MY magic? Do you really think a secondhand spell carried out by a half witch is more effective than any I have in place here?” She smirks and gestures around us with an airy-fairy wave of her hands. “Safe as houses, and a little warmer than a steel box. I’ll be back before sunup, with a guest or two. So be awake, ready to go, and have more hospitable attitudes, because he isn’t the type to take any kind of rudeness and dismiss it as graciously as I’ve done. You’re lucky I’m in a good mood, with a solution to an issue I’ve been agonizing over, and you happen to be important to someone up there.” She points upwards at the appearing stars in the velvet blanket of sky, gaining a squint from me, a confused frown from Carmen, and more intrusive verbals from Meadow.
“Meaning?” she interjects harshly, eyes still not simmering down to normal, and I’m getting the vibe that none of us are really warming to this witch at all. She’s a strange one with an aura of something that makes you not really trust her, but you can’t quite put your finger on it, even if her words are telling you that it’s not true.
“I was led here for one task, and it just happens to coincide with you three showing up…. hardly coincidence. Now why I came here makes sense. Looks like the planets are finally aligning and your fates are sorting their mess out.” She smirks again, and I eyeroll at her use of word soup to tell us nothing at all once more. She’s evasive for sure, talks in riddles, and literally offers no insight while seeming like she is. Carmen inhales heavily to hold her own temper, slumping back down to sit and gives up, and I sigh realizing this is futile. I too fall back, let myself land heavily on a log beside her and stare helplessly at this strange woman.
“You’ll tell us when you think we need to know, right?” I point out, knowing this is looking to be a lot like how she operates. She plays things close to her chest and maybe it’s her that doesn’t trust us.
“Right. And I hate to spoil surprises. Oh…. talking of which… This one I’m afraid needs some words of caution.” Leyanne eyes me steadily, locking on like I’m the target and her face falls serious and stern. She nods down at the vial on the long chain I brought with me from Sierra that we didn’t need at all. As soon as she eyeballs it, it begins to glow with low, white, faded intensity, and she smiles a little wider as though it contains an answer she needed to be sure of. “Don’t go turning anytime soon. I know you have, and you’ve been lucky up until now, so don’t anymore…. That little witch gift in you isn’t supposed to be lost.” She winks, smiles in a somewhat staggeringly pretty way, and turns to walk off, but this time I really do need her to be less vague with that.
“What are you talking about… the vial? What?” I lift it and take it from my neck, thinking she wants it back, that it somehow gets damaged by my turning, but I never wore it when I turned. Leyanne only chuckles at my obvious confusion, the questions etched across my face, and turns away from me to straighten her petticoats. Pulling her cloak back over her shoulders to conceal her slight frame.
“No wee darlin, I’m talking of those two little seeds of hope you have growing in your belly. Part witch, part wolf, part vampire….. don’t turn and they won’t die. Something that took Sierra a hell of a long time to figure out. In the end, all those lost, came after a turning… so I would say that’s proof of what not to do.” She moves off with a steady step and the blood literally drains from my face, turning my body icy cold as it infiltrates my fuzzy mind like a dripping tap. I blink down at my stomach, and it smacks me right in the chest with the force of a freight train
“Seeds in my? … Are you saying I’m? How can you ..? I can’t be… we never….. We were careful. We made sure that there wouldn’t be accidents. How could you know?” It’s a blurt of words, a spew of soggy rambling as my eyes mist up and I find swallowing a whole ordeal. It stops her progression as she pulls up her hood.
“Because I can. Perks of being a creepy bitch, and careful or not, the fates decided these two bairns had to come to fruition. Like I said, Luna …. Don’t turn or the wolf in you will treat them as a virus and cure your body. Their getting big enough now to be seen as such. Such a simple remedy that most wolves never figured out until it was too late.” It’s a commanding but gentle tone, full of the confidence of someone in the know and I sit like a statue, gazing at my own belly and have no idea how to even react. I can’t think, or feel, as a numbness crawls over my limbs and skin, enveloping me in mild shock.
“You’re pregnant…” Meadow mouths it breathily, finally caving from fierce warrior wolf and slumps beside me to instantly cradle my abdomen with a gentle hand and a face of instant tears. Carmen’s face colors darker as she looks away, her eyes misting so obviously, and her instant of heartache almost drowns out my own shock and numb at such a crazy revelation. “Chica? You’re pregnant!” Meds says it again with more energy. A hint of excitement, and I shake my head at her, still unable to let it absorb.
Colton doesn’t even know or is even capable of knowing about this even if we were home. He should know, he should have been with me when we found something like this out…. It should have been together. A moment, a shared happiness, and not this cruel twist of being hit in the face with it while hours away from him. Tears fill my eyes and my heart shudders painfully at the thought that this should have been a life changing discovery, in his arms, and not like this while he’s lost to me.
I don’t even know if this would make him happy, given we avoided the possibility because of the brewing war and the state of our lives under the shadow of vampires. I don’t even know if I’m happy. I don’t know how to feel. Our world is a mess, our lives aren’t simple, and my mate currently wants to kill me. This is so wrong, yet on some level a tiny piece of me shines bright and a warmth settles in my heart that twists it in a good kind of way.
“Turning makes us miscarry.” Carmen whispers the words, seemingly more to herself than needing to have a question answered and it tears my attention back to her swirling chaos of dark emotions. I can feel the deep and heavy grief of her mother’s death all over again, yet this seems different somehow, and a harsher, piercing kind of sorrow fills my senses and makes me stiffen in reaction. Carmen lowers her eyes and begins to cry softy, staring at her own body much like I was. “Right, of course… hybrids, not pure. Makes sense.” I don’t get why she is so upset but Leyanne fastens a steady look on her and seems to soften slightly, seemingly knowing the why in Carmen’s dissolving emotional state.
“It was you or both. If you didn’t heal you would die. There were no other options. Juan is a murderer, not you.” Leyanne seems to know something we don’t, and I literally gawp at Carmen as my brain registers on what she’s saying. Pain hitting me tenfold for two reasons, and I can’t get my head around the possibility Carmen was pregnant. It feels like she stabs me in the heart, not only for her pain but for the possibility of ….
“Colton’s?” Meadow is the one to say the words I literally can’t verbalize but thankfully she shakes her head. I feel so selfish for the relief in that, but I don’t know, somehow if she had created a life with him first it would have tainted my own bond to him. I’m so stupid, and jealous, and ashamed of my reaction and thoughts.
“A one-night stand that spelled disaster. It was never meant to be but still…….. just for that short time, I hoped. He didn’t want to know. Then he didn’t need to know anymore.” She can’t look us in the eye and turns her face away as it dawns on me that everything I suspected about a change in her…. It wasn’t just what Juan did. It wasn’t Colton’s betrayal, or the pack leaving her. Hell, it wasn’t even her mom. It was deeper than all that and this is it right here.
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