Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 65167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
“You were never meant to have this baby, Hannah,” my father says, wiping my forehead with a warm cloth.
Is he serious? He wants me to miscarry?
Not in this lifetime. I’ll do what I must to protect the life growing in me. My child. Rogan’s child.
“It should never have happened,” Dad continues.
It happened because you forced us together!
But the words don’t come. The pain… It consumes me, and every maternal instinct I possess rises, takes over. I force myself into a sitting position, ignoring the dull ache of my healing chest.
Hospital.
Need to get to the hospital.
Need to save my baby.
“This wasn’t meant to be. There’s too much DNA at work, Hannah. Human, vampire, lycan. The chromosomes are at odds with each other. A miscarriage was bound to happen. This baby can’t exist, and you know it. You understand the science. It can’t.”
I swallow hard. I could attempt to yell, to tell him to fuck off, but that would require the strength that I need to get out of here. To get to the hospital.
To save my child.
But my God… Is my father right? He knows about the science. He knew enough to trick Rogan and me into thinking we were fated mates. He knows anatomy, physiology, genetics…
I stand, willing my legs to hold me.
No.
Just no.
This baby will live. He or she will have all the best parts of Rogan and of me. It’s a fucking miracle, and it will survive.
“Hannah, lie down,” Dad says in his low voice. “You can’t stop nature.”
“The hell I can’t!” I grit out. Chills skitter through me as I make it to the bathroom, holding on to furniture as I go. Once inside, I heave a sigh of relief.
No blood.
Miscarriages have blood.
But why all the pain? Like a sword is slicing into my uterus?
Hospital.
Need hospital.
My father won’t take me. He thinks this baby is already gone. I don’t believe it.
I won’t believe it.
Not until I see it on an ultrasound.
A heartbeat. My child’s heartbeat. Is it too soon?
I stumble out of the bathroom and into my father’s arms.
“Let’s get you back to bed,” he says.
“No. Please. The hospital. Please, Daddy.”
His brown eyes soften. I’ve always believed my father loves my mother, sister, and me in the only way he knows how. He’s a mess. He always has been, but once in a while, I see a sliver of humanity in him, even though he doesn’t possess a drop of human blood.
“You need to feed, Hannah,” he says. “That will help.”
He’s not wrong. When was the last time I fed?
“Fridge,” I manage.
Dad walks out of my bedroom and returns with a glass of dark red liquid. “Sheep blood?” he says. “Really?”
I ignore his judgmental tone—or try to, anyway. My baby is the most important thing right now, and he or she needs sustenance, as do I.
I drink quickly, rivers of blood trickling from the sides of my mouth.
It’s thin and flavorless compared to the alpha wolf blood of Victor Rogan, but it has the nutrients I require.
The pain in my gut subsides, but only a bit.
I still need to get checked out, and if my father refuses to take me, I’ll get there myself.
Because nothing—and I mean not one fucking thing—is going to come between me and my child.
14
“Hospital,” I choke out again.
“Hannah…”
“Damn it, Dad! Either you take me to the fucking hospital or I’ll get there myself!”
He glares at me. “You’ve got to listen to me. It won’t work. It’s a scientific impossibility. Let it go, Toosie.”
Toosie. His name for me when I was a child. One of the only good memories I have of my father. I close my eyes the moment the pain lessens.
I see myself sitting at an old-fashioned soda fountain. The server brings my father and me each a glass of frothy root beer. I take a drink, let the flavor slide across my tongue—creamy vanilla, crisp wintergreen—like those pink candies I love—and something earthy and tangy that I find out later is sassafras.
Root beer with Daddy.
I wasn’t quite three years old.
But the memory is fresh in my mind.
Mom was home with a newborn Larissa, and Dad took me to an afternoon cartoon to get us out of the way.
“Root beer,” I say.
“What?”
“I want a root beer, Daddy. First I need you to take me to the hospital, but then I want you to get me a root beer.”
“For the love of God…”
“Don’t you remember? That time when Larissa was a baby, and you took me to a matinee and then we stopped for a root beer?”
His gaze softens.
Good. Maybe now he’ll do as I ask.
The one thing that’s different about my father and stepfather—other than I have the former’s genes—is the few good memories I have regarding my father. I have no good memories of my stepfather. Not a single one.
My father lets out a sigh. Will he acquiesce? Or do I need to call a damned ambulance?