Page 6 of Valley of the Shadow
“Can I get up now?” Natalie’s lips were pale. “I’m not dizzy anymore.”
“Stay put.” He put a hand on her cheek and spoke quietly. “Just… give me a break, okay, Red? Stay here until Lucien can examine you.”
Red like firecrackers. Like chili peppers. Like her hair. Natalie didn’t look like her nickname just then. She looked tired and wan and unwell.
Baojia clamped down on the creeping terror that lived in his heart. Every night he had to control his fear and pretend the world was a safe place. That he could keep the monsters at bay. That his children would be protected. He had to, or he would go insane. But as he knelt next to Natalie in the middle of the kitchen, the fear crept out and would not be contained.
Something was wrong with his wife.
Chapter Two
“Okay.” Natalie stared at the paper Lucien had handed her. “Sothatdebate is over.”
“I’m sorry,” Lucien said. “I’m very sorry.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, her eyes never leaving the top page of the report. “This was always the plan. The debate has just been about when.”
“It needs to be sooner,” he said, “rather than later.”
Natalie finally looked up into the face of the vampire who was her doctor and her friend. “How long?”
Lucien rubbed a thumb along his jaw. “Weeks, not months.”
The reality of those words hit her right in the chest. She let out a hard breath, and the tears she’d been holding at bay started to leak out of her eyes. “Weeks?”
“New Year’s at the very latest. Waiting any longer could mean that you’re not in optimal health when you make the change.”
“I’m not in optimal health right now, Lucien.” Natalie rubbed her eyes and wiped her cheeks. “I have…” She took a breath. “I have breast cancer.”
“Yes, you do. You also have options. Traditional treatments for breast cancer are very good,” he said. “The five-year survival rate for this type and stage is nearly ninety percent. If you want a referral to an oncologist, I will find you the very best. Money would be no object.”
Because Lucien was the son of Saba, who was basically the queen of the vampire race and also richer than Croesus, which meant Lucien was rolling in money too. And with no human family left after thousands of years, he’d chosen Natalie, Baojia, and their kids as his own.
“Ninety percent success?”
“My best guess would be surgery followed by chemotherapy. But I’m not an oncologist.”
Natalie looked back at her report. Two tumors hidden in the dense tissue of her left breast, right over her heart. “But after that? After five years, what are the chances the cancer will come back?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Is it genetic?”
“I don’t know that either, but it might be worth taking a test. You’re young.”
Her mother hadn’t lived much past forty, and Natalie was approaching that.
“I know what I want to do.” She reached for his hand. “I want to go with plan V.”
Lucien nodded. “That would be my first choice, but you know he’ll be unhappy.”
She sniffed. “Uh, he’ll be happiest with me alive and still around for my children.”
“You know you won’t be able—”
“I know.” She closed her eyes and tried not to think about the time she’d have to spend away from Jake and Sarah. “But treatment would mean I’d be sick and maybe gone too. Hospital visits. Nausea. And with all that, the odds of something going wrong and permanently damaging my health are greater, aren’t they?”
“Chemotherapy, at its core, destroys your body to destroy the cancer. Radiation and surgery—”
