4. Vivianna
VIVIANNA
It didn’t take long for the nurse to return with Dr. Faulk, and I had to keep from throwing up in my mouth at the delighted smile he gave me.
“Well, isn’t this a surprise. I didn’t think we would see each other so soon,” Faulk said as he sat down next to me on a rolling stool. “How are you feeling?”
I had to swallow a few times before I could talk, and even then my voice was very raspy. “What the fuck have you done to me, you deranged bastard.”
“Kate, could you grab Vivianna some water, it might help with her voice,” Faulk directed as he turned away from me to look over the readout of all the machines.
“Right away, Doctor. Anything else?” Kate asked before she bolted out the door once again.
Faulk continued to look over things, then swiveled back to me, placing his stethoscope in his ears and listening to my chest and my belly. He frowned and shifted where he was listening, but his expression didn’t get any better.
“What’s wrong?” I demanded as the monitor beeped out my climbing heart rate.
His gaze snapped to my face. “How long have you been awake?”
“No, this is not how this is going to work. You give me answers and I will think about giving you something in return,” I growled, feeling my wolf twitch at my anger.
Hope surged through me that all might not be lost. If I could get my wolf back, then I knew I could get out of this place before anything else happened to me.
Faulk sighed as he wrapped his stethoscope around his neck again and crossed his arms. It was odd to see such a human expression in his scarred face with his one golden wolf eye and the other human.
I’d been told that after all the experiments he’d done on himself that he couldn’t shift anymore, instead sitting forever in this twisted half shift.
His ears, more like a wolf’s, along with sharp teeth that made his smiles turn threatening.
“You are under my specialized medical care as I help you through this pregnancy. You have surpassed all my hopes yet again, my child. Twins. Who would have ever imagined,” Faulk answered, shaking his head.
“I have to admit, when we discovered your state I was worried the gas I’d used on you might have hurt the babies, but with the growth therapy I used on them, they seemed to stabilize. ”
My heart was in my throat at the implication of his words—these babies were mine. I’d gotten pregnant during my heat; these were not Vadik’s. Then the second part of what he said hit me.
“What do you mean growth therapy?. Did you experiment on my children?” I snarled, thrashing in my bed and pulling against my restraints.
Faulk shot up from his seat and headed for the locked medical cabinet, grabbing a few vials and a syringe. “You need to calm down, Vivianna. It is dangerous for you to be so agitated while pregnant. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to your pups, now would we?”
“Please, just tell me what you’ve done to my babies…I need to know,” I sobbed, tears streaming down my cheeks. “Don’t put me back under. I promise I won’t get upset—please.”
“No, it was far too soon for you to wake up anyways. I need a few more weeks before they are at the point we can safely deliver them,” Faulk answered as he injected the solution into the IV. “Now, relax and think of what’s best for the babies.”
Even as I felt the medication hitting my system, I fought, needing to be awake to watch over my body and protect my children.
I’d always heard women saying they would do anything, even if it meant burning the world down, to keep their kids safe, and in this moment I understood.
No matter how hard I wanted to fight, to do whatever it took to get free, I couldn’t.
The world started to fade as I was being pulled back under the medicine’s power, proving that I wasn’t strong enough to be a mother.
Next time, I wasn’t going to lose…and they would all be dead.