Mischa nodded. “Trust me, he’s going to find out.”
Holy flaming ogre balls, this was going to be something insane, I just knew it. My mind started spinning with all the possibilities. Mischa took a few deep breaths and leaned in close to murmur.
“So … backstory first: I’ve never had a period in the human world. Mom was always telling me I was a late bloomer, but I knew there was something weird about me. Still, she would never let me go to a doctor, and since I wasn’t sexually active, there was no reason to worry about periods, or babies, or birth control.”
Okay, this was a weird and slightly disturbing backstory. She’d better get to the point fast. Her voice was so low there was absolutely no way for Braxton to hear. Still, I glanced over and was relieved to see the dragon shifter down on the floor playing some sort of army game with Nash and his little figurines. Dude even made playtime look badass.
“So then when my shifter side was unlocked, and Max and I were hanging out heaps, I never even gave birth control a thought. I really liked him, Jess, and we got along so well. He was the first real friend I had beside you. He seemed to like me also, even though I think for a time he was just confused about his feelings for you and me.”
Maximus had all but admitted that to me, but there had been a real thing between him and Mischa, even if it started because she looked a lot like me.
“You remember in the trial how Max wouldn’t give his alibi?”
I nodded. I had thought at the time it was about a girl.
“Well, he was with me, just kinda hanging out, but I made him promise not to tell anyone. I was insecure and trying to learn my way, still embarrassed from that first time when you told me that everyone could scent my attraction. Mostly I didn’t want to be defined by what I was doing with Max, so he kept it private for me.”
Asshole. Always on my case for keeping secrets, but looked like he had a pretty big one of his own.
“So you two did have sex,” I said. “All the times you told me you were a virgin, you just lied right to me?”
She crumbled forward. “No, I was a virgin for a lot of that time. We slept together once, just before the Four came to Stratford, when you and Braxton were in the prison. It was a sort of spur-of-the-moment comfort thing. I don’t remember how it happened. One minute we were talking and worrying and the next…” She trailed off, flashes of memory in her gaze.
She focused again: “I was really happy it happened, but he withdrew then. He said we had to focus on you and Brax, on getting you out of Vanguard. He distanced himself from me and never looked back again, and then the next thing I knew he was mated to Cardia.”
I blinked a few times. “You were still saying you were a virgin in the sanctuary though.”
She nodded, her movement shaky. “I thought if you knew what had happened you would lose your shit at Max or me. I worked double-time to pretend I was still the same virgin that had first come into your lives rather than a slutty chick who gave it up to a guy who didn’t really give a crap about her.”
I tried very hard not to sigh. “That’s some sort of human shit there again, isn’t it? Why would you think any of us would have cared that you two slept together? And the word slutty is not even in a shifter’s vocabulary. You’d have to sleep with twelve men in one night, minimum. Did he hurt you?”
My voice rose a little, and I saw Braxton glance our way, but when I gave him a ghost of a smile he turned back to Nash.
She shook her head violently. “No! Of course he didn’t. It was probably one of the best nights of my life, and that was with the fact that I was stressed and worried about you being in the prison. By the time we were escaping to the sanctuary, things got really weird between Max and me, and then he met his mate. It was so fast there was never enough time to even process my true emotions on it all.” She hung her head, dark hair falling to curtain her face. “I was an idiot, Jess. You warned me that we couldn’t be true mates, and I knew it was one of those things which happened because of the circumstances, but still … I couldn’t let him go.”
She rubbed a hand across her face, and I sensed something much bigger than her giving it up to one of the Compasses was coming. Something to do with the fact that she was talking about birth control earlier. She honestly couldn’t be…
“Just after you disappeared into Faerie, and Max met Cardia, I started to get sick. Pains in the stomach and lower back. Eventually I went to one of the healers in the medical ward, and they figured out what was wrong with me. When they told me I kind of lost my mind … hence why I acted like such a dumbass … dummy.” Her hand dropped to her stomach, and even though I knew it was coming I still gasped loud enough that Braxton was basically at my side in a second, Nash tucked in under his arm.
“What’s wrong, Jess?” He was speaking but I wasn’t comprehending. My eyes were locked on my sister, my brain a fuzz of confusion.
She was actually pregnant. With Maximus’s baby. It was all starting to make sense now. Her desperation in the sanctuary. The reason she did everything in her power to try and bring him back to her. She had known the entire time and he’d been holed up with his new mate. Mischa must have felt like her entire world was crashing down … and no one had been there to help her.
“Mischa?” Braxton’s voice was harder but not mean. He wasn’t angry with her any longer either, even though I knew he had been pretty brutal with her when I’d first disappeared. “Someone better speak.”