My mom’s hard gaze narrowed as she sat down the cup she was cleaning. “One more time?”
“I slept with a Dark,” I whispered. My chin trembled and my fists clenched. I prepared myself for an ass-chewing.
She turned to face me fully inside one of the communal kitchens in the Light realm. Light Elves still roamed the hallways even though it was close to midnight, their quiet, respectful chatter barely heard. My mom tightened her apron around her thin waist, keeping her hands busy. “When?”
“Tonight.”
Her nose crinkled in distaste. “His name?”
I sputtered, “I don’t know.”
My mom’s blink was gradual, her tone gentle as a whisper. “A stranger?”
“It was an accident! The room was dark. I just went in there to get away from the crowd.”
Tightening. Her. Apron. “Did you use protection?”
My mouth snapped shut, and my gaze drifted over her left shoulder. Stayed there.
“What the hell, Juliet!”
I threw my hands into the air. “I know.” My head shook. “What do I do?”
My mom snarled. “You sure as hell don’t tell your father.”
“Mom.” I shook my hands at her. “What do I do?”
I wished I was anywhere but here as the silence extended.
Eventually, my nerves tingled in unease.
She stood still for so long, a Light Elf came inside the kitchen, took one look at us, and left without a comment. And still, she was mute. Just staring hard into my eyes.
When she finally spoke, her words were quiet. Simply spoken. “You leave the Light Realm.”
My eyes grew wide and burned more fiercely. “No.”
“Juliet, you don’t know if you’re pregnant or not.” Her forehead crinkled, creating tiny wrinkles on her young face. “You’ll have to become an Outsider until you know for sure.”
“No.”
She peered away from me and clasped her hands together at her waist. “Yes.”
I tilted to the side, trying to catch her eyes.
But she wouldn’t look at me.
My heart hammered inside my chest and swelled in a painful ache. “You’re disowning me.”
Her throat moved, swallowing. “If you’re pregnant, with a possibility of it being Dark…”
The sweltering tears I had been holding back spilled over my eyes, pouring down my flushed cheeks. “I don’t want to leave you.” I coughed on my words, the clog in my throat too constricting. “Or Dad. I want to stay here.” They had never won a parent of the year award, that was for damn sure, but they were still my parents.
Her attention never moved from her blind stare to the side. No words came forth.
“Mom…”
Her nostrils flared.
“Mom!”
Her gray gaze snapped to mine.
I froze.
“Leave, Juliet.”
I opened my mouth. Shut it. I pled, “Please don’t make me be an Outsider.” I shook my head in disbelief. How the hell was this even happening? She had been so proud of me at my Blood Tree. “I can’t live with the humans. I don’t have any money—”
“You do. You have a bank account.”
“There’s hardly anything in there.”
“It’s enough to get you started.”
“Mom…please don’t do this.” I grabbed for her hand.
She jerked away from my touch like I had scalded her. “Leave.” She pointed a sharp finger at the door. “And I’ll pray that you’re not pregnant.”
I took a faltering step backward, toward the exit. “I’m sorry! Please—”
She turned her back to me and crossed her arms. “Not sorrier than I am.”
Susan shifted from one foot to the other, her struggle to hold my boxes making her arms shake. “Are you going to open the door?”
My hands were free so I placed them on my hips.
And I stared. Not saying a word.
Shit had gone down. Major life changing shit.
My eyes were bloodshot. My bank account was already dangerously low from renting an apartment—on my own. The bottom of my shoes were covered in mud thanks to the heavy rain. And my family had disowned me. Susan deserved the burn in her muscles from holding too much, just a little portion of my agony. I merely stared as she held all my possessions in her arms. Only when she wobbled, almost dropping my clothes hanging over her arm, did I unlock my door.
She sighed and darted inside. “When are you going to forgive me?”
“When you pay me back.” I entered my ‘home’ and slammed my door behind me.
Susan carefully placed my items on the furnished couch. “I can pay you.”
I shook my head. “I’m not talking about money.” She was older than I was with much more cash than my meager savings. “One day, you will owe me a favor.”
Her lips thinned, her white brows drawn together. “One day?”
“Yes. One day.”
“When will that be?”
I grimaced, peering around my tiny one bedroom apartment. “The hell if I know.”
“So…you’re going to be upset with me for a long time.”
“Upset doesn’t do my feelings justice.”
“Angry?”
“Higher.”
“Pissed?”
I waved my right hand up.
“Furious?”
I growled, “I’m devastated, Susan! Devastated.”
Her white brows lifted in surprise. “The chances that you’re pregnant are slim. You’ll be back in the Light Realm with your family in no time.”
My eyes narrowed with fresh burning tears and my voice was gruff. “I’ll never go back to them.”
She stared, eyeing my features. “What?”
“My family has left me out to dry.” The red mark was long gone from my left cheek, but my dad’s parting comments would always haunt me. My mom had been right. I never should have told him. “You didn’t hear what my dad said. I’ll never go back to them.”
She popped her knuckles. “Never is a long time for an immortal, Juliet.”
