Page 119 of Shared

They laughed.

It wasn’t creepy, but a sweet laughter, one I was smirking at before they even answered. “You killed him. Dragon blood is poison to him.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I’m not a dragon.”

“Your son is a dragon. And he grows in you, and shares your blood with you,” Rocky said, moving his hand forward and reaching down, touching my tummy with his dark hands, surrounded by his white light.

I looked down, and I could almost feel it. Something different, vibrating inside of me, more precious than any diamond.

Holy shit. Shit.

“Am I…? I’m…?” I asked, startled. I was only twenty-two. This seemed like a lot to process.

“With child. A child that is human and djinn and dragon-kind. The first. We knew one was coming for thousands of years. It was foretold, but the secret got lost in the sands of time. You have saved this realm and the dragons’ realm. You have stopped Seraphus, after a millennium of hopes and the prayers of millions.”

Wow. Not bad for someone that graduated high school with a 2.5 grade average. Do the dirty with a couple of super handsome dragons, get knocked up, save the world. And then, here is my thank-you.

“Your brother is fading,” they said, really breaking me out of my reverie and my deep thoughts. Because a baby? A baby I could handle. There were books and programs to help me through, and that didn’t even start to cover how I had two baby-daddies, not just one, that I knew I could lean on. They wanted this.

But Zach dying? Nope. Couldn’t handle that. I’d probably start crying and then not be able to stop.

They didn’t even have to tell me how to wake up. I yanked out of it like I was in a bad dream.

“Bring us to him,” the diamonds told me in the darkness I woke up to.

My eyes had trouble adjusting, but eventually I realized that Murtagh was snoring on my right-hand side of whatever bed I was on, and Caspian was leaning against the bed on the ground. I could see his blond head slumped back.

Careful not to wake them, I pulled myself out of bed. I’d been dressed in a large t-shirt and nothing else; someone had been taking care of me. My body hurt, but not that much. I felt like I was recovering from a flu, and not getting rammed through a porch ceiling or getting my neck ripped into.

I almost stepped right on top of Miles, who was on the floor, curled up like trusty hound dog. I shook my head; at least he was safe. And I would get to hold the fact that my plan ended up being better than his plan over his head for the rest of our lives.

I was quickly aware that I was creeping through a haunted house. I could feel it, the spookiness of it, the uneasiness that settled in my bones.

I looked back and forth.

“Looking for your brother?” hissed the raspy voice of the shadow man.

I whipped around and saw, blinking, that a very light, almost emaciated, shadow stood at the wall on my side. It pointed down the hallway. “Follow the light.”

Seraphus had done a number on that thing, I could tell. I’d heard that the shadow was subdued, but it looked like it had gotten the shit kicked out of it.

I blinked, got myself to nod at the intensely creepy creature, and then entered the bedroom.

“There’s nothing more I can do,” the little witch was telling Ryan, who towered over her in comparison, looking like a gargoyle. He wasn’t one to cry, very stoic, but he didn’t look like he was doing very well as he hunched over the bed where Zach was panting. His skin was pale and white. “Death is coming; it’s on its way, cher. You have to say your goodbyes now.”

And Ryan started to break down. All he had to do was look down at Zach and realize what I already knew—he was seconds away from not being Zach anymore. But Ryan crying was a gut-punch. I hadn’t seen it happen before, and I didn’t want to. He had an ugly man cry that would put even Mel Gibson’s to shame, complete with lip-quiver.

“No. We’re not saying goodbye,” I told the witch stubbornly as I barged into the room, unable to stand still for a second.

My presence in the room shook the witch and Ryan up. They spun and looked at me like I was a ghost.

“My lord! Look at you on your feet!” Wendy said wearily. She looked like she hadn’t slept for days, although when I’d first met her three weeks before, she looked extremely full of life and energy.

“Zazie!” Ryan blinked at me. “Your eyes.”

“Your diamonds…” Said the cat that had settled himself at the foot of the bed. His eyes looked right at Lully and Rocky with salivating envy.

I walked right up and placed the diamonds on either side of Zach’s chest, then plucked my ring off my finger and stuck it on Zach’s.

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