Page 55 of Under the Dragon's Spell
I nodded and put the bottle in my pocket.
Outside, Tyrel called a cab for us.
"Can you believe we're going to have two babies?" I asked him, rubbing my belly where I knew my children were growing.
He nodded, but he had this faraway look in his eyes that meant he was thinking.
"It's going to be alright," I told him, realizing that he hadn't taken the news of our twins as well as I had. "Raising two at once is going to be rough, but we'll manage."
"That's not what I'm worried about. I'm worried that these babies are going to kill you before they're even born."
"That's not going to—"
"Don't say it's not going to happen because it's happened before. We turned down half the applicants because even carrying one of my kids puts a human at risk, now I've given you two of them, you're only halfway through this pregnancy and you already look like you're dead on your feet. This isn't going to get easier before it's over."
The anger with which he delivered his words shocked me. I knew it wasn't directed at me as much as our babies, but that was just as bad, if not worse. "I'm going to be more careful. I'll sleep more and—"
"You already sleep most of the day."
I took a deep breath. "Then what is it that you want me to do?"
He stroked a hand through his hair, looked at the sky. "I don't know, I merely… fuck. I need you to be safe, Adrian."
I took another breath, this one shaky. I didn't want to cry, but shit, I couldn't stop the tears from coming. This sucked. I wanted to be happy about my twins. I didn't want my partner to yell at me in a parking lot because he thought our babies might kill me.
"Shh… Don't cry." Tyrel wiped my cheeks with his thumbs. "I won't let anything happen to you. I'll make it okay. I promise. We can still stop this pregnancy if we need to."
"I'm not letting anyone touch my babies!" I snapped. How could he even think that? "I don't care what happens to me." I just needed the little ones to be okay. I already loved them more than life.
"No, of course you don't." Tyrel wrapped me into a hug. "But I do. I love you, Adrian."
I hiccuped, which wasn't very sexy, but he didn't seem to mind. "Thought you didn't believe in love."
He laughed softly. "I've had to rethink a lot of things since meeting you."
I wasn't sure what he meant by that exactly, but… "I love you, too." I hadn't thought it could happen so quickly, but I didn't want to spend another day without Tyrel by my side, and as I thought that, I understood why he was so scared. Right now, he didn't care about the babies or his inheritance as much as he cared about my health and that was sweet in its own way.
"I'm sorry for what I said. I'll find a way to fix this," he said.
"What are you going to do?"
He took a deep breath. "I'm going to take you back to the island. We have better doctors there. Doctors who know their way around situations like this."
"What about your mother?"
"Let me deal with my mother."
"Okay." I sighed and leaned into him. Then, I felt a weird fluttering sensation in my stomach that made me chuckle.
"What's up?" Tyrel asked.
"I think I've just felt one of them move."
Tyrel hugged me closer and kissed me. That moment, I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. Neither of us was going to let any harm come to our little miracles.
22
TYREL
