Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 111986 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111986 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
“I know.” Harper sighed. “The baby needs to be protected.”
Her immediate capitulation took Knox by surprise. “If I’d known that pregnancy would make you accept better security so easily, I’d have knocked you up months ago.”
She smiled, sincerely surprised that he was so at ease with the news. “I was worried you might feel a little…”
“Jealous?”
She blinked. “Actually, I was going to say ‘anxious’ and maybe ‘excluded’. Some guys feel like you’re on the outside looking in – I don’t want that for you. Do you feel jealous?”
“I’ll admit that I’m selfish enough to not want to share your attention with anyone.” So was his demon, actually. “But this isn’t just ‘anyone’. It’s our child.” He needed to have a doctor confirm that she was pregnant before he could truly believe it. There was still a surreal quality to the situation.
She leaned into him. “You’re not upset that a lot of things will change?”
“What’s so bad about change?”
“Nothing at all. I’m just checking.”
“Does anyone else know?”
“Raini knows. She bought the pregnancy test and urged me to use it. Honestly, I thought she was being dramatic. It turns out that she was right. I didn’t confirm that I was pregnant, but she’ll have known just by the look on my face. She won’t tell anyone, though. Not even Devon or Khloë.”
“But you want them to know,” he sensed.
“I’ll feel bad keeping it from them, especially since Raini knows. Personally, though, I think we should keep the pregnancy quiet from as many people as we can for as long as we can.”
Knox rubbed her upper arms. “I agree.” Or people might attempt to either kill her to stop the birth of the baby or kidnap her to have access to the baby once it was born. “But you can still tell your closest friends.” Mostly because he suspected that it would make them keep a close watch on her. That idea appealed to Knox and his demon a great deal. The more eyes she had on her, the better.
“We’ll need to also tell the sentinels,” he continued. “And you need to see a doctor. One of the gynecologists in our lair, Dr. Rodgers, is one of the best in the US.” Knox fully intended to make sure she had the best of everything throughout the entire pregnancy. “He’s odd, but he cares about his patients and he’s very discreet.”
“We can make an appointment tomorrow —”
“No, we should ask him to come here. Now.” The primal part of Knox wanted nothing more than to take Harper to the floor and bury himself inside her – it was an unexpected urge, but it was there all the same. However, the overprotective part of him was in a frenzy and wanted her to be checked out and to have the pregnancy confirmed. “I need to know that you and the baby are fine.”
“Then I guess you’d better call him.”
Dr. Rodgers was nothing like Harper had expected. Small, gangly, and sporting geeky glasses, the Chinese American demon looked more like a scientist than a gynecologist. Given that he now possessed information about Harper and Knox that the rest of the lair did not yet know, he didn’t seem excited or smug as she might have expected. Her demon eyed him suspiciously, too overprotective to trust any strangers around them.
As he stood in her living room, hands clasped, Rodgers flashed her a professional smile. “So, you believe you’re pregnant.”
Sitting on the sofa beside Knox, she said, “The test was positive.”
“Demons can get fake positive results, so the tests aren’t always very reliable. What about symptoms? I can tell just by looking at you that you’ve had trouble sleeping. How’s your appetite been?”
“Not at its best.”
He pursed his lips. “Your tongue ever feel like it’s burning?”
She frowned. “Yes.”
“Headaches?”
“Yes.”
“Nausea?”
“Yes. But I haven’t had morning sickness or anything.”
“Some pregnant women don’t.” He offered her a bottle of water. “Drink.”
She didn’t take the bottle. “I need to use the bathroom, so I’d rather not.”
“Don’t pee. I want to do an ultrasound scan, and the images will be better quality if you have a full bladder. Now drink – we want it nice and full.”
Knox took the bottle, twisted off the cap, and handed it to her. “Good girl,” he said as she sipped at it. They both watched the doctor as he switched on the portable ultrasound machine that he’d brought with him.
“Given what you’ve told me,” Rodgers began, “I’d say you’re about nine to ten weeks pregnant. Demonic babies develop at a faster rate than human babies, so the pregnancies usually last around thirty weeks. There are three stages to a demonic pregnancy. I call them infestation, oppression, and possession.”
She paused with the bottle close to her mouth. “Aren’t those the stages of demonic possession?”
Smiling, he shrugged. “Pregnancy is pretty much the same thing.”