Page 45 of Betrayed Pregnant Mate

“The situation of being immune?”

“Veronica,” Rafael says, sighing again as though he’s come to his wit’s end. “If Maisie and Rosa keep poking around, looking too closely at your blood samples, collecting data on you—they’re eventually going to find out the truth.”

“Do you always have to beat around the bush, or can you ever just get to the point.”

“Veronica, if they do any gene mapping, see the way your exposure to the venom has started to alter your genetic code, they’re going to realize that you’re a vampire.”

I let out a snort loud enough that a woman pushing a stroller moved away from us. My eyes track the stroller, my stomach churning, hard.

“I know it seems hard to believe,” he says, “but I’ve met with every single person whose mother was attacked during that same time period. Yours was the earliest one in the pregnancy. It seems the sooner it happens, the more time you have to develop with the venom present. You developed with the tools to whip up a vampire’s genetic code, but without the actual need to. That meant that, when you were born, it was as a human, but as soon as you were introduced to the venom, those latent proteins with the map for the vampire genome got to work, and have been updating you ever since.”

I glance at my palm, and think of the strength, how Percy and I were able to be together, and I was fine.

“It’s impossible,” I breathe. Just like everything in this fucking town. It is impossible, yet, somehow, all of it is happening to me.

“Veronica, I need you to listen to me,” he says, voice low. “What I said about you being a unique threat is true. You will be very valuable to them, if they can get you to join up. You are, essentially, an example of what the perfect vampire would be. All the benefits, none of the drawbacks. Super strength, immunity to disease, ability to tell when someone is telling the truth, all without having to drink the blood of humans to get those things.”

“So?” I ask, dumbly, my brain feeling like total mush with all the information I’ve had to absorb in the past ten minutes.

“So, you need to be careful,” he says, “watch your back.”

Just then, Aris comes walking down the street.

“You made it!” he says, clapping Rafael on the back and leading him inside. “Veronica,” he says, smiling at me, before ducking into the building.

I can’t breathe, I can’t think. Rafael just told me that the vampires are going to be looking for me, trying to get me to “join up,” and I can’t even focus on that. Because there is something much bigger, something much more important happening. Because my entire world is about to change.

Because in the lab, leaning down and looking at the screen, my blood lab reports showed, clear as day, that I was pregnant.

Chapter 22 - Percy

Bigby, Aris, and I are walking through the woods, searching for a gnome someone said they spotted earlier.

I was in the pack center, talking to Bigby about vampires, when Aris approached both of us, asking if we were ready for a mission. I’d gotten excited immediately, but Bigby had looked skeptical as Aris explained our objective.

“It’s not a top priority, by any means,” Aris had said, “but I need some time to take my mind off this thing with the vampires, and we don’t want the poor little thing wandering the woods by itself. Even worse if a human finds it and puts it in their garden.”

“Aw, man,” Bigby had said, trudging along after us. “You always have to put me on the missions with little magical creatures.”

“They love you,” Aris said.

“I still have the scars from the fairies,” Bigby had muttered. We rode together in Aris’s truck, then hopped out at the trailhead where the gnome was spotted.

Now, Bigby plows through the forest like he can personally rip trees from the ground, and honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was true. Aris is moving gracefully, checking under logs and inside hollow trees for the gnome.

I have a package of Skittles in my pocket, and I take them out, dropping them behind us one at a time. With any luck, the gnome will smell them and come running.

“So,” Aris says, returning to my side and raising an eyebrow at the Skittles. I shrug my shoulders, dropping another.

“I think that’s technically littering,” Bigby says, crashing through the underbrush and re-joining us on the trail.

“And I think that’s technically deforestation,” I say, which makes them laugh, “besides, it’s not littering if the gnome picks them up.”

“What makes you think gnomes like Skittles?” Bigby asks. “I’ve never read anything that—”

“I used to look for them with my grandma,” I say before he can get off on a tangent. “Skittles, or really, any fruity candy, usually works.”

“Hmm,” Bigby says, in a tone that makes me think he doesn’t actually believe that.

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