“Zane?”
Bree’s head hurt the second she tried to open her eyes.When she moved, she felt she would vomit.She curled into a ball, pulling on the black silk sheets and balling them into her middle.“Zaaane?”
“I’m here.” His voice came as a godsend. It was soft, gentle, soothing.She felt his cool hand on her forehead and cheek.She pushed her face into it, it felt so good.When she tried to move the nausea came again and her whole body screamed out from fatigue.
“Why am I so sick?I feel awful.It is awful, awful…”
“You are pregnant with a vampire, remember?This will not be easy on you.”
“How long?” She tried to sit up.Within a second she fell back down to the bed and groaned.She felt like she had a bad bout of motion sickness - times one hundred. “How long will this go on?”
“Most likely however long morning sickness lasts. I’m not sure.”
Bree rolled over and put her head into the cool sheets.“Would your mother know?”
Zane jumped onto the bed and lay next to her.He was wearing a pair of long, silky black pajama pants embroidered with gold design.His chest was bare.Bree noticed how strong it looked, perfect.He was so – perfect!
“I was half human.The child within you is a full blooded vampire.It will affect you differently, I’m sure.I don’t know how long, Bree.I’m sorry.”
“What if I die?”
“You won’t.A curse isn’t a curse unless there is the opportunity to lift it.The baby may take a lot out of you, though.You may need to be given blood from time to time as it grows.” Bree groaned in response.
Zane just held her to him then.He said nothing.It felt good to hold her small form against him.He felt so protective of her and he never wanted to let her out of his sight.She didn’t always take his warnings too seriously and he feared that she would want to go off and see her human friends again.He was so terrified that someone would harm her.Funny, Zane thought, that he should fear humans at all.He was so powerful over them.But for the first time he actually feared them.
And it only increased his hatred for them.
How would Bree and Zane raise their child?He despised humans and thought of them as pieces of property easily disposed of if they did not perform perfectly, day after long day without ever having a break.Bree was still human, and was once - not too long ago - a slave of his herself.From what he understood, humans had not treated her all that great in her own world, either.More of a reason to hate them.
“Bree, what had happened that first night we met?”
“What do you mean?”
“You had come into the park late that night.You were dressed in a gown and you had been crying.”
Bree remembered for the first time in a while what had happened that night at the prom.Oh, the humiliation! The shame!Oh!! “I’m sorry.” Zane touched her nose with his fingertip. “You don’t have to talk about it.”
“No, I can tell you. It was really stupid actually now that I look back.But it was horrible just the same.”Bree told Zane about how the most popular guy in her school had asked her to the prom.She was invisible before that and suddenly then she was popular.She liked Charles and had always kind of wanted to know him better.But the whole prom thing was a set up.He ditched her right there in the middle of the dance floor for his ex-girlfriend, right in front of everyone!She remembered how she tried to run away but kept bumping into every other couple that danced between her and the door out.She had been cursed at, laughed at, and mocked.
