by Haven, Rose
--
Emilie's voice wasn't gone, after Elizabeth came home. It returned often without warning, telling her nonsense or sometimes just screaming to cause a migraine. Elizabeth was all but crippled by it, sometimes bedridden for days at a time. Luthias sent for healers from all corners of the world, and each took a look at her, giving her herbs for this and that. Nothing seemed to work. Often the herbs only seemed to worsen the nausea she felt in the morning.
She didn't know what she would do without Luthias. Although he still had things to attend to throughout the day, he was at her side more often than not. Though he seemed no more protective than usual, it was apparent that her kidnapping had shaken him. She had more people assigned to guard her, and Kieran had to escort her anywhere she went within palace grounds. Elizabeth might have complained, if she wasn't grateful there was someone to catch her whenever she suddenly fell over. Whenever she had a fall, she would wake to find herself in her bed, a damp cloth on her head and Luthias at her side. He never complained. That was the best part.
It had been almost two months since her kidnapping; still Elizabeth laid in bed, waiting the newest of the foreign healers. Today was a rare day when Luthias had no choice but to be gone—apparently there had been attempted treason somewhere on the island, but he still didn't explain much to her.
She laid on her side, trying not to think about her aching breasts. Her loosest nightgown was all she had been able to wear that day, with corsets and bras alike aggravating the sensitive mounds, which she swore were more swollen than they had ever been. She had gained weight from reduced movement, she thought, her thighs heavier and her poor stomach starting to rise out from her pelvis, making a roundness in her middle that had never interrupted her figure before. Everything hurt, more or less, and she couldn't bear to talk about it.
Idiot.
Elizabeth was getting better at ignoring the voice. She rolled onto her back, ignoring the resulting ache in her lower back. When at last the door opened, she glanced over lazily to see an older gentleman in a pageboy hat and round glasses, carrying a little case.
"Hello, you can call me Dr. Viktor," he said.
She nodded a little, almost smiling.
"Hello."
He sat with her, withdrawing a few instruments from his bag.
"What seems to be the trouble?" he asked.
Very normal and professional, compared to the others Luthias had sent. She was relieved.
"Aches, soreness...a voice in my head," she sighed.
"Can't do much about a voice in your head," he said, surprisingly candid. "Though those usually mean something didn't get resolved in your karma cycle. You could ask a spiritual guide."
As far as advice went, that was the most sound so far.
"The aches, though, that I can solve for you. Sit up."
She managed to do so, though a few muscles creaked. She cringed as he moved his stethoscope over her chest, aggravating what was already sensitive.
"Your equipment is all so...human," she commented.
"In these bodies, we've got blood, organs, hearts, and puss like anybody else. I've got another kit for the other form. Dress down for me?"
She removed her loose gown, though she was ashamed of what she looked like underneath. She cringed as he again pressed against her breast, listening for her heartbeat. Oddly though, the next place he moved the cold disc was her stomach, where he listened for much longer.
"I've got the problem," he said, and held the earpieces to her.
Elizabeth gave him a look, confused. But she would put the pieces in her ears, listening when he moved the disc to a new place on her slightly distended belly.
"That's another heartbeat, you see," the doctor said. "Pregnancy causes all sorts of aches—maybe even the voice too. Who knows?"
"I...what?"
Pregnancy. Her mind had all but rejected the concept, though all the signs had been there. Pregnant, months now—long enough to hear a heartbeat. There was a child inside her. Luthias', or...
"How far along, Dr. Viktor?" she asked, trying to appear cheerful.
"I'd give it...eight, nine weeks. Maybe more, maybe less. It's hard to tell with demon fetuses, they have little growth spurts that make it all guesswork."
She cursed mentally, heartbroken, angry, even as a small thrill began to settle in. It could be Rion's.
Wouldn't that be sweet, Emilie cooed.
