Chapter Twelve
Esmeray
Pregnant? I couldn’t be… I ate my dinner, my appetite ravenous and climbing, refusing to say a word to Gre.
Not that he offered to speak, either. We were two lonely people forced together and locked in with little else than life.
I was a demon! I was meant to bear witness to death, to scourge the afterlife, to wreak havoc on sinners.
I wasn’t meant to bow to fertility goddesses and fuck a mage with the most lovely cock I’d ever taken.
I rose from the table and tossed my napkin down with a thanks to a confused Vincenzo. He watched me leave, and Gre couldn’t meet my gaze. “Where are you going?”
“Out!” I stomped out the front door, toward my new car, and hopped in, fighting tears as I did so.
I drove across town to the demons’ district, the roads rougher in places as I scoured the evening lights for a sign that declared an apothecary lay nearby.
I stopped by, stormed in, and purchased two different varieties of demon pregnancy tests and glared at a judgmental cashier who quaked as I said nothing.
In a little time, I returned home, marching past Gre who sat behind his counter, watching the door with a grave expression mottled over his giraffid face.
As I stomped by, droplets like rain splattered the floor by his feet, tears from his ungulate face.
Relief abated his torn expression when I returned.
He didn’t speak, though, didn’t chase me.
I checked my phone and sighed in relief when I realized he hadn’t even called me. He gave me that space.
As I burst into our bathroom and sat about urinating into a plastic petri dish of a cup, I finished emptying my bladder, lowered the lid, and dipped the stick of one test into the slightly sulfuric liquid.
It hissed only the slightest as I capped it and sat the test down.
Dark ichor slid down a line as a white space in the shape of an x, not a cross, highlighted.
I checked the package to verify, and unfortunately; the result was clear.
I was pregnant.
But, to be safe, I opened the other brand.
Inside was a stick with a bulb on the end, like a cotton swab.
The instructions told me to put the narrow end into the cup and watch.
If a flower bloomed, it meant there would be a demon born!
The sterile white thing didn’t hit me as anything arcane or flowerlike, but I watched it all the same, urine saturating and climbing the paper stick, tainting it black like oxidized silver.
And, as I suspected, the smooth surface of the bulb peeled back with a dark curl and twisted papers within bloomed open, the petals a mottled red and black.
And, judging by the spread of the blossom, I’d be around seven weeks pregnant, aligning with our first union.
As I stared at it, I sobbed silently, only once.
Ausmius peeked up from my shadow, his face blank, no eyes to mock me, no mouth to grin, only horns to show me he was there. He pantomimed a heart gesture with his hands, and I glared at it. “You’re just happy you’ll have a new host to be rid of me!”
Ausmius gave a thumb’s down.
“Jerk.” I folded my legs atop the toilet seat and stared at the demonic pregnancy tests.
Life was what it was. We’d made something together, whether we wanted to or not.
And the worst part about it? We had no choice.
I had no birth control as demons had only one season every eight months, and it was easy to abstain.
A day or two of being horny was worth not having to carry a child for thirteen months.
I had almost eleven months left, eleven months where I could complete any goals I had.
The sobs returned, and I tugged at my hair, bunching up.
Footsteps clattered from across the bedroom, a person attempting to make their presence known.
The practiced and familiar ease of which the footsteps climbed let me know it was Gre.
I hadn’t even asked him if he had children—though he’d made it known he would happily not.
I didn’t know if he truly wanted them. I didn’t know a thousand things.
Who his parents were, if they were alive, baby pictures or childhood stories.
I knew Gre as the mage that had tethered himself to me, who was meticulously organized, fair, and generous to a fault.
A servant of Bastet and Diana. And a fantastic snuggler.
“Knock knock,” he said as he approached the doorway.
“Occupied.” I took deep breaths to ease my tears.
“I know that much, but are you in any state that would ruin my opinion of you?” He sounded fairly neutral.
“You know very well I’m… Gre, I don’t know what to do!” I stood and crossed the bathroom floor to open the door and stared at the male, his human form full of concern.
