Page 55 of Betrayed Pregnant Mate

I start to think I should just ask her to call for Veronica like a lost child at an amusement park.

“Hello everyone! How sick was DJ Bones?”

The crowd roars in response, and I stop trying to fight my way through them, realizing I’m either going to hurt someone or end up moving in the opposite direction. I just have to ride this one out.

“We want to thank you all for coming out. This has been, by far, the biggest turnout for the Rosecreek Halloween Festival that we have ever seen!”

Another ear-splitting crowd roar, another wish that I’d thought to bring some earplugs.

“Up next, I want to introduce—” she stops, swaying a bit and reaching out for the microphone stand, which doesn’t have much stability to offer her and just topples over.

Aris is running up on the stage in an instant, his arms out to her, catching her as she passes out. The crowd murmurs, everyone worried for her. We all stay like that for a minute, stretching into an eternity.

Maisie and Bigby run up onto the stage as well, crouching around her, Maisie with a stethoscope and blood pressure cuff, checking her, working her over like I’ve seen her do a dozen times.

Then, after what feels like forever, Linnea finally comes to, sitting up a little and waving meekly to the crowd. They all cheer as she gets to her feet. I watch as she leans over and whispers something in Aris’s ear. His eyes go wide, and his gaze meets mine just as I feel it—that double heartbeat, beating double-time.

Veronica. Aris sends, as he walks Linnea down off the stage, and another volunteer runs up the steps to take the steps. He doesn’t have to tell me because the feeling comes in full force, the crush of her terror, anger, and frustration. She’s in trouble.

Chapter 27 - Veronica

It happened so quickly.

An arm around my waist, a hand over my mouth, and everything went dark.

When I first came to, I was wondering about what they had used to knock me out, wondering if Rafael might know what kind of drug could knock out the “perfect vampire.”

Whatever it was made me loopy, giggling, sick with dopamine. It was like my brain was comprised of the little bubbles from a soda can, shook too hard and opened too soon, foaming out my ears and eyes and onto the soft fabric of the car seat.

It took a while for me to come down from that high, reality slowly coming back into focus until that high was just a little fuzz, a grease swipe across what was happening instead of completely altering it.

Now, I’m in the backseat of a car, bouncing painfully with every bump and sharp turn. Through the windows, I can see the moonlight shining down, and I hope it’s still the same night, that several days haven’t passed since I was last conscious. Trees pass by. I can tell that we’re on a gravel road, but I don’t know enough about the area to make a guess about how far we’ve gone or where we are.

The duct tape around my wrists and ankles is burning my skin, tugging on it, and I pull against it, testing my strength, wondering how hard I might have to pull to break it. I can feel the little life inside of me, feel my responsibility to it, and rage grows and grows inside me, spiraling out every time we go over a bump, and I feel it in my stomach.

For the past few weeks, I haven’t been fully present. When faced with the choice—leave, and take the baby with me or actually talk to Percy and make things work, it’s like I retreated so far inside myself that I could pretend, for a moment, that reality wasn’t real.

But now, my elbow is starting to twinge again from the tight binding around me. I’m starting to come back into my brain, starting to let that numbness fade away.

I’m scared. I am so, so scared to have a baby, because I’m terrified that I’m going to be a terrible mother. I think about Percy, who will make the most incredible dad to someone, someday.

Back in New York, I was so jealous of him; he was raised by two loving parents and grandparents who were around for everything, constantly praising him and encouraging him to take big risks because they would be there to catch him.

My father didn’t come to my high school graduation, and he died before I graduated from college. Percy’s family made matching t-shirts that denoted who they were to him. They took pictures and had him don his robes again and again to make sure everyone got one from the right angle.

I had to ask one of my teachers to take the photo for me.

Back then, when I thought about us having kids, I was petrified, because I thought of myself as being broken, flighty, unreliable, and thought of Percy as being perfectly whole. I was convinced that he never let me in all the way, that he was waiting for something better to come along, someone else who would make a better mother to his children and fit into his perfect family better, more seamlessly.

And now, I see things for how they really are—Percy is a little broken, and I’m a little broken, and every single shifter in the Rosecreek pack is a little broken. And yet, they come together and love each other as best they can every day.

Despite the horrors they’ve been through together, and also because of them.

If I make it out of this car, I decide I will tell Percy the truth. I’m going to tell him that I’m pregnant and, that I want to stay in Rosecreek, and that I want us to try. I want to see what happens if I give it my all, and leave behind the notion that I couldn’t possibly be a good mother.

As I think it, my gaze drifts away from a spot on the carpet, and up to the right ear of the person driving the car, I see red.

I am so tired of people thinking they have the right to take me, to remove me from where I am, and take me wherever they want. I’m tired of not having control over my own body, of not being able to stop things when they happen to me. I sit up in the backseat and make eye contact with the person driving the car through the rearview mirror.

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