I scanned my sparse apartment once more. “Damn if I already don’t know that.” I jerked my head at the door. “Get out of my place. I’ll call you when it’s time to pay up.”
Susan held still. “Let me help you. If you’re serious, you’ll need—”
“I’m not a charity case. I’ll get a job and finish college like any normal human does.”
“But—”
I opened my door. “I don’t want you here. Please go.”
Her feet faltered, but she strode forward. Her voice was stronger as she passed by me. “This wasn’t all my fault. You are the one who slept with a Dark Elf.”
I closed my door on her face.
And my lips twitched.
I knew it wasn’t her fault. My anger had subsided on that issue.
But I now had a favor I could call in.
My attention turned back to my new life, my apartment.
A favor was always handy to have in an unknown future.
The timer on the oven blared. I shoved up from my chair and jerked the knob to the side, cutting off the heinous noise. I made myself trudge to the bathroom, one foot moving in front of the other, the walk of a dreaded immortal lifetime.
Two months and my period hadn’t come.
I braced my right hand on the door frame and peered down to the pregnancy test on my bathroom counter. I couldn’t take my eyes away from it. The answer was plainly visible. I didn’t need to stare as I was, but my attention didn’t waver away from the truth.
I placed my free hand on my lower stomach.
I tried to swallow. My throat was too dry and the saliva pooled at the back of my throat choking me. A single tear trailed down my cheek. More came, flooding down and dripping off my chin. The cooling drops splattered against my collarbone, dampening my heated flesh. I didn’t take my hand away from the door frame to wipe them away. I would fall if I let
go.
It was official, my life was over.
My youth was gone.
I was twenty-years-old, and I needed to call an OBGYN to make a well-check appointment.
I was a kid having a kid.
I was going to be a mom.
And I was going to do it alone. As it needed to be.
The chipper receptionist in the emergency room smiled as I walked through the door. “How can I help you today?”
“Get me a damn doctor,” I hissed, holding my belly heavy with child. “I’m in labor.”
That stupid smile stayed right in place. “What is your doctor’s name? I’ll have a nurse call to inform him or her.”
I ground my teeth as another contraction zeroed in like a missile. My right hand slammed down on the countertop. “Dr. Who-Gives-A-Fuck-Right-Now.”
My normal OBGYN was in Hawaii on vacation, and in my current condition, I didn’t feel the need to tell the smiling human. I snapped my fingers at the wheelchair behind her. “I need to sit.”
I wondered if her smile was constructed from plastic surgery when it merely lifted bigger while she stood and rolled the wheelchair around her desk to me. “What would your name be?”
“Juliet Julius,” I mumbled, sitting heavily on the chair. “I need drugs.”
She leaned down and winked at me. “We have the best painkillers at this facility.”
Okay. Maybe she was using them, too. It would explain a lot. “Wheel me toward them.” But the phone on her desk began to ring, and my attention honed in on her. I grabbed her left wrist, and growled, “Don’t even think about it.”
With a delicate twist of her arm, she removed my restraining hold with no issue. “You are my number one priority right now. Don’t you worry about a thing.”
I snorted but gripped the armrests. She pushed my wheelchair at a fast clip down a hallway, making my damp hair ruffle back in a swift breeze. Definitely not painkillers then. Maybe some form of speed. “Don’t tip me.”
“Never. I’ve been doing this a long time.” She hummed to herself, jerking us around a corner and heading toward a set of white double doors. “Ms. Julius, I must say, your hair is positively glowing it’s so beautiful.”
I grunted. “Drugs.”
“Drugs it is.” She opened the white doors and pushed me into another waiting area. There were three nurses standing behind a counter, all busy with charts or paperwork. And wearing those same ridiculous smiles on their faces while they worked.
“Lots of drugs,” I muttered and rubbed my temples. “And get me a doctor who doesn’t look like they just graduated high school or sound like they sucked on helium.”
The receptionist chuckled. “I know just the doctor for you.”
“You need to push now, Juliet,” the ugliest human imaginable demanded in a deep baritone. No smiles there. His face was crinkled with a lifetime of scowls and his hands were marred with age spots. This doctor was perfect. The speed-loving receptionist had come through. “One. Two. Three. Push!”
“Am I doing this right?” I spoke through gritted teeth, bearing down and pushing as ordered. A nurse on either side of me held my limp knees back to my chest. “I can’t feel a damn thing.”
Drugs were good.
“That’s perfect,” Doc answered. “Give me another one.”
I inhaled heavily and groaned as I pushed with all my might. Still, I felt no pain. Panting, I muttered, “Do you see anything yet? What color is the hair?”
Doc blinked up at me.
Like I had just asked the funniest question.
I waggled a finger between my legs. “Watch what’s going on down there.”
His bushy brows puckered, and he peered back to his work. “I’m assuming you mean the hair on your baby’s head, correct?”
My white brows shot straight to my hairline. “Good God, don’t grow a humorous bone now.”
He chuckled quietly. “A little humor takes the edge off.”
