Chapter 23 - Lena

"I'm sorry, what? I'm what?" I ask again. I think I have now asked at least three times. No matter how many times they say it, I really don't think my brain can digest the words.

"Pregnant," Milo responds factually again with a sigh.

I look at Cyrus, who has an extremely guarded look on his face. We had sex for the first time since he was back a few weeks ago, maybe a month? Wasn't it too early to know?

I look down at my stomach as if it will answer me somehow, then back up at Cyrus and Milo and shake my head.

"No, there's no way, is there?"

Milo raises a black eyebrow and cocks his head at me with a half grin.

"Do you really want to have that conversation with me?" He laughs.

"No," Cyrus snaps, "That'll be enough. Lena, think about it objectively for a minute. How fast did those marks on your wrist heal the other day from Creepy Tom? Or even your shoulder? Shouldn't that dislocated shoulder still have been bothering you a little longer? It seemed to get better pretty quickly."

"I am positive about this, Lena. This vision was ridiculously clear. You are absolutely pregnant with a child who's a shifter. But you are also a key to the relic that's here. I don't have as much on that, but the problem with the spell you tried is that this baby is blocking your own natural abilities."

I frown, shaking my head. I mean, Cyrus wasn't wrong about the weird healing, but how could I be pregnant? My mind is racing, and I think back to being pregnant with Rosie, remembering the simple test Gram used on me.

"I think you're both ridiculous, but grab me that necklace from over there," I sigh. Milo jumps up and brings my Gram's favorite necklace. If nothing else, maybe this would at least teach them to let it go.

"So, the way this will work is, Cy, you'll want to hold the necklace above my stomach. If I'm pregnant, it will move in a clockwise circle. If I'm not, it will either stay still or swing just back and forth."

I lay back on the bed and wait for him to step closer to the bed before handing him the necklace. The brush of his skin on my hand leaves a searing feeling behind. The idea of how this could have come about is far too close in my memory for my comfort with Milo standing in the room, bouncing around with all his nervous energy.

Cyrus holds the chain as instructed, and within less than a second, the pendant starts swinging in a wide clockwise circle, spinning faster and faster until it pulls from his hand and falls hard to my stomach.

I can feel my eyebrows stretched up on my face in disbelief.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," I groan as I reach down and pick up the necklace. I try again myself, only to watch it do the exact same thing.

My eyes fly up to Cyrus's and I can feel the fear and questions pulling at every corner of my mind. What does this mean for our strange cover-marriage? How am I going to raise a child who's obviously not strictly human by myself if he leaves? The panic is starting to rise, and the familiar crackle of electricity is flickering around my field of vision.

"Hey, it's okay," Cyrus offers as he sits back down on the bed and pulls me close to him, "We're going to figure this out together, okay? It's all going to be okay. You're not on your own here. I'm not going anywhere."

"You can't make that promise," I snap, feeling the energy sparking off me in small snaps. I can't control my emotions right now. I look up at Milo and a small bolt of energy hits him in the arm.

"Damn it, Milo, get out of here. I need a minute. I don't want to hurt you, and I can't think right now." He stands slowly, reluctantly nods, and exits the room before another bolt of energy can collide with him.

Cyrus walks him to the door and closes it behind him with a sigh. He turns to me, hands raised as he walks cautiously back toward the bed and sits down, facing me. "Let's just talk about it, okay?"

"There's nothing to talk about. You have to go back to your crazy military compound with all these people and lead them. You aren't going to have a choice in staying here. You also can't expect me to just let a child be taken from me. So, I'm back to doing this alone, again."

A sob racks my body as the thought comes flooding back. I hadn't intended to raise Rosie by myself either. She was the one light that came out of the really bad relationship I'd found myself in during college.

This felt so much worse somehow. I had known Rosie's father was a piece of crap, but Cyrus was really different. He was like home and security all wrapped into one when he held me. The problem was there was still the gaping wound of him leaving me when he was ordered to. What if that happened again? Men involved romantically with our family never seem to last.

Cyrus reaches out, takes both my hands in his, and pulls me closer, folding me into his chest despite the small zaps of energy coursing off me in waves. I don't know if he's just getting used to them or if they really aren't having an impact on him, but he just holds me closer to him until I'm leaning against him, crying.

