I finally raised a shaking hand and laid it against his chest, letting the familiar beat of his heart soothe me. “I’m okay, Brax. Misch just surprised me with some information.”
Concern lined his face and eyes, and I could tell he was going to push me for more details. “I’ll tell you later. Go back to your game with Nash.” I gently ruffled the little boy’s hair. “He needs some playtime and so do you.”
Braxton very reluctantly left us, and I recognized the look he bestowed on me. I would be telling him later what happened, there was no doubt.
For now, I needed to sit down.
Chapter 14
Mischa and I sat side by side, our emotions all over the shop. I knew this information wasn’t anything which should have knocked me like this. Supes got pregnant; it happened by choice and accidentally, even with our very clearly defined fertile periods. Unplanned young didn’t occur as frequently as with humans, which was no wonder with the way they seemed to have a fertile period every month.
Mischa was barely holding it together. “What are you thinking?” Her voice was low and crackly.
“I’m the first person you’ve told?”
She nodded, wringing her hands together. “Yes, I was in denial for ages, thinking the healer made a mistake. I mean … I’ve never had a period. Maximus didn’t seem to think I needed any protection. I was just stupid.”
I shook my head. “Shifters have four fertile periods a year, and we’re always aware when they are. Maximus would have assumed you would know if it was your time. Like the rest of us, he probably forgot that you know next to nothing about our world.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I went back to the healer and demanded to know how it had happened. He thought that because my marks were bound by magic for so many years, before slowly starting to release, there was no way to predict my fertile period. Basically I wasn’t following any normal pattern for a shifter. My body was all out of whack, and with the surge of hormones it was like I created my own fertility.”
I shook my head. “We went true twin style there, doing everything together. Both of our fertile times were screwed up as a side-effect of the dragon mark.” Fucking Larkspur. I reached out and hugged Mischa, squeezing her frail body. “We need to get some food and sleep into you. You have to be healthy so my little niece or nephew thrives.”
She shook against me, but I sensed the tension which had been plaguing her for so long starting to ease. Sharing her secret had taken some of the burden which must have been weighing her down.
I had a thought. “You’re lucky those bitch twins didn’t hurt the baby when they attacked you in Krakov.” A sense of horror stole over me. The memories of her injuries were so much worse with the knowledge of her pregnancy. So much of her blood had coated the ground.
She wiped her face on her sleeve, and gave me a tired smile. “Yeah, I think the fact that the mark was keeping us safe helped. Then Grace healed me so quickly that I was okay, and I feel the baby moving now, so I assume it’s okay too.”
We needed to get another healer in to check on her. I wasn’t too worried, shifters were tough and so were their babies. I mean, I had no personal experience of course, but there had been a lot of pregnant shifters move through our packs over the years, and as far I knew there wasn’t much that could go wrong in healthy shifter pregnancies. Still, she was probably a few months along now and should be checked out.
We at least needed to find out the gestation period for this shifter-vamp hybrid fetus. Calculating this was left up to the magic users, because it changed every time in hybrid births. Just depended which genetics was stronger. I would think that if she could feel the baby moving, then she was a decent way along.
A quick glance to check that Braxton wasn’t watching, and then I reached out and smoothed down the huge shirt she had on. Sure enough, there was definitely a baby bump there.
“Cardia’s going to lose her shit,” I said, a burst of laughter leaving me. “Seriously, we’re going to have to make sure she’s occupied while you tell Max. Then he can have the joy of breaking it to her.”
A smile wavered on her lips. “It’s not really funny, Jess.”
I snorted. “Sometimes you have to laugh. Honestly, you and I might both be knocked up because fate was fucking with us. We should have known when our fertile periods were, and yet they made sure we didn’t. These babies are meant to be born. That’s just how fate works.”
Mischa let out a deep, ragged breath. “In the human world I’d just be a moron who let some dude have sex without protection. Max and I did talk about it, but when he told me that supes didn’t have to worry about diseases and such, and that if I wasn’t fertile there was no way to fall pregnant, I thought it was okay. Like I said, I’d never been fertile before and I figured I was just some sort of supernatural dud in the baby-making department.”
Sounded like she’d been waiting to bleed like humans. We weren’t the same as them and therefore did not have the same sort of fertility symptoms.
“Girl, you seriously need some basic supe classes. These are the things we learn in our first years of schooling. Or from our moms. Of course I didn’t have a mom here, and you clearly had one who was more concerned with keeping this world a secret so that no dragon marked hunters found us – are we both starting to see how this all happened? Bad timing really.”
Mischa leaned in closer. “I know it’s asking a lot for you to keep this a secret, but for now I think it’s better that everyone focuses on the dragon king. We’ll deal with the pregnancy thing after. I mean, it’s not like it’s going anywhere.”