She tried to answer the rest of the doctor's questions, letting him check her blood pressure, her temperature, and a few other things that she knew she had never had checked in a human hospital. She might have been more interested, if the sound of that tiny heartbeat wasn't still drowning out everything else.
Too soon, Dr. Viktor was closing up his bag.
"I'll tell Lord Luthias the good news," he said, standing. "You've got a touch of human blood in you, but the child will be all but pure. If it's a boy, he could even name him the Cennasaí heir."
Elizabeth felt like dying.
"P-please," she managed, before he left. "Don't."
His expression made it too hard to tell the truth. Instead, she smiled and told him, "I want to tell him myself."
That must have been compelling enough.
"A fine idea, Miss Elizabeth," he said. "Congratulations."
She watched him leave, feeling as though her world was crashing down. Still naked, she would roll back onto her side, drawing her knees up close. Her hand pressed to her stomach as she closed her eyes, wondering if she could feel it without the doctor's sensitive instruments. It was a bittersweet sensation when indeed, she felt the tiny, erratic pulse of her dearest joy, or most lasting mistake.
THE END
Demon Romance
Forbidden Mate: Fruit of his Loins
Secret Blood World Series Book Three
Lucile Wild
Forbidden Mate: Fruit of his Loins
Prologue: Stolen Seed
Separated from Elizabeth at her doctor's request, told only vaguely why she was under the weather, Luthias suffered another night without her. He had thought the waking dreams of Emilie would finally fade with Elizabeth home safely, but karma enjoyed tormenting the Canine Lord. Sheets kicked off his mattress, tension blooming behind his eyes, Luthias wasn't even surprised when his insomnia conjured an apparition of Emilie sitting on the windowsill, watching him. She wore a thin, white nightdress, neckline plunging deep over her surprising bust, the waistline tapered over her slender hips. Her dark hair was wild and loose, a wave wrapped around her elbow as she smiled at the lord.
"What do you want?" he grunted, hoping engaging with her would end this faster.
"That's no way to greet your lost love," Emilie asked.
Luthias rolled over, turning his back to her. He didn't need this. His feelings for Emilie confused him; he longed for the simplicity of Elizabeth's presence, her sweet taste, and her tight slit. The fact that Elizabeth had come from Emilie exemplified fate's cruel sense of humor.
"Luthias..."
Her soft request was followed by a long moan, deep like pain, yet steady as pleasure. Curious, he looked back towards his hallucination. He was startled to see she was changed—though she wore the same nightgown, it was now distorted by her bulging belly, large and round and tensing at the hem of the transparent fabric, which was also struggling to contain breasts that, though large before, had ballooned to distracting proportions and squeezed together against the revealing neckline. She leaned back against the windowsill, one hand gripping the ledge, the other on her monstrous stomach. Emilie looked just as she had days before giving birth to Avery, overburdened with the weight of a partling baby.
"My," she whispered, surprising him with her smile. "How did I fit in anything?"
He had thought that a woman's pregnant body would disgust him, but when he had seen how Emilie grew with his son, he was fascinated. Especially at this stage, when her body had been stuffed to its limit with the yield of his seed, the sight of her was uncomfortably arous
ing. He tried to look away now, but he couldn't.
Emilie smiled, slowly releasing the windowsill to stand on her own. She ran her hands curiously over her enormous mounds, cupping them, though she had to lift them from her distended stomach to do so.
"I forgot about these..."
As she slowly massaged her nipples with her thumbs, peaks rising beneath the thin nightgown, Luthias tensed as an unwilling erection fought against his briefs. She looked up at him with her unmotherly, wanting smile, as her hands slid down her back to support herself.
"Do you mind if I sit down?"
He could only shake his head, sitting up. He watched her approach, those impossible breasts trembling with each step. Slowly she lowered herself to the edge of the bed, parting her legs so she could straddle the very corner of the mattress. A hand spread over the largest part of her stomach, the other slid down between her thighs, as she leaned back to lift her belly and make room for her own touch. Her fingers slid between her folds, and she moaned again, legs spreading further.