"I am not going anywhere. You are not doing this alone. There's nothing in this world that is going to be capable of keeping me from the three of you ever again. Lena, I'm here. I'm yours, assuming you still want me. I didn't marry you lightly."

"Three?"

"Yes," Cyrus chuckles, "You, Rosie, and whoever else this is."

My heart feels full in the best way at his inclusion of Rosie in all this. I can't ask for much more than that right now. There's that doubt there in the back of my mind, but I can't argue with the feeling deep in my chest that tells me he is exactly the person I am meant to be with.

"You called her Rosie," I sniffle against his chest, "Not Rose."

"I still can't reconcile such a cutesy name with this wise old woman who followed me around, dropping wisdom on me from the first day I met her."

I laugh lightly at the explanation. It's very much the way she'd always been. Even before my mom had passed away, she'd been insistent that Rosie wasn't a good nickname for her. She'd wanted me to call her by her full name, Rosalind, at all times, which just didn't seem to suit her.

"I definitely understand that. She has always felt like an old soul."

"Have I shown you the tattoo I got?"

"Tattoo?" I ask, frowning as I think about it. I don't recall seeing one anywhere, not that I had particularly been at liberty to inspect his whole body since he'd been back. He turns on the bed, his shirtless back exposed. On his right shoulder blade, I can see my name and a little rose.

"How do the guys not give you endless shit over being this much of a mushy romantic?" I laugh, trying to break myself out of the tears that are still streaming down my face.

"Oh, they tried. There are some advantages to the whole Alpha thing. For one, I'm able to make them shut up about things. Besides, if I hear about my tattoo, we open back up the whole can of worms about Orion's, and he'd rather die than talk about his."

"Now you have to tell me."

"Nope, that you'll have to get out of him on your own," Cyrus laughs and turns back to me, wiping the tears from my cheek.

"Can you breathe now?" Cyrus asks, "I mean, ultimately, it would be kind of nice to break this news to a certain someone."

Our little moment of possible happiness is interrupted before we can even figure out how to broach this with Rosie as a crash of glass echoes through the house. We both leap up and out of the bed as fast as possible. We make it a few steps when we hear a shout from the yard.

"Cyrus, they're here!"

He looks at me and toward the door and the hall in the direction of where Rosie is, and there's a moment I can see a decision cross his face. I don't know why, but in the pit of my stomach, I know I won't like whatever that decision is.

He crosses the room and pulls me into a quick, hard kiss, then runs in the opposite direction and dives toward the window, throwing himself through it. His body starts changing in a ripple of energy as he falls.

I cross the room as he's falling and see him land in the moonlight. My eyes take in the sight of three large shapes closing in on him.

I can hear the shriek of his name leaving my lips as I watch a quick black dragon sneak up behind him and launch itself onto his back, clamping down on his neck. I don't know what I intend to do, but I know standing here won't fix anything.

I turn and run for the door, and as I step into the hall, I come face to face with Tom. He's got Rosie by the throat, pinned up against the wall. His hand has strange black claws sticking out where the ends of fingers should be, and his green eyes have changed into slits.

"Not another step," Tom sneers as he lifts his chin at me in defiance. "I don't want you close enough to touch me this time, Bitch. But you're going to come with me, and we're going down to that mine, or I'll kill her. Your choice."

Rage like I have never experienced before boils to the surface in a flash. I have never felt such a consuming anger in my life. The crackle of energy coming off me is more than enough warning. Tom shakes his head and pulls himself and Rosie a few steps further away from me.

I'll kill him. I will tear him apart piece by piece.

"Let her go, Tom. She has nothing to do with this. Eclipse doesn't need her for anything. I'll come with you if you just let her go."

"I don't think so. I don't think you'll behave yourself if I don't have a little leverage. And who says Eclipse has anything to do with this?"

I don't know what he means. I raise my hands in a gesture of compliance. I don't know what else to do. I just need him to let go of my daughter.

"Okay, okay. I'm coming, okay. I promise. Can you please, just let her go?"

Rosie's eyes meet mine in a wide panicked look as she shakes her head no.

"Don't worry, Kiddo. I'll be fine."

"Oh no, Kiddo, worry. I've waited for this for a long time," Tom hisses in her face.

Without warning Tom slams Rosie hard back against the wall and lunges for me. The last thing I see before my vision fades to black is the look of shock on Rosie's face.

