Born of Blood

Chapter 21

For the first three days she screamed.

Her wild gurtle sobs bounding across the room as she writhed on the bed, her legs and arms were restrained to the mattress for the protection of her young. Her weak stature proved helpful with the restraints, she would tire herself out after a few hours of struggling and succumb to the exhaustion Jacob knew her body bottled within itself. He could only sit there and watch as she fought so hard to remove the fetus from her body, her sobs of betrayal and pain raising the hairs on the back of his neck, her throat and chest beet red while veins rose beneath her skin with the will of her cries.

The sheet would crinkle and the mattress would groan as she rolled around on the small hospital bed, attempting to free her limbs so she could remove her baby. She would beg until her voice was horse, pleading with the doctor to save her and remove the 'demon' from inside her; she would beg to take him away from her.

He did not know who this man was she referred to, he could speculate it was the very one who planted the child in her belly, though her thoughts were never coherent enough to confirm his suspicion. All she could do was scream and attempt to mutilate her own body, while Jacob and Orion watched on with sad eyes. They were trying to wait until she was sane enough to speak to them, enough to listen to their words and answer their questions. Secretly, they both feared she would never get to that state, that this news was the last she would ever receive to a conscious mind. Orion held himself to the side of her bed, a metal chair supporting his mountainous frame as he rested his cheek on the mattress his mate writhed over. She was begging again, pleading with the Doctor to remove their pup. To kill it, murder it. Orion could feel heat pass through his eyes and nose before it fled. He was stuck in a maddening pool, his brain and his soul fighting with each other as they felt the mattress roll and creek with her movements.

He had never laid with another woman in his life, he saved himself for his mate from the moment he was born. Though, he knew the pain of being taken advantage of. As a young slave in his youth, women took notice to his stature quickly. His manual labor for his owners as a boy would draw a crowd of women staring at him with a vultures eyes, snapping sinful words a woman of Christ would never let fall from their lips as he developed homesteads for the coming populations. Religion had been the cause for their movement to the Americas, but religion had fled when it came to their actions in the Americas.

They would touch him, when he would walk to gather more supplies. Brush against him in inappropriate ways to be near a child, knowing he was but a child. They would hand him their undergarments as if it was a secret message passed between friends. Whisper words in his ears, insisting he meet them in the hours where God was never awake. Had he not been discovered by the traveling pack, just as he was about to develop through puberty, he knew he would have been molested by those bold women. He knew the fear of feeling someone touch him while he slept, of fearing they would make him do things to disrespect his pride and his mate. Though, his mate had been desecrated. The man who attacked her had gone too far, he had done much more than a shaky touch over a cloth blanket.

He had impregnated his woman. And it was a terrible thing to know, that she had been raped, but that wasn't just her pup, at least not anymore. Orion had waited so long for his mate, and he could not wait to start a family with her, to have heirs to his pack he had led for so long, and that included the child in her womb. She was his, and that child was his, no matter who it biologically belonged to. He would teach it to hunt and grow into a strong wolf, he would teach it to defend its territory and defends its family to the ends of the earth. That was his pup now, and she needed to understand that.