Trez recoiled. The Council had met regularly prior to the raids of a couple of years ago, and Rehv had never needed backup. “What’s doing?”
“Wrath got shot back in the fall.”
What. The. Fuck.
Trez ground his molars. “Who?” After all, he liked the king.
“Band of Bastards. You don’t know them, but you may meet them tomorrow night—if you agree to come.”
“Of course we’ll be there.” As iAm nodded, Trez crossed his arms over his chest. “Where?”
“I’m having it at this estate in Caldwell at midnight. It’s one of the few that wasn’t infiltrated by the Lessening Society—the family was mostly wiped out nonetheless, however, because they were visiting another bloodline in town at the time the attack went down.” Rehv went over and sat down on the tapestry-covered sofa, twirling his cane on the floor between his legs. “Let me tell you how we’re going to roll. Wrath is now totally blind, but the glymera don’t know this. I want him seated in the morning parlor when those aristocrats arrive so they don’t see him relying on anyone to find his place. Then…”
As Rehv continued to lay out the plan, Trez took a seat in front of the fire and nodded in the right places.
In his mind, however, he was in that kitchen, with that female….
What was her name? he wondered.
Just as important…
When could he see her again?
FIFTY
Downstairs in the clinic’s examination room, Qhuinn felt like he was up in the air, flying high. And not in a soon-to-crash POS Cessna with a wounded Brother in the back.
“I’m sorry, could you say that again?”
Doc Jane smiled as she brought a rolling table over to the bedside. Dimly, the stuff on it registered, but he was more focused on what might or might not come out of the physician’s mouth. “You guys are still pregnant. Her hormone levels are doubling exactly as they should, blood pressure’s perfect, heart rate’s great. And still no bleeding, right?”
As the physician looked over at Layla, the Chosen shook her head, her expression as poleaxed as he sure as shit felt like. “None at all.”
Qhuinn took a little walk, his hand dragging through his hair, his brain cramping. “I don’t understand this….I’m mean, this is what I want—what we want—but I don’t get why she had the…”
After having ridden the roller coaster down into hell, it was completely disarming to hit an unexpected rise back in the direction of earth.
Doc Jane shook her head. “This is probably not helpful, but Ehlena’s never seen this before, either. So I get your confusion, and more to the point, I understand better than you know how treacherous hope can be. It’s hard to give yourself over to any optimism after where you both have been.”
Man, V’s shellan was so not an idiot.
Qhuinn focused on Layla. The Chosen was in a loose white robe, but not the kind she’d worn as a member of the Scribe Virgin’s sacred sect of females. It was an everyday bathrobe, and underneath was a hospital johnny that had pink and red hearts on a white background. And on that rolling table? Turned out it was a box of saltine crackers and a six-pack of little Canada Dry ginger ales.
Talk about your over-the-counter medications.
Doc Jane opened the crackers. “I know that the last thing you’re thinking of is food.” She handed one of the flaky, salty squares over. “But if you eat this, and have a little of the soda? Might settle things down in there.”
And what do you know, it did. Layla ended up working her way through half a sleeve, and two of the small green bottles.
“That really helps, huh?” Qhuinn murmured as the Chosen lay back and sighed in relief.
“You have no idea.” Layla put her hand on her lower belly. “Whatever it takes, I will do it, eat it, drink it.”
“The nausea’s that bad, huh.”
“It’s not about me. I don’t care if I throw up for the next eighteen months, as long as the young is all right. I’m just scared that with the heaving, I’ll lose…well, you know.”
Okay, anyone who thought females were the weaker sex had their head fucking wedged.
He looked at Doc Jane. “What do we do now?”
The doctor shrugged. “My advice? Trust in the symptoms and in the test results, otherwise, you’re going to go crazy. Layla’s body is, and has been, driving all this. If right now there are no indications of a miscarriage, but in fact every reason to believe that the pregnancy has resumed a positive course? Take a deep breath and go one night at a time. If you look forward too much, or get stuck dwelling over the past couple of days? You’re not going to get through this in one piece.”
Word, Qhuinn thought.
The good doctor’s phone went off. “Hold on a sec—shoot. I have to check on that doggen who cut his hand last night. Layla, as far as I’m concerned, there’s no medical reason to make you stay down here. I don’t want you leaving the compound for the next couple of nights, though. Let’s get some time under our belts, okay?”
“But of course.”
Doc Jane left a moment later, and Qhuinn was at a loss. He wanted to help Layla back to the main house, but she wasn’t crippled, for godsakes. Still, he felt like carrying her around—for like, the rest of the frickin’ pregnancy.
He leaned back against the stainless-steel cabinets. “I find myself wanting to ask you how you are every two seconds.”
Layla laughed a little. “That makes the both of us.”
“You want to go to back to the house?”
“You know…I actually don’t. I feel…” She looked around. “Safer down here, to be honest.”
“Makes sense to me. You need anything?”
She nodded at her little tray full of anti-nausea stuff. “As long as I’ve got this, I’m good. And you should feel free to go out and fight.”
Qhuinn frowned. “I thought I’d stay in….”
“And do what? I’m not telling you to leave, by any means. But I have a feeling it’s just going to be me sitting here and stewing. If something happens, I can call you and you can come right home.”
Qhuinn thought about where the Brotherhood and the fighters in the house were heading at midnight: the Council meeting.
If it had been a normal evening of engaging in the field, he probably would have stayed put. But with Wrath actually in the world, meeting with those assholes in the glymera?
“Okay,” he said slowly. “I’ll keep my phone with me, and I’ll make it clear to the others that if you call, I’m out of there.”
Layla took a sip of her ginger ale, and then stared into the cup, like she was watching the bubbles rise around the ice.
He thought of where they’d been the night before at Havers’s—out of control, terrified, in mourning.
Shit could still go back to that, he reminded himself. It was way too early to get attached again.
And yet he couldn’t seem to help himself. Standing in the tiled room, with the scent of Lysol disinfectant in his nose, and the lip of the counter he was leaning against biting into his ass…he realized this was the moment he started to love his young.
Right here, right now.
As a male bonded with his female, so too did a father to his offspring—and accordingly, his heart just opened wide and let it all in: the commitment that came with choosing to try for a child, the terror of losing them that he bet never went away, the joy that there was something of you on the face of the earth after you were gone, the impatience to meet them in person, the desperate desire to hold them in your arms and look into their eyes and give them all the love you had to give.
“Is it okay…can I touch your stomach?” he asked in a small voice.
“Of course! You don’t have to ask.” Layla lay back with a smile. “What’s in there is half yours, you know.”
Qhuinn rubbed nervous hands together as he approached the table. He had certainly touched Layla during the needing, and then afterward in a solicitous manner when a situation called for it.
He had never thought of touching his baby.
Qhuinn watched from a vast distance as his dagger hand reached out. Jesus, the tips of the fingers were trembling like crazy.