Page 75 of Rose and Shadows
Then again, neither had the relationship I’d formed with Velra, Lazriel, and Cassius—our family.
This, though, it was… beyond even that.
An impossibility.
A beautiful impossibility made our new reality.
A fucking miracle was what it was.
13
~Velra~
Pregnant.
It didn’t compute.
I couldn’t quite… I didn’t know how to… I just didn’t know.
“This can’t… no… I’m part Wraith, this shouldn’t be possible.”
But it was possible and while I’d been struggling to process it, elation had greeted me, so much happiness and excitement. With no apparent need for processing.
From them, at least.
From my men.
The look in Cassius’ eyes as the revelation had hit him had been undeniable. Even without the flood of hope and joy through the Soul Brand that I’d felt from him, despite him trying to soften his reaction a little to give me time to breathe with it, hadn’t been needed. I’d seen it all over him. This was amazing to him. A gift.
Even Sylas had rolled with it, really. He’d slipped into magical research mode, into action, all that zeal and urgency for this child. He thought it was a miracle as well, a salve of sorts tohis whole life spent around so much death and loss and fucking pain.
And I got that. I really did.
He’d already completed the spellwork to help me and the baby, both shielding the pregnancy completely from outsiders, while allowing us to feel it. He’d determined a way to feed the baby his necromantic energy and the precise right amount that would only help, not harm in the least. One night it had taken him to figure that out, then a few hours for the concoction he’d given me to digest to mix. Even by his standards, that had been an incredibly fast turnaround time. So, yeah, he was all in.
Lazriel? Well, he’d responded as I’d imagined he would—giddy with it, then intensely protective, then needing physical proximity, even spending many hours lying with me as I’d slept for a while, then studied, just listening to the baby’s heartbeat.
It had been extremely difficult for him to leave my side this morning to go to class.
Thankfully, some dirty sexual promises from Sylas had helped to cinch it and send him off out of the dorms and back into the heart of Wraeven Academy.
He had back-to-back classes with his favorite professor, Drenn Voxe, to start the day and take it well past midday actually with the length of each, so that had also lent a hand.
It was really what Lazriel needed—to return to normalcy. Things had been bad enough with everything else going on without him being held and tormented by that madman, Victor Halrow. This… returning to classes, would give him some stable ground to walk on, a tether. A focus. And one that wasn’t all war and terror.
We all needed this time to recalibrate, take a step back, get our bearings.
And part of that for me was trying to reconcile this absolutely shocking pregnancy news.
“You are with child. Congratulations. A child is a great blessing. And they will be so very fortunate to be born into so much love.”
Those words spoken by Remnant had been whirling around my head.
Because that was really the heart of it, wasn’t it?
Whether the baby would actually be blessed to be born into this? Into this fucked-up world with still so much prejudice, so much hatred and fear toward those who didn’t fall within the parameters of what was deemed acceptable. And this baby… it would fly in the face of all of that, defying the rules of magic, bending supernatural law, unnerving the balance.
And on top of that, to have me as a mother… was that a fucking blessing?
