Page 5 of Betrayed Pregnant Mate

Until then, I hadn’t realized how much a turn-on scrubs were. I’d always thought I didn’t have a type, but walking out of that emergency room, suddenly and completely, my type was her. It felt like she was the only woman who would ever feel attractive to me again. It felt like I would go to the ends of the Earth just to be near her.

And that was what made it so difficult to leave her behind.

“Veronica,” Linnea breaths, yanking me out of my memories. “Oh Gods, Veronica is in trouble.”

Chapter 3 - Veronica

My head is throbbing with one of the migraines I normally get when I’m really stressed, and I slowly open my eyes, trying to figure out where I am. There’s a zinging pain above my left temple, and I gingerly bring a hand to it, worried that I might find blood.

Instead, I’m met with something cold, and I realize there’s an ice pack on my forehead. I blink up at the ceiling, thinking I might recognize it. As I sit up, the ice pack falls into my lap, and I realize I’m on the couch in the Cadell’s living room. Glancing around makes my head hurt worse, but I do anyway, and I discover that I’m in the room alone.

Why am I on the couch in the Cadell’s living room? Why is my head positively pounding? Why have they left me here alone after something clearly happened to me?

Voices come from the hallway, and I sit up straighter, straining to hear them.

“…she’s saying he tested positive. For the vampire venom.”

Vampire venom?

“Oh, Gods,” a male voice says, and I assume it’s one of the members of Aris’s team. “Poor fucking Percy. The guy can’t catch a break.”

At the mention of Percy, the memories come flooding back to me, one after the other, like a tidal wave I can’t control. Everything, from the day I first met him in that inner-city ER to the moment just outside when I saw a wolf transform into a human man. Into Percy.

I put my head in my hands and try to think, listing the facts and examining what I know.

Four years ago, I met Percy at the hospital in New York. I’d never believed in insta-love up to that point, and hated any book or movie that contained the trope, but the moment I saw him, it was like getting hit with a ton of bricks.

I lost my breath. I stared at him, seeing stars in my eyes. It was like my entire world had narrowed to a tiny little circle, and a stranger with a bleeding arm was right in the center of it. After he spoke, it took me a second to process what he said.

Before I knew what was happening, I handed him my card, smiling at him, and watched him walk out the front doors. I had never, ever been that brazen with a man before. Especially not with my terrible history. But something about him was different.

That was evident when he picked me up the next day, taking me to the nicest restaurant I’d ever been to and treating me like a princess the whole night. As the date went on, I found myself falling more and more in love with everything about him—his floppy golden curls, his goofy demeanor, how nice he was to the serve. I caught him tipping $100 and couldn’t lie to myself—it was a turn-on for a lot of reasons. First, he clearly had money, and second, he wasn’t afraid to leave a generous tip.

If I was the kind of girl who did hook-ups, I might have had a rule for myself about waiting after a certain number of dates to sleep with him, but I didn’t have the context for that.

Even if I’d had a rule, I’m not sure I would have followed it with Percy. I invited him inside to meet my goldfish after he told me he’d always wanted a pet. It was a thin excuse to get him in my apartment, but it worked. Minutes later, I had him completely naked on my bed. That night, he worshiped my body like he was put on the planet to please me. His boxers never even came off. I saw it as a green flag.

Then, after the next date, he let me give him a hand job, but when I tried to roll on top of him, he just pulled my hips up to his face. As we continued dating, a theme was emerging—he would not do penetration with me.

We had sex nearly every night for two weeks, and every time, he found new and creative ways to shut me down when I tried to initiate penetration. Frequently, he used his fingers, once he even brought a toy with him, claiming he just wanted to explore a bit.

Finally, one day, when we were walking back from getting ice cream together, I’d turned to him, taking a deep breath.

“Hey,” I’d said, nudging his shoulder with mine. Everything about this relationship was different than anything I’d ever experienced. He was already my good friend—coming close to being my best friend. When we started talking, it felt like he had been in my life the entire time. I could open up to him about anything.

“Hey,” he’d said, nudging me back.

“Are you like—” I took another deep breath. Brenna, one of my friends, had insisted that I had to talk to him about it, or it was going to put a wedge between us. All at once, I forced the words out. “Why don’t you want to fuck me?”

He stopped in his tracks, and I had to turn around, a hand to my face, the ice cream melting all over my fingers.

“Oh my god,” I’d said, “please, forget I said that.”

“No,” he’d said, reaching forward and prying my hand away from my face. I stared at him through my fingers. “I’m sorry. I knew this would probably make you curious, at the very least. I should have just been forthright with you.”

“Okay,” I’d said, heart hammering. “Do you have an STD?”

“What? No?”

---