Chapter 21
ADRIAN
I know Tyrel tried to hide how worried he was on our way to the doctor's, but I could see it in his posture. The man was tense all over. I wanted to look forward to this appointment, to finding out more about my child, but it was difficult to do.
The old fears started creeping in. What if something was wrong?
Sure, I'd been able to get pregnant, but was I really able to carry a baby to term?
And a dragon baby at that? Maybe my body wasn't made for that.
Maybe that was why I was so tired all the time when I really wanted to put on a happy face to put Tyrel at ease.
At least, when we got to the doctor's office, we weren't sent to a waiting room. Briefly, I wondered how much money Tyrel had waved at this doctor, but I wasn't about to complain.
The assistant who led us into the examination room shot me a sympathetic look, which only made me feel crappier. Was it that obvious how much the trip here had exhausted me?
Dear lord, I had no idea how I was going to get through the rest of this pregnancy, but I would.
The doctor who greeted us was female, with pretty blond curls and a friendly smile. I only hoped that smile wasn't going to fade from her face during the examination.
"A dragon and a human," she said in a light hearted tone. "A combination I don't see too often in here."
"What do you know about dragon pregnancies?" Tyrel asked. I wanted him to be a little less rude, but I could see that he was agitated, and he was bad at reading the mood at his best. He wasn't perfect, my dragon, but he was here with me.
At least the doctor seemed to take the question in stride. "I've treated someone like him before. Only once, I admit, but he did end up with a healthy baby if that makes you feel better."
"Excuse him," I spoke up. "He's just worried because I'm always so tired."
"That's not unusual in your situation, but come sit in the chair and we'll see what's going on inside you."
I sat in the examination chair she'd indicated and hoped for the best. Tyrel stood next to me, so I grabbed his hand and squeezed, as much to calm him down as to ease my own mind.
The doctor lifted my shirt, and then she put some cool sort of cream on my belly. She switched on a small monitor to the side, and next she went over my stomach with some small device that I could only guess was going to give her an ultrasound image.
Sure enough, a black and white image showed up on the screen.
"Is that…"
She smiled and pointed at the screen. "That's your baby."
I thought I could make out the head, but everything else was still kind of a mess. A work in progress. My work in progress. I was so proud of my little one I could have cried. No matter how much of a strain it put on my body, it was instantly forgiven.
"He or she's beautiful," I whispered, looking up at Tyrel. He smiled back at me, tightening his grip on my hand.
"It's looking good. I can't quite tell the gender here. Let me…" The doctor moved the device around a little. "Oh," she said then, with a look of surprise.
"Oh what?" I could practically feel the tension radiating off Tyrel.
She grinned, and pointed at the screen again where the image had changed a bit. "That's also your baby. Your other baby."
My mouth dropped open. "Twins? We're having twins?"
First they told me a pregnancy was unlikely and now I was having two at once? Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket, just in case.
"Yes, there's definitely two in there. Which would explain your state." She sighed, as if she was only just realizing what she was saying. "Human twin pregnancies are high risk, but this…"
Next to me, Tyrel had gone pale.
"I'll manage," I said. My babies were beautiful, and it was only three more months at most. I could handle that.
"Will he be okay?" Tyrel asked as if I hadn't said anything, looking only at the doctor.
She, in turn, looked at me. "I won't lie. It's going to be rough. I can't even tell how rough because I've never handled a pregnancy like this, but dragon offspring is demanding. If you don't take good care of yourself, they'll eat you alive."
I nodded at Tyrel. "He's taking good care of me."
But Tyrel's skin color didn't return to normal while the doctor finished up her examination, taking measurements of me and the babies.
"I want to see you here again next week," she told me on our way out, then she pressed a bottle of pills in my hand. "Vitamins. Take one a day with your dinner. Call if anything happens. Make sure you eat enough. I want all three of you to gain weight."
I nodded and put the bottle in my pocket.
Outside, Tyrel called a cab for us.
"Can you believe we're going to have two babies?" I asked him, rubbing my belly where I knew my children were growing.
He nodded, but he had this faraway look in his eyes that meant he was thinking.
"It's going to be alright," I told him, realizing that he hadn't taken the news of our twins as well as I had. "Raising two at once is going to be rough, but we'll manage."
"That's not what I'm worried about. I'm worried that these babies are going to kill you before they're even born."
"That's not going to—"
"Don't say it's not going to happen because it's happened before.
We turned down half the applicants because even carrying one of my kids puts a human at risk, now I've given you two of them, you're only halfway through this pregnancy and you already look like you're dead on your feet.
This isn't going to get easier before it's over. "
The anger with which he delivered his words shocked me. I knew it wasn't directed at me as much as our babies, but that was just as bad, if not worse. "I'm going to be more careful. I'll sleep more and—"
"You already sleep most of the day."
I took a deep breath. "Then what is it that you want me to do?"
He stroked a hand through his hair, looked at the sky. "I don't know, I merely… fuck. I need you to be safe, Adrian."
I took another breath, this one shaky. I didn't want to cry, but shit, I couldn't stop the tears from coming. This sucked. I wanted to be happy about my twins. I didn't want my partner to yell at me in a parking lot because he thought our babies might kill me.
"Shh… Don't cry." Tyrel wiped my cheeks with his thumbs. "I won't let anything happen to you. I'll make it okay. I promise. We can still stop this pregnancy if we need to."
"I'm not letting anyone touch my babies!" I snapped. How could he even think that? "I don't care what happens to me." I just needed the little ones to be okay. I already loved them more than life.
"No, of course you don't." Tyrel wrapped me into a hug. "But I do. I love you, Adrian."
I hiccuped, which wasn't very sexy, but he didn't seem to mind. "Thought you didn't believe in love."
He laughed softly. "I've had to rethink a lot of things since meeting you."
I wasn't sure what he meant by that exactly, but…
"I love you, too." I hadn't thought it could happen so quickly, but I didn't want to spend another day without Tyrel by my side, and as I thought that, I understood why he was so scared.
Right now, he didn't care about the babies or his inheritance as much as he cared about my health and that was sweet in its own way.
"I'm sorry for what I said. I'll find a way to fix this," he said.
"What are you going to do?"
He took a deep breath. "I'm going to take you back to the island. We have better doctors there. Doctors who know their way around situations like this."
"What about your mother?"
"Let me deal with my mother."
"Okay." I sighed and leaned into him. Then, I felt a weird fluttering sensation in my stomach that made me chuckle.
"What's up?" Tyrel asked.
"I think I've just felt one of them move."
Tyrel hugged me closer and kissed me. That moment, I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. Neither of us was going to let any harm come to our little miracles.