Bear padded into the bathroom. “Cassie, are you all right?”
She spat into the toilet. Her throat burned. “Ow.”
Cassie leaned her head against the rim of the crystalline bowl. It was smooth and cool. “I’m never eating again,” she said. Clearly, she’d had too many magical feasts. She had a potbelly now that pressed against the elastic waist of her pants.
Bear touched her damp hair with his nose. “Breathe deeply. Fighting it will only make it worse.” She felt his hot breath on her scalp. It made her itch.
“Stop hovering.” Like shooing a fly, she swatted the air in front of him.
“It will pass soon.”
“It better.” Oh, too much motion—her insides flopped, and she felt for the toilet. Her stomach squeezed as if it were ejecting a lung. Empty, she collapsed backward. “Can’t you magic me? Transform my sick molecules?”
“I do not wish to interfere,” he said. “Your body is reacting naturally.”
“Reacting normally for botulism.”
Bear blinked his glassy black eyes at her. “You are joking. You must know the cause of this—your daily nausea, your changing shape.”
Cassie clung to the ice rim of the toilet. When he put it that way… But no, she’d been careful. She’d been smart. “I can’t be. It’s not possible.”
“Because of the chemical imbalance?” Lying down, he curled around her like a giant cat and laid his head on her lap, as if to reassure her. “I know. I fixed it. All is well now.”
“You fixed it?” Cassie felt dizzy. She was… no. She tried to remember her last period and couldn’t.
“It was simple. All I needed to do was adjust the hormone levels,” he said, clear pride in his voice. “It was no harder than keeping your body warm or protecting you in the Arctic water.”
Cassie threw herself forward and vomited with all her strength, as if she could expel the fetus inside her. Bile scratched her throat, and she sank backward again, diaphragm sore from pushing. She dug her fingernails into her curved stomach. She sucked in, but it would not flatten. It was as firm as a muscle.
He’d retreated from her as she’d vomited, and he now stood beside her, casting a massive shadow over her. “Are you… You are not happy?”
“How could you do this to me?” He had deliberately altered her molecules to impregnate her without asking her, without telling her. “That ‘chemical imbalance’ was deliberate. I’m on the pill.”
“Deliberate? You caused…? But how…,” he said. He swung his head low, an agitated polar bear. “You were willing. I asked if you were certain. You said you were. I thought you understood.” She felt like she was drowning. His words drowned her. “You knew from the beginning: I must have children. This was the reason I sought a wife. There must be more munaqsri. This child—a future munaqsri—is desperately needed.”
“I thought you…” She felt as if her insides were shaking so hard that they’d fly apart. “I thought you loved me. For me. Not for…”
“I do love you,” he said. “You are my tuvaaqan, my wife, the mother of my—”
“You used me,” she said. “You didn’t even ask me. You just… ‘fixed’ me.” She had trusted him. She had believed they were a team.
He padded closer to her. “We are going to have a baby,” he said. “We are going to bring life into the world. Do you not see how wonderful it is?”
“Just… leave me alone.” Cassie pushed his chest, hands sinking into fur, and he backed out of the bathroom. She shut the door in his face and locked it. Back against the door, she slid to the floor. Her nausea threatened like a tidal wave. She wanted to rip her internal organs out of her. Heart included.
Through the door, he said, “I love you.”
She retched on the floor and then cried.
He had to reverse what he had done. It was that simple. He could manipulate her molecules; he could fix this. Ice crunched under Cassie’s mukluks as she walked through the topiary garden. If he could fix a “chemical imbalance” and keep her warm in the Arctic, he could put everything back the way it had been.
She found him between the rosebushes. Facing the permanent sun, he did not turn as she came up behind him. She swallowed a lump in her throat. He could do it, yes. But would he? She didn’t know. She felt as if he had turned into a stranger, hidden behind black eyes and cream fur. Looking down, she studied the roses. Amber and violet in the low sun, each petal and leaf twinkled with Bear’s reflection.
“You shot at me,” he said. “Do you remember? You shot at me with your tranquilizer gun, and I still married you. Did you ever wonder why?”
She hadn’t, until now.
“Because you shot at me. Because you chased me, before you knew what I was, before I dared reveal myself to you. You were so stubborn, so single-minded, so strong. Without a second’s thought, you risked your life chasing me, all for your work, for your father, for his station, and for the polar bears,” Bear said. She stared at him, but he wasn’t finished. “And afterward? You were so courageous that you would marry a beast to save a woman you had never met. So great-hearted that you could care about a ‘freak of nature.’ So intelligent that you could be my partner, my teammate, my tuvaaqan. These are the reasons I love you. It is not because of your ovaries or chromosomes; it is because I know, out of all the world, that you are my match.”
Cassie lifted her hand toward him. She wanted to bury her fingers in his fur and press her face against his neck. But she stopped an inch short of touching him. She desperately wanted to believe him. She’d thought he was her match too. She’d thought he was her tuvaaqan. Maybe he still was. It could all be a misunderstanding. “If it’s me you love, then take this creature out of me,” she said.
He shook his heavy head. “You do not know what you are asking,” he said. “It is not a ‘creature.’”
Who knew what kind of thing was growing inside her? It wasn’t human; it was half-munaqsri. Thanks to Bear’s “quirks,” she didn’t know what that meant. She hugged her arms across her chest. “How can I believe you? You won’t even let me see you.” For the first time in months, she wondered what the darkness hid from her.
“It is a child, and the world needs it.” He turned to face her. “Once you understand how important this child is, you will be as happy as I am. You have to trust me. All will be well. Give it time. You will see.”
Cassie tried to read his inscrutable bear eyes, but all she saw was her own reflection, distorted to a reverse hourglass. “How pregnant am I?”
“You are due in the fall, after the equinox.”
He’d known for at least three months. Months! He must have “Fixed” her during the polar bear birth season, maybe even the first time they’d slept together. She felt sick and dizzy all over again. He’d lied to her. He’d used her.
“You will be a mother,” he said. “We will have our own miracle.”
She didn’t know how to be a mother. “I am too young to have a baby,” she said.
“And I suppose I am too old?” He looked out across the ice fields. In a soft sad voice, he said, “I had believed this would make you as happy as it has made me. Perhaps I deluded myself. I had hoped… once it was real, inside you, you would be happy.”
She had been happy. She’d been happy with everything exactly as it was, or as she’d thought it was. “You were wrong.”
“I did not intentionally hurt you. You know I would never do that. I am not some monster, Cassie. You know me.”
Wind rustled the ice leaves. Cassie shivered, and the sun continued to circle the horizon.
You know me. Clutching the sheets to her chin, Cassie listened to him breathe. She felt a tight ache inside her chest. Did she know him? She’d thought she did. But now… Had he truly used her, or was it all a misunderstanding, as he’d said? Was he the man she thought he was? Was he a man at all?
Loud, her heart beat staccato as she knelt on the mattress. She cupped her hand over the flashlight. She had a right to know who he truly was and what was inside her, didn’t she?