The house was too quiet. Too still. For a moment you thought they were hiding again—Thomas with his uncanny stillness, Ellen with her bubbling giggles muffled behind curtains. You searched the bedrooms, the garden, even the old woodshed. Nothing. The silence pressed into your ears, heavy and wrong.

Your throat tightened. "Thomas? Ellen?" Your voice cracked against the walls, trembling with the kind of fear you weren’t used to admitting. Your lisp made their names sound softer, rounder, and the echo mocked you.

Panic—something you had not felt even in the battlefield—flooded through you. Images came, unwelcome: Ellen’s bright eyes glancing back, Thomas’s small hand clutching yours. They were little. Too little. What if someone had taken them? What if—

You stormed into the study, and there he was. Dieter. As always, pristine. Sitting with a book in one hand and a glass of wine untouched by his elbow. Calm, polished, his pale eyes lifting toward you as if you were a page he’d already anticipated.

"They’re gone," you said, your voice jagged. "The children—I cannot find them."

He placed a bookmark neatly into the fold, then set it down, unhurried. "Yes," he murmured, as though you were discussing the weather. "They won’t be a bother for a while."

Your chest clenched. "What do you mean?"

His lips curled into that quiet, surgical smile. "I sent them to camp."

You stared. "Camp?"

"A summer camp. For teenagers." He savored the pause, watching your face contort, the way he always did—feeding on reaction. "They’ll be gone all summer. We can finally have some peace, you and I."

The world tilted. "They are five and three, Dieter!" Your voice broke, trembling with disbelief. "How could you send babies among older children? Without telling me?"

"They’re not babies, They are little shits." he replied softly, as if scolding your sentiment. "They’re noise. Obstacles. Thieves of your attention." He leaned forward, elbows resting lightly on the desk. "Do you not see how they pull you from me? Every time I hold you, every time I want you, there they are—crying, laughing, demanding. Parasites. I wanted them gone."

Your nails dug into your palms, the soldier in you warring with the mother. "They are my children. Our children."

But his eyes—ice, merciless—didn’t flinch. "They are your duty fulfilled. Nothing more. You gave me what the Reich required: heirs. But I did not ask to share you with them. You belong to me, mein Schatz."