My hand flies to my stomach. "The baby?—"
Oh gods. The stress of the fight. The violent sex. The way he slammed into me over and over while I was too angry to care?—
What have we done?
"We need to get you to the mystic." He's already reaching for me. "Come on?—"
"Don't touch me." I scramble backward and more fluid slips down my thigh. "This is—we did this. If you'd just told me the truth?—"
"I know." His voice has gone hollow. "I know. But please, Kess. Please let me get you to help. You can hate me forever—just not while you're bleeding. Not while our child?—"
Our child.
The child I didn't know I wanted until this moment, when I might be losing it.
"Yaern," I manage through the fear closing around my throat. "Take me to Yaern in the village. She knows healing."
He doesn't argue. Just scoops me up and the shift takes him before we're even off the ground.
The flight is a blur of terror.
His wings beat faster than before, driving us forward with desperate speed. I keep one hand pressed against my stomach, the other gripping his scales, and I can feel the blood still seeping between my thighs. The wind tears past us, cold and sharp, and I'm shivering—from fear, from cold, from everything.
Please,I think, not sure who I'm praying to.Please don't let me lose this.
We come down outside Yaern's cottage in a spray of leaves and displaced air.
He shifts back and sets me on my feet with trembling hands, keeping one at my elbow when I sway. His face is ashen in the moonlight.
"Go," I tell him, pulling away. "I don't want you here."
"Kess—"
"Go." I meet his eyes, and whatever he sees makes him flinch. "I can't have you here while I find out what we did."
He stands there for a long moment, fighting himself—alpha instincts screaming at him to stay. But he gave me his word.
So he goes.
The shift takes him in a rush of air, and then he's climbing into the sky, growing smaller until I can't see him anymore.
I knock on Yaern's door.
She opens it after three heartbeats, takes one look at me—bleeding, crying, destroyed—and pulls me inside.
"I'm pregnant," I manage as she guides me toward the bed. "He knew and didn't tell me. We fought. We had sex—rough, too rough—and now I'm bleeding?—"
"Lie down." Her voice is calm, steady. "Let me look."
She examines me while I stare at the ceiling, trying not to think about anything.
"It's light," she says finally, and relief hits me so hard I almost sob. "Spotting. Could be from stress, from rough sex, from a lot of things that don't mean you're losing the pregnancy." She draws a blanket over me. "You need rest. No more of whatever that was."
"I can't go back there."
"You don't have to." She takes my hand. "Stay as long as you need."
"What if I lose it?"
