20. Leonardo #2
I smiled at Sandro. “I am. Besides, you won’t be far. I know I started to hyperventilate earlier, but I’m fine now. Maybe. I’ve never done that before, so perhaps I’m not.”
“You were incredibly upset with the thoughts of your grandfather knowing about our baby.” Sandro kissed me quickly.
“I’ll be back in a moment.” He stood up and walked out of the bedroom.
He wasn’t wrong. That was what had upset me.
If my grandfather was willing to have his own son killed, where would he stop?
His own son. He would no doubt be willing to kill me and our child as well.
I placed my hand on my slightly rounded stomach.
I wasn’t huge by any means, but when naked, I was certainly showing.
Or when I was wearing one of my shirts. I’d actually taken to grabbing shirts from Sandro’s side of the closet.
He didn’t seem to notice, and if he had, he’d not said anything about it.
I smiled as Sandro reentered our bedroom with Rio behind him. “How are you feeling?” Rio asked as he came to stand beside me.
“Okay, I guess. I’m not sure why all of a sudden I started to freak out, but I did. I mean, the thought of my grandfather getting our baby is scary.”
“That’s not something you need to be worrying about,” Rio told me. He sat in the chair that Sandro had been in, and I actually noticed it for the first time. It wasn’t ours. It didn’t match any of our furniture or anything like that.
“Uh…where did the chair come from?” I asked.
“I sent it with you and your mate when you had your quick little sleep,” Rio said.
“Sandro was going to need somewhere comfortable to sit, so here it is.” Rio looked over at Sandro.
“Now, if you wouldn’t mind getting on the bed beside your beloved, I can start the ultrasound.
I can also share my news with you after we’ve finished it. ”
“News? About what?”
“Now, if I told you now, then you would be distracted by that instead of being focused on your ultrasound.”
The bed dipped slightly, and I turned my head to look at my mate. “Do you know what the news is?”
“I do not,” Sandro said.
“Only Master Vincent and Marcello know. And I have to assume Abel as well, as I don’t believe that Marcello keeps much from his beloved.”
Sandro sat beside me, leaning against the pillows. “Do I need to sit up?”
“Only if you wish,” Rio said. “You could lay your head in your mate’s lap if that is comfortable. I’m going to project the baby’s image in front of us, and you will be able to see him from any angle.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t really thought about the ultrasound. Mazzi and Abel had both said they loved it and I needed to do it as well, but that was it. I’d been too preoccupied with everything else that I’d not thought to ask them about how it was done. Oh well, I was about to find out on my own.
I glanced over at Sandro, who I found smiling down at me. I felt odd lying here in bed beside him while he was sitting and Rio was on my other side in the chair.
The room darkened completely, and any thought I had about being in an odd place ended when the room was suddenly filled with the most beautiful sound.
The swish-swish of our baby’s heartbeat was all I could hear, and immediately, I felt my eyes start to water.
“That’s our baby’s heartbeat,” I said quietly. I knew Sandro could hear me though.
“It is. I wish I could have gotten the speakers to work the other day. But you can hear it now, and that’s all that matters.”
I moved, laying my head on Sandro’s thigh, and immediately, his fingers went to my head, and he started gently running them through my hair.
I closed my eyes briefly but opened them quickly.
When I did, I gasped. There in front of me was our baby.
Yes, I’d seen him the other day when Sandro had done an ultrasound, and it wasn’t a terrible experience, but the one floating in the air over the foot of the bed felt as if I could reach out and touch him.
“That’s our baby,” I whispered.
“It is,” Rio said. “He is growing as he should. He might be a little bit on the larger size for his age, but it could be that he just had a growth spurt, and he’ll slow down now. It’s nothing to be worried about.”
“You said our baby is a vampire. So you won’t be able to tell if he’s going to be a sire or a carrier, then?”
“No,” Rio said. “Just as with warlocks, that isn’t known until they meet their fated mate. There are, of course, some that you simply know are going to go one way or another, but I cannot answer your question about how your baby will present.”
“I understand. I was just making sure I understood completely.” I placed my hand low on Sandro’s thigh near his knee.
“I love that I can see all of his fingers and tiny little toes. I’ve held Tulio and the twins, and they’re all still really small, but I never really thought about tiny fingers or toes until now. ”
I heard Rio chuckling. “There’s his heartbeat.
You can see it moving to the pulse you hear in the room.
His heart is healthy. He also doesn’t seem to be shy,” Rio added.
It took me a moment to realize what he was saying.
When I did, I laughed. Our son was certainly not shy.
At least not from the angle that he was being viewed magically at the moment.
“I see what you’re saying,” I said after I stopped laughing. “Hopefully, he’s a bit more modest when he’s out here with us.”
“He’s a vampire—of course he will be,” Sandro said.
I felt him wiggle my head and laughed again.
It had been a discussion between us before.
I was a shifter. I’d been raised to not worry about modesty when it came to shifting.
You couldn’t, really. You got naked to shift.
That was simply how it was done unless you were a smaller shifter like Abel.
The rest of us, we had to strip out of our clothing because it was never fun to find yourself stuck in a shirt when you were in your feline form.
Especially not if you were needing to run away in a hurry for some reason.
I sighed. I was completely content at the moment.
The rhythm of our son’s heartbeat was soothing, and I’d picked up on the fact that Sandro was playing with my hair to the same regularity.
I yawned and suddenly wondered if Rio had done something again to make me sleepy.
“Rio, did you magick me again?” I asked quietly.
“I haven’t, no. Are you tired? Do you wish for us to end the ultrasound?”
“I never want to not see our baby, but between the sound of his heartbeat and Sandro rubbing my scalp, I could probably fall asleep in under a minute.”
“Understood,” Rio said. The sound of the baby’s heartbeat was the first to disappear. It was quickly followed by the bedside light turning back on, and with it, the image of our son in the air was gone.
I sighed but managed to move and sit up. “Thank you, Rio. I have to agree with Mazzi and Abel. The magical ultrasound is really cool. Especially with the way you can spin the baby around and we can see him from all sides.”
“It is indeed. I’ve actually not done that many of them.
It wasn’t until the last few years that they’ve really become standard for us.
We were doing them the same way as everyone else, but somewhere along the way, someone discovered that we could magically project the aura of the baby, and it appeared much like an ultrasound image.
I feel that most parents enjoy them, especially when they want to know what they’re having.
It can be incredibly difficult to hide that when you have the ability to see the baby from so many different angles. ”
I sighed again. That all made sense, but I was still feeling incredibly relaxed. Maybe I just needed a nap. I was supposed to be full of energy though, and this was not that.
“What was your news?” Sandro asked. He pulled me back toward him, and I went willingly.
I felt so safe in his arms, and I had to remember, this was Rio.
He knew—in fact, everyone in the coven knew—that Sandro and I had sex.
I was pregnant with his baby. I was wearing his claiming bite, and they had all seen it.
“The news is that I found a psychologist that is willing to join the coven. The only downside is that he can’t arrive for another few weeks, as he has things he has to do for his current patients.”
That was amazing news. “That’s wonderful to hear. Do you think he’ll stay?” I asked. I wanted Sandro to get the help he deserved, but it wasn’t just him. Abel had been through so much, and honestly, I probably could benefit from talking to someone trained in that area as well.
“He has no family to leave behind. Only distant relatives, but his parents are gone, and he was an only child. He of course has his prickle, but he said he didn’t mind leaving them as they weren’t an overly large group.”
I sat up, a bit lost. “What’s a prickle, and why isn’t it large?”
Rio chuckled. “A prickle is a group of porcupines. Our coven’s new psychologist is a porcupine shifter.”