"Sorry, Luthias," she murmured, as though he weren't watching her every move. "I'm just so horny..."
Luthias regretted the tightness of his undergarments, which bulged now beyond explanation. He decided to peel them off, tossing them away before he seated himself behind her, sliding one arm beneath her breasts—they spilled across it like a shelf, so warm, swollen with milk—as his other hand slid down to touch her wrist, the one that wormed gently right and left as she coaxed fluids from her nethers. His cock had nowhere to go, and so it pressed uncomfortably between her cheeks, just teased by the accumulation of wetness. She knew he was there, of course, and squeezed her ass just to make him squirm—even as she made herself moan.
"Gods...there's just so much pressure...like I'm about to burst..."
She leaned back against his bare chest, eyes closed as the moans rolled forth—“ah, ah..."
He was throbbing. He finally took hold of her breasts, one in each hand despite how much flesh spilled around his fingers, too much to contain. He needed to fuck her. His cock was demanding it. He was about to order her to submit when she pulled her nightgown over her head, leaving her naked. Luthias could grasp bare skin then, pressing briefly against the elasticity of her belly as he kissed her shoulder. She reached back, tangling her fingers up into his hair as she rose up, pressed back against him, then lowered herself right onto his stiffness. She folded her legs under her body, knees digging into the mattress as she pressed down, insides still needing to spread further to accommodate him, though he knew his child's descent would require so much more room.
"Fill me up more, Luthias," she groaned, her still-narrow pelvis rocking back against him, both hands now supporting the oversized watermelon of a womb that stretched out before her. "Cram another inch inside..."
He tried to comply, hands on her hips as he helped his cock squeeze deeper, member pulsing, firm and long, prying apart folds that clutched him greedily, as though they hadn't already glutted her with his seed. She dripped all around him and he panted, until her toes dug into the bed and she screamed with delight, ass against his stomach as she nearly squatted to envelop him.
"Gods it’s all been fucking worth it," she groaned, grabbing her sensitive tits. "This fucking parasite...f-fuck me..."
Her orgasm came as milk trickled down from her engorged breasts—pushed to his own limit, his seed burst inside her so suddenly it hurt. His limp phallas slid free as he breathed deeply, allowing her to sit back properly against his chest. She let her legs hang over the side of the mattress, taking his arms and wrapping them as far around her body as they would go. The action felt...loving.
"You promised to cherish him," she said, quieter. "This thing that came from me."
"Avery," he whispered.
"It wasn't easy," she said, tense. "Carrying him. Birthing him. I hoped he would know a better side of you than you showed me."
"This is in the past," he said. "He's grown. He conducts himself well enough—why bring doubt to that?"
"You and your bullshit..."
She laced their fingers, squeezing his hand, then holding it loosely.
"Treat hers better than you treated mine."
With that, the apparition vanished. Luthias was alone at the edge of his bed, his hand coated in semen, which he begrudgingly wiped on his crumpled sheets. While he was grateful this never happened while Elizabeth shared his bed, the fact that this happened at all since finding Emilie's reincarnation didn't sit well with him. What did he have to do to satisfy his guilty conscience?
He laid back, exhausted. He prayed for Elizabeth to recover soon.
Chapter 1: With Child
Elizabeth hid her condition from Luthias as well as she could, but within a few weeks, she was running out of options. The doctor had warned her that demon children were prone to growth spurts in the womb, which made the specifics of their development hazy. One such spurt came upon her very suddenly—one morning she had woken to find that, rather than the passable bloat she had gone to sleep with, her stomach now pushed out like she had swallowed a grapefruit. She managed to find a dress with an ill-defined waist, the skirt heavy enough to conceal the problem, but she didn't know how much longer she had before she woke up with a belly that nothing could explain away.
