“Come on, Mistress,” Corri said. She jumped off my shoulder, her wings buzzing incessantly. “Let’s get you inside.”
I nodded again. Davien took my arm and gently led me toward the door to the Holy Chapel. It had started snowing, and Headmaster Colin stayed behind. Corri used her magic to push the door open. Seth took my other hand and pressed it to his lips.
“You’re not alone,” he said. “We’ll help. I’m glad you told us.”
“Yeah,” Davien chuckled. “So, you trust us after all.”
“I do,” I whispered.
Adrian was one step behind us. The creak of the door as he closed it drew my attention to him. I turned to fix him with a gaze.
“I trust you.”
It was warm inside. It was late, I was exhausted, and all I wanted was to teleport to my room, crawl into bed, and sleep until I could sleep no more.
“Alright, so… See you tomorrow?”
“Wait.” Seth pulled me by the hand. He raised it to his lips once more, and I thought he was going to kiss my knuckles again. I was about to ask him how the hell he’d turned into a gentleman all of a sudden, when he… sniffed the back of my hand. “I felt it outside, but there were so many scents brought by the wind that I couldn’t be sure.”
“What are you doing?” I complained. He was smelling my palm now, then he moved to my wrist. “Come on, this is creepy.”
I looked at Davien for help, but he’d stepped aside and was studying me with furrowed brows.
“What?” I asked him. “What’s going on?”
“Something has changed,” he said in a mysterious tone.
Adrian stepped closer, but he seemed to be just as lost as I was. If anything, he was annoyed that Seth was sniffing me so shamelessly.
“Your pheromones have changed,” Seth concluded as he finally let go of my hand. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and looked at me with a sheepish smile on his lips. “I’m a sphinx, Yoli. A shifter. My sense of smell is infallible. You smell different, and I can only think of one possibility.”
I rolled my eyes. “So maybe I’m on my period.”
“Are you?”
“N-no.” I blushed.
Now Corri was sniffing me like mad. She was flying around my head, pulling at my hair and sniffing it loudly.
“I don’t smell anything,” she declared, frustrated.
“Anyway, I know how you smell when you’re on your period,” Seth said.
“This is embarrassing and ridiculous. I’m going to bed.”
“I think you’re pregnant,” he dropped the bomb on me.
I froze mid-step.
“That’s what it is! Yes!” Why did Davien sound so excited? “I’m not much of a telepath, but I can feel things… It’s like, there’s something inside you. Or someone. Entirely new. It’s like I can feel your emotions, but I can also feel emotions that are not yours. They can’t be, because we were just outside, and I know you were super cold, yet I got a vibe that you were also warm at the same time. Which makes no sense. Contradictory emotions. Yes, that’s the word.”
“No.”
I must have gone pale, but not paler than Adrian. He was livid.
“You were on the pill,” he whispered.
“Last year, yes.”
“And what about this year?”
“I took the morning after pill!”
“Wait a second, mate,” Davien confronted Adrian. “What makes you think the baby can only be yours, huh?”
That made Adrian turn more ashen than a ghost. He looked at me, and there was so much hurt in his eyes that my heart broke.
“Okay, let’s just calm down,” I said, raising my voice. “I am not pregnant! I can’t be, because I either used protection, or I made sure to take the morning after pill. There’s no way I’m pregnant. Corri, get me a pregnancy test.”
“One pregnancy test coming right away!” She disappeared in a cloud of pixie dust, and in less than one minute, reappeared carrying a rectangular box that was as big as she was.
“Thanks. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d rather do this in my own bathroom.”
I teleported to my dorm-room, but it was too much to hope that the three men wouldn’t follow me. I shook my head, got inside the bathroom, and peed on the stupid test. I couldn’t wait to prove them wrong. What the hell? How could they think I’d be so careless as to get pregnant with one of them? I wasn’t ready to have children! And I knew perfectly well why Adrian had reacted the way he’d reacted. He was fay, and I was human. He’d gone through that already. If the baby was his, it would be a fay-human hybrid, and that meant he or she would age unnaturally fast, like Inna. But that was out of the question because there was no baby.
“Well?” Seth called from behind the door. “Are you going to come out, or what?”
I ignored him. I was sitting on the edge of the tub, test in hand, waiting for the five minutes to pass. I needed to see the result first, on my own. Not even Corri was with me. My phone said one more minute. I didn’t want to look at the test before the allotted time had passed. The seconds ticked by slowly. I couldn’t believe I was wasting time with this when I had much more important stuff to deal with. I needed sleep, and I needed a fresh perspective in the morning. I needed to come up with a plan to get the ingredients I was missing.
The last minute passed, and my eyes drifted toward the test.
Two lines.
Positive.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
This wasn’t happening. I spent the entire winter vacation in my room, trying to make sense of the situation I’d suddenly found myself in. Classes started the next day, and I still couldn’t pull it together. After the night I showed Seth, Davien, and Adrian the positive test, I just wanted to disappear. Crawl inside a hole and vanish from the face of the earth. Eventually, Adrian got back to his senses and said that if the baby was his, he was going to support me, of course. I didn’t want to hear it. Davien and Seth were just as ready to do anything they could to help me and make things easier for me, but all that did was to make things worse. I should’ve been thrilled that they were all so positive about it – just as positive as my pregnancy test, yeah – but I couldn’t. I couldn’t imagine my life with a baby. It didn’t matter whose it was. I simply wasn’t ready for something like this. So, I avoided them as much as I could. All they wanted to talk about was the baby and the future. Eventually, Adrian gave up and went home to check on his daughter. His only daughter, I hoped. But if my baby wasn’t his, then it was… Davien’s. Somehow, Seth wasn’t annoyed at the fact that there was no way the baby could’ve been his. Maybe he was relieved, and he didn’t want to say it? What did I know? And to think he’d gotten angry with Davien when he’d used his powers on both of us, so he could be the first to enter me…
I didn’t know anything, apparently. Corri brought me pregnancy test after pregnancy test, and they all turned out positive. I was living a nightmare! This was the last thing I needed right now.