Gideon was still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Mikhail actually experienced emotions, and wondering over what other powers Mikhail might possess, so he didn’t immediately respond.
“How long?” Mikhail barked with customary impatience.
“Only a minute or two.” Gideon hurried to the other side of the bed to get out of Mikhail’s way and watched. Concern for Maggie overrode his confusion over Mikhail’s uncharacteristic behavior. But only just.
Mikhail sat on the side of the bed at Maggie’s hip. He immediately placed both hands over her abdomen once again, dropped his chin to his chest and closed his eyes. He sat like that for immeasurable minutes. Gideon didn’t say a word, though everything in him balked at having another male so close to her, putting his hands upon her.
It took every ounce of his self-restraint to keep from wringing his hands like a helpless old woman. “Can’t you fix her?”
“It’s not a wound. She’s not broken,” Mikhail bit out. “It’s a babe growing within her. A healthy babe. There’s nothing to fix.”
Gideon hadn’t meant fixing the babe. He’d meant fixing whatever it was that had made Maggie turn white as a sheet and pass out. He remembered the wild flutter of her pulse. Was it her blood pressure? Sometimes expectant mothers had problems with blood pressure, didn’t they? Her pulse had been erratic.
But the angry hiss Mikhail emitted when Gideon opened his mouth to explain silenced him. Gideon bit his tongue. Best to let Mikhail concentrate. He glanced down, dismayed to realize he was clenching his hands together in front of him. He jerked his hands apart and fisted them at his sides as he stood still, his focus darting between Maggie and the scarred warrior.
At length, War straightened, though his gaze never left Maggie’s face. The air left Gideon’s lungs in a sibilant hiss. Mikhail was looking upon Maggie with unmistakable awe.
Gideon didn’t know what to say, or how to react.
Mikhail reached up, his large hands hovering at either side of her head. He frowned in severe concentration.
Slowly, Maggie blinked blearily between the two demons.
Mikhail stared down at Maggie. He wasn’t smiling now. He didn’t offer any words of comfort and kept his expression guarded. Yet Maggie seemed to take solace from his presence. Rage rose up inside Gideon, snarling for the chance to rip Mikhail’s throat out. That was his woman. His babe. Mikhail had no business…doing whatever it was he was doing to make her feel better. That was Gideon’s job.
Just as quickly, Gideon slapped the monster back in its cage. No way was he letting that thing come out with Maggie in the room. Not ever again. It had damned near killed her the last time. And now that she was pregnant?
Oh, hell no.
Without a word, Mikhail conjured a glass of water. He slipped a gentle hand behind Maggie’s shoulders and helped her sit up. Gideon remembered another time when he’d been the one to conjure a glass of water for her. She hadn’t touched it.
Maggie took this glass from Mikhail with a grateful smile and swallowed several sips before passing it back. Mikhail accepted the vessel, vanishing it in the blink of an eye while Gideon seethed with jealousy. Over a glass of water.
“Feeling better?” Mikhail asked.
Another first. Usually, the moment Mikhail healed a human, he pulled a Houdini. He sure as hell never stuck around to make small talk. Bedside manners were about as important to War as the dirt on the bottoms of his size thirteen combat boots.
“Yes, I think so. Um, did Gideon…ah, call you?”
“Yes.”
“So you know…what he thinks?” Why did the fact that she systematically continued to deny she could be pregnant with his child stab at him so painfully? She waited until Mikhail nodded before going on. “Can you explain to him he’s jumping the gun? There’s no possible way I’m—”
“You are with child,” Mikhail said firmly.
Maggie lost what little color she’d regained. Gideon reflexively jumped closer to the bed. She wasn’t going to pass out again, was she?
“H-how can you tell?”
Mikhail laid his hands upon her abdomen once more, closing his eyes, as if in communion with the being already growing inside her womb.
“I sense his essence.”
“His essence?” Now it was Gideon’s turn to shake his head in disbelief. “You mean…does he have a soul?”
Mikhail nodded solemnly. Maggie shot Gideon a baffled look. “What do you mean, does he have a soul?”
“He’s part demon,” Gideon said by way of explanation.
“It’s also part human,” Maggie argued, then shook her head. “If I were pregnant—which I’m not. I can’t possibly be.”
“You are. And the babe is also part angel,” Mikhail added, quite unnecessarily, in Gideon’s estimation.
That reminder brought a long moment of contemplative silence.
The Chosen One.