Chapter 11 Tess #2
“Okay, okay!” Crystal waved her arms, and Tess felt the slightest pang of regret. Itwasthe pregnancy and she knew better. She got riled up on occasion and her mouth started talking before she could control it. “Everybody chill.”
But she was still irritated.
“Sorry,” Tess mumbled. She had already scarfed down her sandwich and her chips and now she was still hungry, but she felt like a bit of a pig and it wasn’t a pretty feeling. At least Kal never looked at her like that. He only ever looked at her like she was beautiful.
As if psychic, Kal said, “I’ll get you another sandwich.”
Crystal was shooting Mark an expectant look over Deedee’s head and Mark sheepishly said, “Tess, I apologize if that was patronizing or anything. I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Thank you,” Tess said. She took a deep breath and didn’t speak again until she felt like she meant it. It would have helped if Kal was back with the second sandwich. “I appreciate that. You’re also not exactly offbase. But I’ll try not to murder anyone.”
“I came pretty close,” Crystal said under her breath.
Tess laughed at that and felt a little more relaxed.
It helped that Deedee was in Crystal’s lap, looking over at Tess with her giant, gold-flecked eyes.
She looked so genuinely happy about everything and it lightened Tess’s heart.
It was a dangerous world to have a baby in these days but she couldn’t help but feel a sense of responsibility.
They had to go on. They had to keep the world turning.
And now, they had to find a way to make that world better, marrying humans to Vampyrens, so that these helpless little babies had a better place to live in someday.
It wasn’t going to be easy but it was necessary. Lucian…
That enemy was something Tess could almost forget about sometimes.
Then it would come back to her all at once and even now as Kal sat down, placing another plate full of food in front of Tess, she felt a thrill of fear course through her.
There had been skirmishes throughout the Midwest recently.
Both human and Vampyren were coming up against Lucian who had still not attacked en masse but were definitely using a strategy of attacking sporadically and regionally in small groups.
The eeriest part was that wherever the Lucian won, you never heard much about it.
Tess presumed that was because they killedeveryoneand no one was ever left to tell the tale.
There were only known pockets here and there of Lucian living almost invisibly.
And even that was the stuff of myth and rumor.
No one quite knew what to believe or had any idea how many Lucian might be on earth.
But things were beginning to come to a head.
Loren, as the de facto leader of the Council, believed they couldn’t properly take on the Lucian threat unless the humans and Vampyren united nationwide.
He kept talking about traveling around speaking to the different regional governments about that.
In New York, at least, which had been absolutely ravaged by Vampyren, they managed to create a system similar to Chicago’s.
In fact, that city had two leaders, one human, and one Vampyren just to even things out.
New York was a solid ally in this new world.
“Here you go, baby,” Kal said, setting another plate down in front of Tess.
Tess, now a little bit sated, was able to eat slower without looking like she was taking part in some eating contest. But she hated how self-conscious she felt about it, until Crystal, who could clearly read her like a book leaned over and whispered that she should eat as much as she wanted.
“I think they think it’s sexy anyway,” Crystal whispered.
“We do,” Mark said, having overheard. He had Deedee back in his lap and Deedee nodded as if in agreement. “Watching women eat is hot.”
Tess raised an eyebrow at Kal who nodded and said, “Yes. It’s very hot.”
Now the hormones that made her jealous also made her horny and Tess took a deep breath as she looked deeply into Kal’s eyes.
She was more attracted to Kal than she’d ever been to anyone but beyond that, the pregnancy hormones had turned that urge up to its max.
It didn’t take much for her to get turned on and now Kal was giving her a heated look and she had a strong desire to sweep everything off the table and climb right on top of him.
But she’d hold off until they were alone.
“So the Council in Los Angeles is ready to talk apparently,” Mark was saying.
“According to Loren. But they may need help. I think he wants a kind of diplomatic meeting, but he hasn’t organized it yet or maybe they haven’t agreed.
I’m not certain which. For now, the Vampyren leadership there and the humans have called a truce.
Which is probably wise because apparently there’s a heavy Lucian presence there… ”
Tess was snapped out of her reverie and she gasped a little at the mere mention of Lucian.
She took a deep breath, rubbing her belly, before eating the rest of her sandwich.
She hated to give away how terrified she was by the thought of Lucian.
She liked to think of herself as strong.
But the more she’d heard about them, the more anxiety they provoked, especially with a baby on the way.
Kal seemed to sense this too and he reached over and squeezed her hand. “Let’s go up, huh?”
Tess blushed, embarrassed that he could read her so easily, even if it worked in her favor. Kal had always been rather sensitive to her needs. But that was especially helpful while she was pregnant.
“Okay,” she murmured. “Let’s go home.”
“You alright?” Kal said in her ear as they made their way back to the dorms. He wrapped an arm around her waist and she leaned heavily against him.
“The Lucian scare me,” she said. “And the morepregnant
I am, the more they scare me.”
“I’ll never let anything happen to you,” Kal whispered in Tess’s ear. “Or our baby.”
She closed her eyes for a moment as they walked outside. Kal said that all the time but the closer the Lucian got to Chicago, the more difficult it was to believe.