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Just like I didn’t need him to hear the heartbeat for the first time. That hadn’t been the picturesque moment I’d thought, either. I remember listening to the rapid whooshing and bursting into tears because I’d assumed that was abnormal—that I was listening to the sounds of an alien. It took the doctor twenty minutes to talk me down, and to tell me everything was in fact, just perfect.
Every visit I was told that, actually. The baby was practically perfect. That scared me more for some reason.
I didn’t want to rob Lucian of these precious moments, but I was so tired of him seeing me crying, upset, sick, or anything potentially negative. No wonder he seemed so miserable all the time. He was stuck withme.
“Katerina Smythe,” a nurse called into the lobby. I stood, and we began the process. She checked all my standard stats, then walked me back to the ultrasound room.
I lay on the exam chair and got comfortable. Warm goo was spread over my small, rounded belly, and a wand placed on top. To an outsider, I didn’t look pregnant. I noticed the difference in my stomach’s structure, though. I liked seeing the evidence.
My heart was pounding, and I felt like I was going to be sick. What was I going to see on the screen? Wings? Or something more human like.
I focused on the screen and soon an image appeared. The baby looked... like a baby.
“There are the feet,” the technician explained, pointing to the little white bones.
“And there’s two of them?” I asked.
She laughed. “Yup! And two hands and two eyes and a nose. Your baby looks great! Let’s take some measurements.”
“O... okay.” I adjusted a little and stared at the image on the screen. Sure enough, two eyes, a nose, a mouth. So human and normal. Was I wrong? Or had I dreamed that Lucian was a dragon?
No, he’d definitely turned into a dragon, and I’d been in my sound mind when I witnessed it.
The technician measured the baby’s length. “Seems to be a little bigger than usual at this point. Are you sure the conception date is right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Positive.” Before that night at the wedding, it had been almost six months since my last sexual encounter.
She made a note in my file, and I tried not to worry. “Did you want to know the sex?”
“For now, can we keep it a surprise?” I asked, though I was dying to know.
Another thing Lucian and I hadn’t talked about. Did we want to know, or did we want to wait? Would there be a party to reveal the news to everyone? Who would even come? His family and my sisters were all in another realm.
The technician smiled. “I’ll put it in an envelope for you, and when you’re ready you can look. Or not.”
“Thanks,” I managed to say, though the weight of my guilt was growing by the minute.
I should have brought him. He would have loved to see our baby.
“We’re all done! I’ll leave you to get cleaned up.”
I nodded, grateful there wasn’t much more to the appointment, because my mind was running a million miles a minute. The whole drive home, I tried to decipher my feelings from the facts. Sometimes, the two got jumbled together.
Fact: I was pregnant and getting excited about being a mother. The more time passed, the more I connected I felt to the baby and came to terms with the unexpected way it’d come to be.
Fact: Being with Lucian made me feel wonderful. He was a great man who deserved the world.
Fact: Lucian was a dragon. He could change his form, and that was a trait my baby might have as well. Not might—did. Deep down in their genetic code, Lucian’s dragon lived.
A baby—kids in general—I knew what to do. Dragons? Not so much. I wouldn’t be able to teach him or her how to have control over their shifting, or about fated mates and the mystery behind how that worked. In fact, there was a lot about their heritage I was still clueless about.
Would Lucian be able to teach them safely in our current home? What if the neighbors saw? What if the house caught on fire? What if...there were a lot of those questions, and they all had a similar solution.
We had to go back to Lucian’s realm. Our baby needed to be with its own kind. Not the answer I’d wanted to reach, but I made peace with the hard truth on the ride home.
I parked the car then walked into the house, rehearsing in my mind how I’d go about the conversation. Lucian would be disappointed I’d excluded him from so much, but hopefully he’d be relieved to know that we’d be moving to his icy castle.
I shivered just thinking about it.