“Tequila takes the edge off. Not a doctor cracking a joke while he’s hands deep in my vagina.”
The nurse on my right coughed hard…and her lips trembled.
“Not you, too.”
“Oh no, miss,” she stated respectfully. “I learned the first hour not to get on your bad side.”
Damn straight she did. “Do I push again or what?”
“Just a second,” Doc murmured, bending at the waist for a better view of my exposed flesh. “I think I see the baby’s head.” His lips curved into a private smile. “Lots of hair, actually.”
“What color—”
“Push!” he cut me off. “Now, Juliet.”
Inhaling through my nose, I squeezed my stomach as hard as I could. And kept pushing.
I needed to see my baby now.
“That’s excellent,” Doc stated. “Give me another one like that.”
I growled with the effort to shove a child out of my babymaker.
The resulting sensation was too peculiar for words.
My stomach was full, and then suddenly it wasn’t.
Round one moment and flat in the next.
Just…gone.
As my chest heaved in pants, the doctor ordered, “Stop pushing.” His bushy brows lifted and he actually smiled. “It’s a girl.”
I blinked and gazed at his forehead.
My mind went blank.
No questions formed past my lips.
I had a daughter. A girl.
My baby was here.
My little baby. Mine to hold.
Mine to protect.
And then she squalled so loudly, I started grinning, too. “Can I hold her?”
The nurses were helping the doctor, but one wrapped her in a blanket and placed my child on my chest. My arms instantly cocooned the tiny bundle. She hardly weighed anything. So small and breakable. A precious gift given to me from the most unlikely of individuals—a Dark Elf.
I laughed quietly as my daughter’s eyes opened, her chin quivering. “You’re my Kenna.” I lifted my head from the pillow and kissed her forehead where wisps of her hair were sticking out from under the edge of the blanket. “Black hair and all.”
Age 26
I peered down at my darling daughter and straightened my blue wig, careful not to show my white hair. Humans tended to comment on the light hue. The less attention I drew to us the better. It was odd that humans didn’t look twice at my blazing wig, but with my natural hair color, they stared.
Humans. They were weird.
Such a short lifespan, and yet they continually filled their daily lives with unhealthy habits.
Smoking. Crazy driving. Disgusting foods. And laziness.
I had them pegged down pretty well. It was one of the reasons why I was climbing the corporate ladder in marketing. All I did was flash ideas of the exact opposite of what humans were, what they wanted to be—instead of how they truly lived their lives—and it was the next big pitch in my company.
Show the humans what they think they are. Easy.
Bam. Paycheck.
My daughter stared at me with pleading eyes. “Mommy, can’t you come in with me today?”
“I took off yesterday for your first day of school.” I brushed a strand of her jet-black hair behind her right ear. “I can’t miss another day of work.”
“Please.”
“I can’t, Kenna. I’m sorry.”
“Pretty please?” Her green eyes flicked to one of her classmates as she was being escorted into the elementary school…by her dad. I closed my identical green eyes as she bounced on the tip of her toes and pointed. “See? Other parents are going in!”
I sighed, my chest heaving. Damn humans. I took my daughter’s hand and stated, “I’ll take you inside and drop you off at your classroom. But only if you list the rules.”
She scratched at her right arm and pulled me forward to the entrance. “Okay! Never open a black—”
“Shh. Tell me in a whisper.”
She puckered her tiny lips and breat
hed quietly. “Never open a black wooden door. Never kill anyone—even accidentally. Never have sex before…” Her head tipped up and her lips pinched, staring straight into my gaze. “Mommy, what’s sex?”
I coughed as a teacher glanced at us. “We can talk about this later, darling. When you’re much older. That’s good enough for now.” My feet hadn’t stopped moving forward, keeping up with my child’s quick pace. When we arrived at her classroom, the scent of crayons and erasers tickled my nose. I knelt down on one knee in front of her. “I’ll be here to pick you up. Don’t leave with anyone else.”
She shook her head. “Strangers are bad.”
I nodded. “Exactly. What do you do if someone tries to take you?”
“Scream.”
“What else?”
Her grin turned devious. “Do whatever it takes to run away.”
“Do you remember where I said to hit?”
“In the privates.”
“Very good.” I covertly flicked a glare at her teacher gawking at us. “And what about policemen?”
“Kick them too if they try to steal me.”
I kissed her forehead. “You are my angel.”
I watched my daughter as we walked through the supermarket. I always watched my daughter.
The signs were there in her simplest actions.
Kenna smiled up at me as she picked up an orange and placed it with the apples.
I shook my head. “No, darling. That creates extra work for the employees.”
She eyed the out-of-place orange. “But the colors are pretty like that.”
I cleared my throat. “Kenna.”
“Hmm?”
“Kenna.”
Innocent eyes peered up at me.
“What did I tell you about lying?”
Her small shoulders hunched in. “Fine.” She picked up the orange and placed it in its rightful place. “But it’s funny to watch the other people see it.”
Blood Tree: Silver Edition Page 8