Hidden Bonds

Chapter 18: Twisted like Vines

Pregnant?

But why is she telling me?

I'm quiet, unmoving.

She grows nervous. She has an unsteady heartbeat and shaking hands.

Finally she can't take the quiet. "It's yours."

"Mine?"

Unbelievable

Suspicious

"Yes."

"How do you know?"

She doesn't flinch at my words. She knows that we all know how she gets around and around.

"Your the only one that didn't use a condom." How could I be so stupid? I never thought this would happen. She wasn't in heat. It's highly unlikely for a pregnancy to occur outside of a heat.

"What should we do?" I'm asking her because I sure as hell don't know. I never thought I would have kids. Why would Graham want to keep this from me?

"You... You want me to get rid of it?" She's crying again, emotional, her voice shaky. She's not her usual self, her confident self.

"I never said that, Gem, but you know what would happen. I would have to be around you at all times. I would have to feed you and care for you. We aren't mates. I already have a mate. I just can't imagine how hard this will be, especially with the way Graham was acting."

She's nodding her head, she understands.

"Then I will arrange for an abortion."

The alpha in me can't allow that. The alpha in me can't let her kill our heir.

I growl at her without meaning to and she flinches away. "I told you that I didn't want that."

Uncontrollable I am.

Twisted I am.

She doesn't understand it and I barely do myself.

"You want me to have it then? I'm not sure how well that will work out... I'm not willing to give up my child to you."

"I don't expect you to, but your not killing it either."

She nods her head, wipes her eyes.

"I will let you have some time to yourself. I think you need to talk to Graham as well." She pulls her spine straight, trying to be strong when I can tell how much she wants to hunch with her shame.

She leaves the same way Graham did and I close and lock the door behind her.

A father?

I had already given that up. Most females aren't willing to foster mother children for the same sex mates and most mates aren't willing to let their partners sleep with a female to make that happen.

Graham is having trouble with the walls around his head. He's shifted and that always makes it harder.

He's furious. He doesn't want me around Gem. He doesn't want to watch as I play mates with her until the baby is born. He doesn't want to watch as I take care of a child that will never be his.

I don't chase after him. I don't try to mind link him. I just walk to the freezer to grab a bag of frozen vegetables for my eye that is starting to swell. It's tender to the touch.

I don't know how to handle this twisted situation that keeps spinning and wrapping around me like vines, giving me more and more thorns to slice through my skin, to slice through my soul.

I don't answer the door hours later. I know it's Posy and my sister. They know where the extra key is if they want to use it.

The lock clicks, I pull the blankets up to my chin, trying to hide the damage done to me as best I can.

"How are you feeling?" Posy. She doesn't sound like she knows about Gem.

"Fine." Short and to the point. I don't want them here for long even though before I didn't want to be so alone.

Nix is sitting on the bed, rocking my sore body around. I groan.

"What's wrong?" She notices the watered down bag of frozen broccoli. She stiffens and then goes haywire. "What happened?!" She's moving my hair, looking my face over. She's moving my blankets, looking my body over, checking my cuts.

I brush her hand aside. "It's nothing, Nix."

"It's not nothing! Your eye is red and puffy! It looks like it's turning colors!" Posy is in on it now too. Both of them are floating around me, pecking questions at me like chickens searching for food on the ground.

"We just had a fight."

"He beat you?! That's not a fight. That's abuse." Posy looks like she might kill him.

"No it wasn't like that. I started it... I threw the first punch." They give each other a look. I don't think they believe me, or maybe hey are chalking it up to a 'boys will be boys' moment.

Nix pulls back my covers and climes into bed with me. Posy joins in on the other side.

"Well, at any rate, he's not coming back tonight. If he does, he's a dead man." Nix cuddles up to my side and I take comfort in the way my family has surrounded me.

I let my mind drift. I think of the baby and how the conversation with Graham will play out. I go through scenarios after scenarios in my head, but every one of them ends the same way.

With Graham leaving me, forsaking our bond without a glance back at the twisted versions of ourselves that we have become.