“I don’t think there’s much we can do. Any choices we had were taken at conception. The goddesses have ordained.” Gre ran a hand through his pretty brown hair and settled his gaze on me. “I don’t need to see those tests. I know, they’re positive.”
I nodded, swallowing hard. “But this isn’t how I wanted things to go. This isn’t my image of the future, where I made partner and had a child or two, earned a home, and—”
“Everyone’s image of the future is different. We have different thoughts and needs and wants. My image of the future didn’t correspond to finding a partner, let alone starting a family. I can’t fathom you’re thrilled about the blender-fucked concoction of genes I donated to you.”
I stared him down, and a flash of anger consumed me.
I braced my shoulders, threw my hands out, and shoved Gre as hard as I could, sending him flying back and onto our bed with a loud crash and creak of springs.
“Your genes are fine! This isn’t about what I’m giving birth to. It’s about the life I wanted!”
“I know that!” he said, sitting up with a glare. “My life and plans are flexible. I was content to putter about my store for the rest of my days until you came along!”
“But now I have no choice. I have… I can’t earn what I want.
I have to have it given to me.” I pulled at my hair and snarled, red leeching into my vision as hormones swam, my body temperature spiked, and sweat beaded on me.
Ausmius, for his part, was nowhere to be seen, not taunting me or pantomiming horrid things.
“And how do you think I feel?” He glared at me.
“That you’ve been stuck with an omega you didn’t want, who needs to be supported now, who is too stubborn to take their born privilege.
An omega who can’t move up the ranks on their own, who is floundering to keep afloat, fighting the inevitable.
” My voice cracked in a sob and I couldn’t tell a soul why I did it.
I threw myself atop him, grasping the sides of his face as my emotions welled.
“That I was handed a beautiful male I didn’t earn or deserve?
That I had forcibly trapped a male with a beautiful mind, tragically powerful thaumaturgy, and a shadow full of mischief enough to keep me on my toes for a lifetime?
” Gre brushed my temples with gentle fingers, pushing hair back as he studied me with those golden eyes of his.
Power and adoration shone in them, and my destructive nature had its way with me.
I kissed him. Our mouths messily collided, and I bit, sharp teeth taking snaps at his lips and tongue until copper bathed my tongue. His breathless shudders and gasps egged me on, and I slid off him, struggling as I flipped him onto his front.
I straddled his thighs as we struggled, engaging in the messy sort of haste that we both detested. But I needed to break things, to take things, to defile. Gre, for his part, wanted to be broken, taken, defiled. Or he wanted to be filled.
As an omega, I was not in possession of as large of a cock as an alpha, but it was enough as I spit over my fingers and drove my hand down the crease of his firm buttocks.
My power may not have known I was half succubus, but my biology did. My mouth drooled profusely, the saliva slicker and more copious as I kissed my way down his back and spread his cheeks, using my knees to pin his dropped trousers and underwear to the floor to effectively cage him in.
“Esmeray, I—” His voice choked out, a hiss on the edge of his breath, and I pushed my face in, tongue curling. I tasted my way through the spent saliva I stroked there to push my tongue against his soft hole. I thrusted the muscle against him, writhing it with conviction I didn’t know I had.
Fresh, clean skin, the scent of magical herbs, the spicy aroma of magic.
His hole, tight and untouched in far too long, squeezed back against the tip of my probing tongue, and I abused that cinch.
I pushed in deeper, withdrew, stretching him as I let copious strands of my drool spill down his crease.
Unflattering noises broke from his lips, strong hands in bunched-up sleeves grabbed comforters and clenched, pulling as Gre did his best to spread his legs, angle his hips, and welcome me in.
I clenched clawed fingertips on each of his ass cheeks, spreading him open.
I needed him, to please him, to make up for something.
In a way, I felt like if getting pregnant had taken so much from me, I couldn’t fathom what it had done for him.
He wasn’t prepared emotionally or financially.
Financially, maybe. He had plenty, but none of it I’d earned.
At the end of the day, I needed an alpha, my father, and other people to pave the way.
“Esmeray, this is—” Gre groaned.
I pulled my mouth away, tongue leaving his dripping hole as I took a deep breath. “Safe word is silk. Pinch me if you can’t talk.”