“Emma is pregnant. Can you checkon the baby? Make sure it’s okay?” Kai asked him. Devon placed a hand on herbelly.
The doctor nodded and left. Hereturned a few minutes later with a handheld ultrasound machine.
Kai, Devon, and I all hoveredaround the bed. The doctor placed some gel on Emma’s belly.
“How far along are you?”
“I don’t know. I just took a homepregnancy test and found out. We had arranged for a doctor’s visit but then Iwas taken.”
He nodded.
He placed a wand against herbelly and a black blob appeared. When he moved it a little to the right youcould see a flicker inside the blob.
“The baby’s heartbeat. Perfectlyhealthy. You are about nine weeks along,” the doctor said and then smiled.
I looked up then and noticed thatall of us had tears in our eyes. Even Kai. Creating life was an amazing thing.
The second we got inside our ownhotel room Kai collapsed onto the bed out of exhaustion and closed his eyes. Iapproached him slowly.
“The government has been watchingthe supernatural community for over twenty years. They kidnapped me tonight,tied me with silver chains and threatened to kill me if I didn’t answer theirquestions. In the end, we created an Alliance. Our common goal is to killvampires and keep humanity safe.”
Kai’s eyes flew open and flaredyellow. “What the hell did you just say?”
Forty-five minutes later Kai andI were eating room service and he was still probing me about my encounter with RAIDOS.
“They have a drone flying overMount Hood!” He was screaming as he chewed his rare steak.
“Kai, they are the government!What they lack in magical abilities, they make up for in intelligence andmoney.”
“They knew my name? They knew totie you up with silver? I don’t like it.”
“Think about it from their angle.They know you exist but they have sat back quietly and watched. Then theyoverheard the vampires say, ‘Hmmm let’s wipe out the werewolves and make a hugevampire nation with tons of human blood slaves.’”
I shook my hands for emphasis.“Oh and while we are at it, let’s have vampire blood-sucking babies becausethis Matefinder girl can help us!”
Kai groaned. “I see your point.”
I pulled out the phone that hadbeen setting in my pocket. “They gave me this, said we would be in touch.”
Kai snatched it from me. “We needto tell the council right away. And I want to meet them. And I want that damndrone off my mountain!”
I stroked my finger across hischest. “First we need a shower.”
He raised his eyebrow. “We? As intogether?”
I laughed and stood, stripping myshirt and walking into the bathroom, leaving the door open.
After our shower, Kai called hisfather and told him that when we went to get Emma, some government agents haddetained me. That’s all he said over the phone. We didn’t know who waslistening. His father said the council would be visiting us soon. No time orplace was given. Maybe that was better. I was sure that RAIDOS could be trustednot to kill us as long as they didn’t have reason. But there were a lot ofreasons. As soon as we weren’t a good use for them, or if they felt threatened,they could annihilate our kind. I shivered.
***
It had been a few weeks since wehad gotten Emma back. Diya was busy planning her wedding back in Delhi but wewould video chat often. I wasn’t even sure where to begin with wedding planningso Diya and Emma said they would take care of everything. Every few days theywould ask me simple things like what my favorite flower was or my favoritecolor. Kai’s mother asked me if I wanted to wear a Sari on our wedding day andI told her yes. I loved the Indian culture and the thought of wearing a red sarijust like in my vision made me happy.
I had called my mother to sharethe news of our engagement and she was actually happy, a little apprehensivethat it was all happening so fast, but happy.
Kai had stepped up security onthe mountain and at all of the pack houses in Portland. Each home had state ofthe art security and was equipped with a large arsenal of vampire killingweapons. Our daily training sessions now included staking a vampire and howbest to fight them. We all knew we were preparing for something, we justweren’t sure what exactly.
I had just reached home afterteaching a self-defense class with Izzy at Safe Haven. We were exiting the carwhen I smelled something. Foreign wolves. I looked around and noticed a fewblack cars that weren’t pack. Izzy looked at me but I sent her home.
