. She couldn’t give him a family, or even a father, but she would give him everything she had.
And that was a promise.