Page 27 of Accidentally a Dragon Daddy

“Well, I’m not pregnant,” I said. “So—”

A few things clicked into place. Could it … could it really be?

“What is it?” he asked as I abruptly stopped speaking.

“Doing some of the math,” I said softly, feeling the blood slowly drain from my face. “But this can’t be …”

Damon was at my side in an instant. “Are you okay?”

I looked up at him. “In theory, you could be right. But that can’t be.”

I quashed the hope growing inside me. A hope I’d firmly put out years earlier and had never allowed to grow. All it ever did was end in more pain.

“I wasn’t guessing,” he said calmly. “I’m telling you you’re pregnant. My dragon sensed the baby growing inside you.”

“It’s wouldn’t even be a baby yet,” I said. “Developmentally, I mean. How can it tell?”

It was his turn to shrug. “I don’t really know. Maybe it can hear differences in sounds? I don’t really speak with it. Not in terms of words, at least. More like basic instincts, emotions, that sort of thing. But it’s telling me, quite emphatically, that you’re with child.”

“I … I need to sit down,” I said, my legs unsteady. I found a nearby tree, sitting back against it. “It all makes sense now. But it’s not possible. I can’t be pregnant.”

“What makes sense?” he asked, crouching to hover protectively nearby, his gaze switching between sweeping the air and forest and focusing on me.

“I … it’s a long story, but I was in jail. I was so focused on that. I never realized until just now that I actually missed my last two periods,” I said. “And then I was getting sick. At the time, I passed it off as the prison food being terrible, which was believable because it was. But now …”

“You were in jail?” Damon asked in a bit of a strangled voice.

“Yeah.” I shook my head, hoping he wasn’t suddenly rethinking everything. “I didn’t do anything. I was framed, but before I could get a trial, this all happened, and now I’m here, so …” I shrugged as he struggled to find more words. It had better not drive him away. Not now. Because if I were pregnant …

“It’s impossible,” I said, reality reasserting itself as I pushed the fantasy aside. Cold, hard reality. That was where I needed to be, where I had to live.

“But, Elanya, I’m telling you, you’re—”

“I can’t be pregnant, okay?” I shouted, tears forming in my eyes. “I literally can’t. My body … I just can’t, okay? The doctors said it was impossible. I would never carry a child.”

Damon smiled lopsidedly. “I bet if you asked those same doctors if dragons were real, they would have said no right up until we were.”

I sat back against the tree. “But this is science,” I pointed out. “Your appearance hasn’t changed anything about my body.”

“Maybe not. But you said yourself you’ve missed two cycles. You’ve had morning sickness. It all adds up to you being pregnant.”

“I …” I rubbed my face. “You’re taking this rather well, you know.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

I smiled. “If I am pregnant, then you’re the father.”

Damon stiffened. “What?”

“Surprise,” I said dryly. “I didn’t know dragons and humans could do that.”

“Me neither,” he said after a long pause. “Are you sure it couldn’t be someone else instead?”

I nodded. “If I were seven or eight months pregnant, I think I would have figured it out by now. Since there was no one else between then and now besides you …”

“I see.”

“You don’t seem overly enthusiastic about this news,” I told him, taking a deep breath to steady myself as panic threatened to overwhelm me.

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