Her options seemed limited. One, she could finally confess her pregnancy and tell Luthias it was his—which it very likely was—hoping to God that the baby who came out in seven-or-so months didn't have red hair. Two, she could tell him the truth, that this might be a Wolf's child, and then hope that he didn't look at her every day after that as though she were damaged goods—if he was even willing to keep her around. Three, she could avoid all of that by packing her things and heading straight back to Vegas, where she knew places that would pay her plenty for stripping while pregnant.
Unfortunately, she had a habit of running from hard decisions. The afternoon she should have spent confronting her reality, she found herself standing on the shoreline a walk from the palace walls, gazing out over the restless sea. The waves frothed with foam that day, though it disintegrated before the tide could touch her feet. She wriggled her toes into the sand. A hermit crab scuttled past with a diagonal trajectory, as if to slyly avoid the oncoming wave. When the wave crashed into him regardless, knocking him halfway up the beach, Elizabeth couldn't help but laugh. For a moment, things were simpler.
The wind tugged at her dress, blowing it back and wrapping the material tight around her middle. She looked down to see the impression her belly made, roundness pressing out where it had never been before. As uncomfortable as the circumstances made her, she couldn't help a brimming fascination with the changes in her body. Thinking she was alone, she pressed her hands against the swell, exploring it as though it were something apart from her. The intrusion of Avery's voice struck her cold.
"Father was asking after you."
Elizabeth froze, as if that would somehow prevent Avery from seeing her. She could already feel his penetrating gaze on her body, particularly the incriminating way her hands cupped her swollen stomach. She knew she was caught. Though she quickly folded her arms over her chest, acknowledging the man who suddenly stood at her side, she could say nothing that would diffuse the tension that settled between them.
Avery regarded her with that discomforting smile she had often seen from afar. He had a marked resemblance to his father, despite a surprisingly youthful face—but unlike Lord Luthias, whose stern face offered fleeting kindness that only Elizabeth could coax forth, Avery offered his smile casually and without sincerity. His was the grin of a politician.
"Why the long face?" he asked. "It looks like congratulations are in order."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You don't think I'm that stupid, do you?" he asked, his tone too smooth for the bite of his remark. "Feigning ill, doctors clocking in and out, you insisting on sleeping in your own bed again? I'm surprised Father hasn't noticed your little bun in the ov
en—surely he'll be delighted."
"I..."
Elizabeth struggled to think. Although understood now that she was Emilie, in a sense—the soul of Lord Luthias' parted mate recycled to her—and yet though Avery was Emilie's son, Elizabeth felt no kinship between them. Avery's presence had always been a lurking discomfort, the way he watched her distinctly cold. She felt that she needed to somehow bridge the distance between them, but he was more stranger to her than anyone else in the castle. She knew he wasn't someone to confide in. Somehow, she knew he would tell his father anything to make him doubt her.
"Please, you can't tell Luthias," she begged.
"Ah," Avery said, a brow raised. "So you are hiding something."
She stared out across the ocean, as though refusing to acknowledge his accusation would lessen its reality. She heard him sigh, like someone trying to determine what to do with a stray dog who had wandered into their yard.
"Is it not his?"
"I don't know," she said, arms folded tight around herself. "I wasn't in my right mind, and now everything's upside down..."
The confession was spilt against her will, leaving her at his mercy. Avery's resulting smirk deepened her dread; his shrug seemed the worst thing anyone had ever done to her.
"Fine," he said.
"Fine?" She was horrified.
"I'll keep your secret," he said, "with your word that you’ll pack your things and leave."
He turned on his heel, as if to leave her then, but he was courteous enough to await her answer. Her stomach curled and she stared after him, half-hoping he was teasing. But there was no levity to that cool smile. He wanted her gone; there was nothing else to it.
Though her options before had been scarce, they were now reduced to nothing. Elizabeth's arms fell to her sides with the weight of surrender, though her response ended up sounding lighthearted, mind still detached from reality.