Fifty--Six
Her
I stand under the spray of the shower, trembling from the hope blossoming inside my belly. It’s only been a few hours since Antonio saved me and gave me a purpose for living again. But I feel like it’s a new day. A new year. A new me. I feel so different.
So hopeful.
He’s going to get my baby back.
I grope around for the shampoo bottle, then cradle it in my arms like I used to do with Lou. I rock it back and forth, humming a melody I remember my own mother singing to me. Tears run down my face.
But they’re happy tears this time. Full of love. I’m going to hold my baby girl for the first time because of him. He’s going to save her like he’s saved me.
There’s a thought tickling inside my head, but I run from it fast. Throw up walls left and right to keep it away from me. He saved me. He will not hurt me…
Not as long as I obey him, and I will. Because he will give me what no one else can. Not my husband –pain lances through me– not the gods –anger fills me now– not even me. Feelings of shame and filth wage war across my heart, leaving a blood, muddy field death-stomped in their wake.
The tears aren’t happy anymore.
I drop the bottle of shampoo, and it splatters open at my feet. Leaking out. Disappearing down the drain. My child gone, ripped away from me.
I’m such a failure.
Am I even worth being saved?
Being given the chance to be a mother again?
What if I fuck it up? What if she’s better off dead?
I can’t even protect a bottle of shampoo…
A sob rips out of me, and my body curls inwards.
“Antonio!”
I scream, needing him here. Praying for my savior, putting my faith in him like he told me too. “Please!”
He comes to me.
Instantly appearing in the shower beside me, he gathers me in his arms and holds me, asks me why it hurts.
Bubbled snot runs down my face, only to be washed away by the hot spray. By his presence here taking away the pain. He’s naked with me, and I take comfort in the closeness of his body.
I press a hand to my belly. “What if she hates me?”
I sob. “I’m so dirty and disgusting and weak.”
“So be strong for her. It will take me a while to bring her back; you have time to learn. But look at you.”
I take in my pathetic state and wince. The craving for V claws at my stomach.
“You turned to me instead of V,”
he says, knocking the breath from my lungs. “That was your second step to being strong. The first was having a shower. I’m proud of you.”
His hand slips between my legs, and heat slams into me, so much hotter than the spray raining down on my head and shoulders, filling the place with steam. I stand frozen as his finger rubs between my pussy lips. Not going in but going up to my clit. He presses on it, and I shudder against him.
“What are you doing?”
I ask, my breath a hitch in my lungs. I look up at him and see his golden eyes staring down at me, burning with an intense heat.
“Rewarding you,”
Antonio says. “For being a good girl by taking a shower, you get my fingers inside you.” I cry out as he slips a finger deep into my pussy. My hands clutch at his muscled shoulders, holding on to him as my back arches, pushing my breasts against his chest. A golden dusting of hair clings to him and tickles me.
“For praying to me like a good girl, they get to move.”
He pulls out slowly, then pushes back in. Another cry escapes me. I fall to the floor, my legs giving out, and he crouches down in front of me.
“Every time you’re good, I’ll reward you.”
He curls his fingers inside of me, and I clutch at his hand as I lift my hips, riding him to his bottom knuckles. I don’t need any V when I have him. All I need is him. He will save me. Provide for me. Care for me just like he promised.
My lips part. The urge to suck his dick and pleasure him as he’s pleasuring me is nearly overwhelming. I’m getting so wet. So turned on. He’s even better than the V.
“Every time you’re not…”
I scream as pain pierces my lower abdomen. It’s pure fucking agony, increased by the fear of confusion and the unknown. My hand feels wet with something too sticky to be water, and I pull it out from between my thighs, my heart racing so far it lodges in my throat. I can’t breathe. Can’t comprehend. Can’t think.
Antonio vanishes, his absence leaving me cold. Sitting on the floor of the shower, unable to see, I place my hand back between my legs. There’s more stickiness. More pain. More fear.
How long have I been bleeding? I’ve been in the shower for hours, sitting under the spray, just trying to get clean. I picked up a shampoo bottle at one point, but I got distracted rocking it back and forth like a baby. I never cleaned myself, couldn’t do that step of touching myself all over.
Touching me like Bear did…
I sob.
Press a hand to my mouth.
Taste the blood coating my fingers.
Jerking my hand away, I press it back between my legs, trying to stop the flow. But the floor of the shower is all wet with something that isn’t water or soap, the thickness of it too great. The consistency of it all wrong.
There’s so much of it too. All down my legs. All around me. Clotted clumps that tell me I’m losing the thing inside me. And I have no love for it, no desire to carry it to term, but if I lose it, I lose Rafiki.
And I can’t lose her again.
Can’t bear it.
“No,”
I rasp, grabbing at the clumps with my free hand, trying to stop them from going down the shower drain. Can I put them back? Can I squeeze my legs hard enough to stop more from leaking out? Can I save it? There has to be a way to save it.
Because if I lose it, I lose Rafiki.
And I can’t.
