I reached out with my hand and touched the other hand.
There were three that I could see, one of which wasn’t mine.
And I realized then where I was.
I was in Blythe’s stomach.
“Oh, holy shit. Holy shit on a stick,” I said. “Oh, my God.”
I was being super intelligent…but I couldn’t get my brain to work right.
“Can you hear me?” I whispered.
The babies didn’t react.
And yes, I said babies.
Woman? Nikolai whispered in my brain. What are you seeing?
I didn’t know how to let him know what I was seeing.
It was obvious speaking wasn’t getting through, but I tried telepathically anyway.
I think I’m in Blythe’s uterus.
There was a long, silent pause, and then Nikolai replied with, that sounds interesting.
I think…I think I’m somehow doing this…in reverse of what you do. Can you do it, too? I asked.
There was a moment of silence, and then a frustrated reply.
I can’t. What did you do?
I thought about what I did, sending him what I’d done exactly.
Then he was there, too.
You can see? I asked.
I don’t know whether we were occupying the baby’s mind…or just using her eyes. I didn’t know any of it, but I could tell that the other baby—the boy—didn’t like it.
Not at all.
They’re twins, I whispered.
Settle down, Dragos. We’re just making sure you’re okay, Nikolai’s voice whispered.
The boy baby settled down, staring at us…the girl…in suspicion. But he wasn’t actively freaking out anymore.
We were pushed out when both of our hands left Blythe’s stomach, and we were left standing there with a confused looking Blythe, a pissed off and bloody Keifer, and the rest of the onlookers staring at us.
“What,” Keifer said, slightly breathless. “The fuck was that?”
I grinned, then I pushed what I’d seen into his mind.
He froze.
He stared off into space, his mouth going slack, and then he paled as he got to the part where he saw three hands.
Then impossibly more when he got to the part where Nikolai joined us and we pissed the boy baby off.
“Twins,” he said roughly. “Oh, fuck.”
“Twins?” Blythe asked. “What are you talking about twins?”
Nikolai did the same thing that I was doing for Keifer, and Blythe swayed.
Nikolai caught her before she could hit the ground.
“But…but…I had a sonogram!” she wailed. “There weren’t two in there!”
“Apparently,” I teased. “One was hiding.”
Blythe flipped me off.
“Shut up.”
I grinned. “Congratulations, Daddy and Mommy. You’re having twins.”
“I hope you choke on a dick,” Blythe said, patting her stomach. “And you do know, right, that twins are determined by the father’s genes, not the mother’s. You could be having twins yourself.”
“I’m not pregnant,” I denied. “And shut your mouth.”
Blythe bared her teeth at me like a feral kitten.
I bared mine right back.
“Well, at least we’re not the only ones,” Keifer said.
We both turned to him.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
He pointed to the both of us.
“We were fighting with our fists. Y’all are fighting with your words. Same thing,” he said.
Blythe punched him.
“No, it’s not the same thing. We’re fighting because we’re trying to relieve stress. Y’all are fighting because y’all are stupid and don’t want to listen to what the other thinks,” Blythe shot back.
“And what,” Keifer asked. “Does he have to say that I don’t already know?”
“How about the fact that the prisoner you have in the infirmary isn’t able to talk; yet you continue to treat him as if he can,” I said sharply.
Keifer froze.
“You say can’t…,” Keifer said.
I nodded. “He can’t.”
“How do you know?” Keifer challenged.
I started walking back towards the hospital, knowing that he’d follow.
He didn’t disappoint.
As I made my way back into the infirmary, and into the ‘prisoner’s’ room, I stopped beside his bed.
“Hey, you,” I said, tapping his shoulder.
Nikolai’s arm wrapped around my waist, pulling me back so I could no longer reach the man in the bed.
Merrick opened his eyes, and when he got a load of the entire freakin’ compound in his room, his eyes flared.Chapter 14When someone asks you if you do any dangerous sports, saying ‘sometimes I disagree with my woman’ is not a good answer. At least not if your woman is in the room with you.
-Note to self
Nikolai
His eyes flared, but he didn’t look alarmed.
He looked reserved.
Almost expectant.
And…defeated.
I looked over at my brother to see him holding his sword in his hand, flexing and un-flexing his hands as he did so.
Merrick’s eyes didn’t miss that, either.
In fact, they followed the movements.
Hope flared in his eyes.
He wanted us to kill him…why?
Then I started to look at him.
He hadn’t been hooked up to a heart monitor since the first couple of days we’d had him here…and those he’d spent unconscious.
As soon as he’d woken up, he’d been taken off everything but the IV that was still running antibiotics through his veins…antibiotics that he shouldn’t need.
Because he was a bonded dragon rider.
Everyone who was a bonded dragon rider had powers, and Merrick wouldn’t have them if he wasn’t bonded to one.