I force myself to recall the few texts I’ve managed to get my hands on about mate bonds. There was nothing available in the library that spoke on negatively impacting them, but there were two books that helped explain them.
In one book, there was a chapter describing the necessities between mates for pregnancy to become possible. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to remember the specific passage that talked about pregnancy with shifter mates; after an intense moment of concentration, I recall the exact words, scrawled on an old, yellowed page:for a seed to take root, the pair must be bound by marks with a consummated, if not complete, bond connecting them.
It was also said that full moons are hyper-fertile times for wolves.
That night was a full moon. Camden marked me. He came inside me. I’ve been so distracted preparing forour meeting with the witches, I didn’t have time to dwell on the horrific possibility of pregnancy; it didn’t even cross my mind, especially since hetold me I wasn’t at risk.
Reyna makes a faint sound in the back of her throat. “Oh, fuck. That bastard Alpha didn’t eventellyou, did he?” She turns to Claire who’s staring at me with wide-eyed shock and barks, “Make a sound barrier,now!”
Claire shoots out of her seat and walks the perimeter of the room, murmuring quiet chants that cause a faint shimmering shield to form in front of the walls and doors. Meanwhile, my mind spirals further and further into despair.
“How do you know? How can you be sure?” I whisper.
“I can sense the presence of life,” Odelia responds. “That includes pregnancies, even in their earliest stages.” She pauses. “Sierra, did he…force this on you?”
Tears well in my eyes as the full weight of the situation washes over me. I’m pregnant, with Camden’s child, after one night of stupid sex. A royal heir. Something that will permanently bind me to the Alpha King. He didn’t forcehimselfon me, but in a sense…he did force this pregnancy on me. He had to have known the possibility and he didn’t fucking tell me. In fact, he outright lied to me about it.Gods,that hurts. I thought we were past the lies, deceit, and trickery in our relationship; evidently, I was dead wrong.
I should’ve trusted my mothers’ words, telling me that all shifters are fucking monsters. She was right. I allowed myself to forget that for a moment, in favor of trying to better the lives of humans and work with shifters, and here’s where it landed me.
“He…he didn’t force the sex, but he didn’t tell me the possible outcomes,” I manage through numb lips. “When I asked if I was at risk for pregnancy, he said no. He lied to me.”
Odelia exchanges a grim glance with Reyna.
“When did you have intercourse?” Reyna asks me. “Wait, let me guess…on the blood moon that occurred a week ago?”
I nod stiffly, feeling like there’s ice coursing through my veins. An awful sensation takes up residence in my chest, feeling like a lead weight that constricts my breathing. I stand from my seat abruptly and start pacing back and forth in front of the table, my thoughts a scrambled mess of,Oh gods oh fuck oh gods what have I gotten myself into?
“Fucking shifters,”Reyna shakes her head.“And we just pledged our resources to them in the upcoming war. Un-fucking-believable.” She turns to Odelia. “How do we get out of the treaty?”
Odelia thinks for several moments, eyes fixed on me, while I retreat further into a shell of terror that feels like it swallows me whole. My hands move down to clutch my stomach, which will soon swell with the presence of a life I did not ask for or even know I was at risk of carrying. I may have been a de facto mother since I was fourteen, but that was by choice. I fell in love with Leisel the moment I saw her, I wanted—needed—to raise and nurture and care for her. This thing inside of me…it was conceived in a bout of trickery.
“Blood moons are hyper-fertile times for witches,” Odelia tells me. “They often send witches into our equivalent of heat—a time when we’reverysexually active. With you marked and your bond consummated, it was just about guaranteed you’d get pregnant.”
“Which Camden knew,” I say monotonously.
She nods. “There’s no way he didn’t.” After a pause, she says to Reyna, “We won’t break the treaty. Besides it being magically binding to both parties, it’s also too beneficial. But we also won’t leave a sister witch in need.” Her eyes move back to me, and she says, “Have a seat, Sierra. There’s a way out of this. A difficult way, but…you won’t have to give birth to amutt you didn’t expect or ask for.”
Feeling shaken to my very core, I drop into the nearest chair and run my hands through my hair, feeling like I’m on the verge of losing my mind. This is all just too much to take in.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Odelia vacates her seat, pulls up a chair beside me, and tells me, “Witches hold all life as sacred. It’s why we help humans in need, even if we’re not particular fans of the way they nearly destroyed this planet. What’s growing inside you right now, though, isn’t yet classed a life—it’s just a cluster of cells. I can only sense it because I’m especially gifted in this area.”
Reyna drops into another chair, adding in, “It’ll only be considered a life once there’s a heartbeat, which usually happens at the end of the fourth week of pregnancy. That’s also when a soul starts to form. For witches who are careless with birth control and need to end unwanted pregnancies before they really start to develop…there is an elixir that’ll cleanse your womb. It’ll be very painful, but it’ll take care of your problem.”
Those words wash over me, offering an escape from my predicament, from the madness that was the cause of it; offering me a way out where I won’t be trapped. For a moment, I consider it. I consider taking care of the problem before it actually becomes a fully formed problem. I consider Reyna’s words, indicating that a lack of soul is equivalent to a lack of life.
A wave of disgust washes over me, poignant and pungent and nearly suffocating.No, I can’t do something like that.Whether or not Iaskedfor this pregnancy, it is indeed a pregnancy; it requires intervention to be rid of. If I take the elixir, I’ll still be preventing a life, which in my mind is equivalent to killing an innocent. I’ve learned recently that I have no compunction with killing to protect, but that extends to people who threaten me or my sister and thereforedeservedeath.This thing inside me that will soon become a child does not deserve to be destroyed, no matter my sentiments on how I got pregnant.
I shake my head slowly, from side to side. “I can’t do that—Iwon’tdo that.”
Odelia and Reyna exchange a look.
Claire, dropping into a seat across from me, says, “It’s your funeral.”
“Fucking probably,” I snap, “but I can’t terminate something that has potential for a life and soul. This child has my absolute protection.”
Odelia holds up a hand, giving Claire a censuring look over her shoulder. She turns back to me and says, “That’s your choice, and our coven always respects the choices of its individual members. If you plan to keep it, you need to understand the implications and complexities attached. Witches and shifters have different timelines for pregnancies; shifters are generally pregnant for six months before giving birth, while witches are usually pregnant for ten. That might be different with earthly witches, which I’ll look into. There have only been a handful of interspecies pregnancies between shifters and witchesever, so I’ll need to find and read up on those cases before I can properly educate you as to what to expect.”
