Page 68 of Chaos Demons

I shrugged, feeling far more at peace now that she’d soothed my worries. I trusted her.

After Harmonia left, I begged for some time alone and bundled up, going out onto Grey’s deck.

It was the second day of November, and this high up, a brisk wind made it inhospitable to be outside, but still, I lingered. I sat cross-legged on the deck, with blankets draped around me for warmth, and tried to connect with myself.

After yesterday, I could feel so many more aspects within me and I wanted to try to identify each of them, find out more about it… and myself.

I began with the aspects I already knew. Sex. It was a sultry and stimulating heat that I could move around my body but which mostly sat between my legs. I could summon it and suppress it fairly well now after a month or so of practice.

Healing — or rather health — was newer but still mostly controlled. I felt it as a tingling, mostly on my palms, but also all over me, within and without. With it came a sort-of strange biologicalknowing.

I’d never been good at biology in school, but I now had a sense of rightness and wrongness within my body — or others — and a knowledge of how to manipulate that.

As I sat with my aspect of health, I felt something strange within me. It wasn’t a wrongness, but it wasn’t trulymeeither. I spent a long time trying to feel through this, but couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. I decided I’d come back to it later. For now, I moved on.

Of my new aspects, the one which had come in the strongest, was war. I trembled when I focused on it, not a pleasant power. It sought to dominate, kill, and destroy. An all-consuming heat seemed to radiate from my entire body — making me sweat under my layers of blankets — strengthening me. It brought a sort of laser-focus to my mind, which saw everything around me as a threat and gave me all sorts of ways to defeat them.

I resisted the urge to suppress the aspect. I needed to feel it, understand it, to control it. I let it seep into my bones — which I hated — then slowly began to rein it in and make it mine, so I could control it. Only then did I let it go.

When it was gone, I felt an overwhelming sense of peace. I sighed heavily, releasing as much tension from my body as I could.

War would be useful if I had to defend myself or those I loved, but otherwise, I wanted nothing to do with it.

Now, on to more pleasant sensations and aspects.

Love had allowed me to communicate and connect with my guys yesterday. I concentrated and the aspect rose up within me. I smiled at its pleasant warmth, which spread through my chest and even up to my cheeks.

It was like… like the warm blankets I’d draped over myself, only within me, comforting me from the inside out.

There was also a sense of external connection. That must have been what I’d used to reach out to my guys. Even now, I felt it seeking out and finding those nearby: Grey, Eva, Reia, even Uncle Donny. I loved them all, and through my aspect, I could feel them.

Compared to war, this wasfarmore pleasant to sit with. I learned how it felt and taught myself how to temper it and control it. When I suppressed it, I felt a sort-of sorrow seep into me, a loss, almost like a hangover. Taking away the high that came with love wasn’t pleasant, so I let just a touch of love back into me until that contented warmth returned.

After that, I began to experiment, trying to identify the other aspects simmering within me.

I suspected I had an aspect of fertility. It hadn’t come out yesterday, but it would explain why the pill hadn’t really worked for me.

I took a long time, seeking within myself, but this one didn’t come out easily.

The trouble was, it overlapped with the aspect of sex and seemed to be closely related to the aspect of health, and I had trouble separating it from those others at first.

All three were connected, but they were also different. It took me a while to make the distinction. I began with where I felt them in my body.

Sex was heated and low between my legs. While health was a general sense of well-being, within and without, but also tingling on my palms. Fertility manifested with a warmth, low on my torso, and a sense of fullness across my chest, which made sense.

Once I’d isolated that, I was able to delve a little deeper into fertility and I found a feeling of connectedness, like with love, but this one was internal, the bond between a mother and child.

Wait…?

And suddenly that strangeness I’d felt with my health aspect earlier made sense.

Oh, fuck…

Now that I was focusing on it, I could feel it.

I was pregnant.

I sharpened my awareness on this new life within me. Ramsey was the only one who’d been with me without protection, so it had to be his. The first time had been almost a month ago when he’d burst and shredded the condom he’d worn, and the second time had been yesterday when he’d been lost to his chaos.

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