Page 27 of Risking Her Heart

“And you’re pregnant.”

“I am,” she says. “But, unless I really miss my mark and never really knew you at all, that look on your face…”

Now my cheeks are burning as I pull my attention back to her. I smile, shrug, look around, then finally have the courage to meet her curious eyes.

“Yeah,” I say. “I think so.”

“You think so?”

I shrug. “I mean… how do you know?”

“What does your heart tell you?”

“That Chuck Spiggan was a good guy,” I counter, and she snorts with laughter.

“Okay, that wasn’t your heart Kitty,” she says, still laughing. “That was Kitty’skitty, and you know damn well what I mean.”

I laugh too. “Yeah, well at the time I thought?—”

“You thought he’d be a good lay.”

“Which he was definitively not,” I say and we’re laughing as if there hasn’t been any gap in our time together or our friendship.

“Now this Zmaj of yours…”

“Zas’tu,” I say, giving her his name.

“Tell me, come on, spill.”

“He’s… amazing,” I say, shaking my head. “And I do feel… I think… I mean… I hope?”

“Hope is good, but the way these guys work… what they believe… has he told you?”

“I don’t speak Zmaj, and he isn’t very fluent in Common, so our conversations have been limited.”

“You mean verbally I assume?”

My cheeks burn but I nod. “Yeah. You assume.”

She laughs and I join her.

“Has he called you treasure?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Then it’s real,” she says, leading the way deeper into the compound as we talk.

“What is?”

“Treasure doesn’t just mean he’s laying his claim on you, though it does that too. It’s a statement, he believes, well more like he knows, you’re the other half of his soul. You two are a perfect match. Soulmates if you will.”

“If I will? As if I have some choice in that? You know I never believed in fate.”

“Girl, you know I didn’t either, but here we are.”

We enter a room that has machines along the wall and what looks like an examination table in the middle of the room. The Zmaj are here too. She stops and we turn to stand side-by-side watching the huddle Zmaj who are deep in their own conversation.

“Which one?” I ask.

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