Panicking, I stumble to my feet and out of the shower, not bothering to turn it off or even shut the door behind me. I grope around the cabinets for a hand towel. Wad it up and press it between my thighs. Hoping it helps. Needing it to help.
Eduardo said the fetus was okay only a few hours ago. So how is this happening? Why is this happening!
Rudy.
My breath catches. Rudy is doing this. He’s punishing me for trying to save my child. He’s just like his mother, a heartless bitch. Antonio was right. The Shadow family only cares about themselves. They’re evil and cruel. They don’t care about the innocent lives they hurt. Even the kindest of them could do this to a child... To a grieving mother.
I just want my baby back. What is so wrong with siding with Antonio when he’s the only one who’ll save her? Sau started this. He told me that. Everything that is happening is because of her. Because she decided to kill his innocent wife and pups. Like mother, like son. She should have to pay for what she did to him. What she did to me!
She killed my baby!
She deserves to die. Antonio deserves to win. He’s just trying to save his mate. My child.
Why can’t Rudy see that?
He told me the truth.
What’s wrong with the truth?
Sau killed Rafiki.
She should have to pay.
Why can’t they see that what they’re doing is wrong!
I hate them.
I waddle out of the ensuite and into my room, clenching the towel tight between my thighs.
I hate them all.
I make it to the door.
They’re killing my little girl.
Ruining the only chance I have to get her back.
I just want her back.
I want her back.
“Stop,”
I beg. I don’t know if Rudy can hear me, if his magic reads minds and fears subconsciously, or if he hears all one’s nightmares and fears and picks and chooses who he hurts. But if there’s a chance he can hear me, I will beg until my voice box bleeds.
I can’t lose her again.
Hope is such a terrible fucking thing.
Yanking on the door handle, I step out into the hall. I need to find Eduardo and get him to heal me before Antonio finds out.
I don’t know which direction to go though. I’m too afraid to call for him and risk the werewolf hearing me.
He will punish me for this.
It’s my body.
My fault.
I’m nothing but a failure.
A disease.
“Stop…”
I collapse to the floor as another cramp knocks me down. The towel falls away. There’s so much copper in the air. So many tears on my face.
“Please…”
Defeated and hopeless, I pray to the one person who has been there for me.
“Antonio… make him stop…”
Almost instantly, his voice cuts through the dark.
“Can you save it?”
he demands, his voice rough and full of anger.
I flinch, pressed up against the wall, terrified of what he will do to Rafiki because of me.
“I’m sorry,”
I rasp, begging him to believe me.
Two hands press against my stomach. A warm feeling grows from them, like the feel of an old lightbulb being held up to my skin, an inch away.
“No,”
Eduardo says, the word shaky. A tremor of fear that ties us together. “He’s gone.”
“You said it was fine.”
“I thought –”
He blunders. “He was!”
“You thought or it was?”
“He was!”
“You’re exhausted,”
he says, his voice low and lethal. “Or maybe you just lied to me?”
“No! I –”
The healer cuts himself off on a whimper. “I might not have checked the heartbeat. But I checked he was there,” he blurts. “I didn’t –” His words are smacked out of his mouth.
“Fix her and start her ovulation again. I want her bred this evening.”
“I’m too –”
“Has your use to me ended, witch?”
he murmurs.
A heavy weight smacks the air. A terrible silence. “No,”
Eduardo wheezes. His hands are back on my belly. The heat that flows from him this time is a lot warmer. I whimper in discomfort, but my attention is on the man lording over me.
“Please… My baby girl…”
I say as to Antonio, pushing the words out through the clog of tears. “Don’t leave her...”
“Who was her father?”
I tense, my heart rate increasing. There’s a memory in the fog of my brain. “What?”
“Her father. You told me it was Aleric Zadar.”
His voice softens dangerously. “Did you lie to me.”
My shoulders shake as I’m hit with an earthquake of fear. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please –”
“Who is it?”
His name lodges in my throat. I sob against the wall as Eduardo continues to heal me. But he can’t fix the hole in my chest. Can’t fix the chasm created by the choice I’m about to make.
“Varius’…”
I sob, pushing his name out even as it wants to choke me, grabbing hold of my tonsils so I can’t speak. “But please don’t leave her because of who her father is,” I beg. “You promised me you’d get her back. Please… You can kill him.” My throat closes even tighter, wanting to stop the words from escaping. But I can’t hold them in. Can’t protect him if it means losing her. “I can kill him. He doesn’t have to have anything to do with her at all. You can still end the Shadow line. I won’t even give her his name. Please… Just bring her back to me.”
Don’t judge her for Sau’s sins.
Let me have my girl.
The air moves, and Antonio squats down in front of me. His voice brushes the air right in my face, a tender caress, a god’s attention. “Birth me a hybrid,”
he says, “and I will let her live.”
Sobbing, I reach for him. “Thank you.”
My fingers grip his shirt tight, holding on to the only lifeline I have. “Thank you… Thank you…”
Who needs hope when you have a man who cares?