“Pregnant,” Bris confirmed. “I believe Devinshea explained to you that pregnancies brought about with strong fertility magic can happen quickly. In a normal human pregnancy, even a supernatural one, it might take days for the fertilized egg to implant, but I assure you, your son is already safely inside his mother’s womb. My magic ensured it. He’s tucked away and growing properly.”
“But that is a problem for us if this is a place where wights convene,” Marcus continued. “The undead will sense the child growing in your womb and you would be their target. We must move away from here if only for the night. We need to find shelter and protect you.”
I was pregnant. Was that morning sickness? It was definitely my gut turning because somehow I hadn’t thought it would work. Except I’d known it would work. I had. Even as I’d lain there after Devinshea had left the honeymoon suite, I’d thought about the fact that I could be having Gray’s baby. My demon boy. I’d seen him once. His and his sister’s faces were the pictures I’d held on to the night I helped my husband transition to his dark prophet status. I’d seen many of the possible futures of the people close to me. Most were nothing more than obscure thoughts now, but those two children—a demon boy and a she-wolf—were clear in my head. My children with Gray and Trent, and one of them was on his way.
Panic threatened in a way it never had before. I’m cool under pressure. No shit. I can handle the apocalypse coming down on my head and I don’t break a sweat. I was sweating now because there was something infinitely precious inside me, and I could break him. I hadn’t considered how easily I could break him. I broke lots of things. I often said the wrong things. God, I wasn’t ready to be someone’s mom.
Except I was Fen’s mom. I hadn’t counted on that tiny, one-day-would-be-king-of-the-wolves boy. I hadn’t realized how quickly I would come to love him. “I’m not on the same plane as my son. I can’t even call him. I was supposed to call Fen when we got to Hawaii. What the hell is he going to think when I don’t call him?”
I was on some weird plane and there were undead people and Zoey clones and armies who wanted to steal the Zoey clone.
“Calm down, Kelsey.”
I could feel Marcus’s persuasion playing at the edges of my mind. I could shove him out or let him in. Panic, irrational and overwhelming, threatened, and I needed to breathe so I opened myself up to him.
I could do this. I was ready. This was a wonderful thing to happen.
Marcus sent those thoughts my way along with a lovely sense of warmth. Like a hug for my brain. He was happy for me. He was proud of me. Damn, if that didn’t make me tear up.
I couldn’t help but smile at my former mentor. “You’re not the one who has to shove a baby through her hoo haw. Gray’s baby. Do you know how big he is?”
My man was not of average height and muscle. Grayson Sloane was a big hunk of demon, and I was betting he hadn’t been a tiny baby.
“I am well aware,” Marcus replied. “I think somehow you will handle it. You’re better?”
I nodded and felt him recede, but he’d done his job and I was calmer now.
It was then I realized we’d lost Summer again. I groaned. “She ran.”
Bris shook his head. “She walked and I can track her. She’s an odd child. The trees follow her. Look.”
I glanced up and sure enough, the branches of the trees were gently moving in the same direction, as if there was a strong breeze making them sway. But the air around me was still.
Who the hell was this chick?
“Are you sure they’re following her?” I asked.
Ancient eyes turned on me.
“You know what the trees think, don’t you?” It brought up a couple of questions, but at least we didn’t have to run screaming after Summer. Apparently all we had to do was follow the trees.
“They don’t think, exactly, but all living things have some feeling, though you wouldn’t recognize it as actual thought,” Bris explained.
I knew it. I couldn’t wait to throw that in my vegan friends’ faces. They were eating carrots and the carrots probably felt that shit. At least my burger was dead before I took that first bite.
Marcus started walking. “She’s in danger. She shouldn’t be alone.”
“Marcus, we don’t know who she is,” Bris said, sounding far more reasonable than either Marcus or his host. “I know Devinshea believes she is the child Daniel and Zoey created when they primed the transference box, but there is something off about her. She’s not the magical creature she should be.”
I had to run to keep up with them. “What is a transference box and how the hell is that chick a vampire’s child? Did the queen have a secret baby before the king turned? I need deets, guys. And I also need to know how we’re going to get home. My son is there.”
“My children are there, too, Hunter,” Bris said. “And my host is panicked about it. As for the transference box, it is a container in which the Fae place their tribal magics to share with other tribes. The tribe receiving the box works a sort of communal magic and creates a magical creature that will bless the tribe for many years. Usually they create a cat or a dog. More often than not it is a tree that is formed, and the tree becomes sacred.”
“How did the king end up…” The answer hit me. “Ah, Zoey stole it.”
“She did indeed,” Marcus replied. “According to what Daniel told me, it was the night they wed, and they managed to prime the box from sexual magic. They created a magical child but didn’t truly understand she was theirs. They allowed the faeries they’d stolen the box from to take her back to their plane. It was only later they understood who she was, and that was when they began looking for her.”
That kind of blew my mind. They’d made a magical baby? It made me think of my own and how I needed to get back to the one I had and tell my husbands about the one I was carrying. I couldn’t fight effectively if I was pregnant. I needed to protect my child. I got my ass kicked regularly. Even when I won, I usually took some serious damage.
Bris simply kept walking. “We have to keep a cool head about all of this. We made it to this plane. We can make it back. I believe we will find Summer is the key to why we were brought here, and she will be the key to getting back.”
Marcus stopped suddenly, rounding on Bris. I have rarely seen Marcus get truly angry, but it looked like my former trainer was having a day. “You need to understand that Summer is mine. I agreed with Devinshea about Evangeline. I allowed his fear that I might one day take his daughter as my companion to push me out of a family I loved. I would never have taken Evangeline as my companion. I attempted to make sure I couldn’t. That was how sure I was.”
I winced but couldn’t get too upset. I knew what he meant. When we’d first started our Hunter/trainer relationship, there had been a whole lot of nasty, glorious sex, and it had felt like love to me. What I hadn’t realized at the time was the love was all coming from Marcus, and it was more like deep affection. At one point he’d even declared he was ready to marry me when I wanted to.
But my human self had been in love with Gray Sloane and my wolf had wanted Trent Wilcox. As I’d gotten stronger, I’d pulled away from Marcus, though I still cared deeply for him. He’d tried so hard to use me as a shield against one day falling for a woman he’d known as a girl.