I wake up to the smell of dampness and the tang of metal in a smothering darkness. Cave dark. A shiver rocks my body as the cold seeps deep into my body. It's freezing down here and the thin tee shirt I went to bed in is not ideal for being deep in a mine in the middle of a snowstorm when the temperature is already low.

How the hell did I get down here, and more importantly how am I going to get out of here?

"Nice of you to join me, Lena," a voice hisses from the dark.

"What do you want?"

"It's simple really. I just want you to retrieve this key for me."

The darkness is replaced by a painful flash of white as the cave illuminates and I find that we're deep in the mine where the old caverns are. They'd been part of what had stopped progress.

In front of me, buried in a vein of quartz is the clear shape of a red, purple, and green banded key. The thing looks intricate, and large. It must be close to twelve inches long.

My eyes search around the cavern, and settle on Tom's familiar facial features, but instead of a normal human body, he's covered over in scales and his legs have been replaced with the thick coils of a snake.

"You're not a dragon."

"Very perceptive."

"Then what are you?"

"The key first, then I'll give you all the answers you want."

I drag my eyes from the disturbing image of his body coiling back over itself in knots, to the key. There's a shimmer to the quartz that makes me wonder just how he's expecting me to get it out.

"It's stuck in solid quartz it looks like. How on earth do you think I'm going to be able to get it out of there?"

"The sigil," he sighs with a hiss as he lunges closer, losing his patience, "Break the sigil and it will let you retrieve it."

There's no way that this can be a good idea. I can feel it in the pit of my stomach that there's no world that I should give into this creature.

"I don't get it, if this is the thing Eclipse is after, and I get it for you, what motive do you have to let me go. I would be stupid to just hand it over."

"You'd be stupid not to, Lena. I'm not with Eclipse. I'm the shadow that Eclipse hides from at night. The stuff of their nightmares."

The fear spiking through me causes the crackle of electricity to flare around the edges of my vision and Tom slinks back again, coiling against the wall. His green eyes glow at me from the dark corner before he dissolves into a dark fog.

The fog closes in around me, smothering me, and cutting off my ability to breathe. I feel darkness closing in around the edges again before it suddenly dissipates and Tom reforms several feet away from me.

"Now, now, Lena. We aren't in public anymore. I can use other ways to get you to do what I want. Do I need to bring Rosie down here with us? I'd be happy to show you just how persuasive I can be. Your grandmother was pretty headstrong too. Look where it got her."

I'm choking, gasping oxygen into my lungs now that the thick fog has left my face. I feel like ice has been poured down my spine. I know if he involves Rosie, he'll kill her. I don't doubt that in the slightest. My eyes turn back to the quartz wall in front of me, my eyebrows scrunching in concentration as I look trying to see what sigil he's talking about.

"What sigil? I don't see one."

"At the base," he hisses impatiently.

My eyes fall to the base where I finally see what he's talking about. Carved into the stone is the same sigil that Cyrus had pictures of back at the house. This one is intact. I lean forward with a shiver and my finger traces lightly over the sigil and I chew on the corner of my lip. Gram put this here. It's meant as protection.

There's no guarantee he doesn't kill me once I have the key, other than that if I'm holding it, he'll have to get close enough to me to take it from me. Maybe that will be my chance. With a sharp inhale of breath, I pick up a small rock off the cave floor and will my intention behind it, carving deep against the soft stone the sigil is carved in below the quartz.

The spell releases and the cavern around us trembles as a ripple of energy bursts out in every direction. I plunge my hand forward, grasping the ornate, carved handle of the key and pull it from the quartz as if pulling it from freezing water.

As I turn, thinking that I'll have a moment to react, Tom's body slams into me. An arc of electricity covers his body and I plunge the sharp teeth of the key upward into the soft skin beneath his ribs and turn it for good measure.

With another wave of energy, I gasp as his body seems to start collapsing in on itself, shock clear on his face as thick warm blood spills out over my hand and he coughs more at me. I twist the key again and another gush of warmth coats me.

With a final grasp at me, his clawed hand connects with my neck, and I feel it tear at the skin near my collarbone. Another wave of magic releases and he gives one last shudder before he folds in on himself the rest of the way around the key, and taking all the light with him as I fall to the ground in a heap with the key clutched in my hand.