Tinker had been a human girl. Windwolf had changed her into an elf.
The Wyverns expected Forest Moss to change Olivia after her baby was born.
“Miss?” the cashier said. “Miss?”
She stared at him, hands over her ears, still reeling. They expected me to become an elf!
“Do you want anything else?” the cashier asked.
If she wasn’t changed, the Wyverns wouldn’t let her stay with Forest Moss after her baby was born. Forest Moss would be crushed if he lost her. And if he snapped again, the Wyverns would kill him.
“Miss?” the cashier asked again.
She pulled out her fat envelope of bills from exchanging the gold bullion. Forest Moss had already paid her to stay with him for forever. She didn’t fully realize the terms. She had thought that being a domi was like getting married; you promised to cook and clean and have sex. She should have realized the catch; Tinker had been born a human but been transformed somehow into an elf.
But Olivia didn’t want to be an elf.
Moving on sheer automatic response, she tucked her change into her purse, accepted the heavy bags filled with her purchases, and moved away from the counter for the next mythical customer to check out. She and the elves had the drugstore to themselves. Everyone in Pittsburgh knew how deadly the Wyverns were—even to their own.
She forced herself to focus long enough to troop upstairs, back to the children’s department where she first made her deal with Forest Moss. She’d thought she had known all the possible ramifications of becoming his domi. She thought it could be no worse that prostituting herself to nameless men on the street in the middle of the night.
She’d spent years resisting pressure from her family to become someone else. To believe in their narrow-minded, bigoted God. To see herself as a flawed creature whose soul depended on her husband’s virtue because that’s how they interpreted God’s words. To become meek and submissive before all men because that’s how they twisted God’s will to suit their desires.
She knew in her heart that they were wrong. She clung to her God through all of the years of beatings, verbal abuse, belittlement, and shunning. Her God didn’t see her as a lesser creature because of her birth as a female. Her God didn’t want her to grovel at the feet of others simply because they had been born men. No one stood between her and Him. She was like an infant on her heavenly father’s shoulder, loved and not judged, and no one could convince her otherwise.
But she’d been born a human with a human soul. To warp her entire existence so that she was something else? Something immortal? She would never die and thus never go to heaven. Never rest on her heavenly father’s shoulder, surrounded by his love?
She had offered herself to Forest Moss. There was no denying that he needed her like air. Without her, he could very well die.
Fear made her stomach churn. She got out another lollipop to quell the sudden need to vomit. I’ve got months before this is really a problem. And so far, the Wyverns have been puppy dogs compared to the men of Zion Ranch.
Jewel Tear held up the tiny onesies. “Will it—your baby—be this little?”
The female might be pretending to ask about Olivia’s baby but she meant her own. Jewel Tear flicked a glance toward the Wyverns who were all looking at the tiny clothes with equal dismay. Honestly, all the elves seemed to be spectacularly clueless about babies, for being hundreds of years old. She was starting to think that none of them had ever seen a baby before.
Was that why Jewel Tear was even considering keeping her baby? Because she was afraid she’d never get a second chance to have one? The poor thing had no clue what she was getting into. Olivia had been terrified of going into labor all alone. Of having to take care of a newborn with no one else to help keep food on the table. No wonder Jewel Tear had tracked Olivia down; she had no one else to ask for advice.
“It—my baby—needs to be small enough to—” Olivia’s Elvish failed her. She picked up a stuffed rabbit and demonstrated a baby dropping down out of her pelvis.
Jewel Tear’s eyes went huge. “Oh!” Apparently she hadn’t considered “pregnant equals giving birth” before. Jewel Tear eyed the rabbit and then clearly fought the urge to press her hand to her womb. “Doesn’t that hurt?”
“Yes.” Olivia tossed the rabbit to the nearest Wyvern. “A lot.” She added two packages of cloth diapers. By the time her baby was born, the stores would have been picked bare. On second thought, she added another two packages for Jewel Tear. “Most women, though, seem to forget how much it hurts in a short period of time. I think if the memory stayed sharp, they wouldn’t have a second baby.”
“I see. And it stays little for how many years?”
It. Obviously Jewel Tear hadn’t started to think of the baby as a person yet.
Olivia handed the Wyvern a pile of yellow onesies, two packages of caps, and a dozen receiving-blanket gift sets. “It’s about a year before a human baby can walk or talk.” God knows how long it took elf babies because elves obviously had no clue. “Babies mostly eat and sleep at first. They cry a lot. They throw up constantly. They pee and poop and you need to clean that up. They can only drink milk from your breast.” Olivia assumed all supplies of formula would be gone by the time she had her baby in April or May. “You can’t leave your child alone, ever. You must carry it with you everywhere you go.”
Jewel Tear picked up another one of the stuffed rabbits and eyed it. “It sounds horrible. Why do you want one?”
Olivia hadn’t really wanted to have a baby. It all came with the package deal of being forced into marriage and unprotected sex. Jewel Tear was right, though. Olivia could have gotten an abortion as soon as she reached Pittsburgh. She felt stupid to admit why she decided not to, but Jewel Tear had trusted her with her greatest secret. The female elf had earned some of the truth. “I love little children. They’re sort of sluglike when they’re first born, but by the time they’re two, they’re just so full of wonder at everything. Everything is marvelous to them and it’s a joy to share each new experience with them. And they love you so fiercely and completely. You are their entire world.”
Blushing, she picked out the rest of what she needed, loading down the Wyvern. Jewel Tear, she noticed, hadn’t put down the stuffed rabbit. As if it was a test run for taking care of a baby, the female continued to carry it as they checked out and headed home.
They collided with the cathedral’s unit of royal marines once they returned to Oakland. The marines greeted the Wyverns with relief, ignoring Olivia until it was revealed that she hadn’t been kidnapped and then rescued. Then they turned toward her like her stepbrothers who she’d outfoxed and made to look bad.
Jewel Tear kept her eyes down, staying out of the conversation, still cradling the stuffed bunny in her arms.
“Oh, be quiet,” Olivia finally snapped.
“Why did you leave their protection?” one of the Wyverns asked.
Olivia threw up her hands and pushed through the soldiers to the line of humans who had paused to watch with interest. They froze in fear as they became the focus of all the elves’ attention. “Without the marines, I’m a human, one of sixty thousand, helpless and thus harmless.” She stepped back beside Dagger. “With them, I’m one of four females. I am a target, but I’m still helpless.”
“She cannot offer protection until Forest Moss changes her,” Jewel Tear added quietly without looking up. “Can you blame her for not yet wanting the responsibility of her position?”
She really wished Jewel Tear hadn’t used the word “blame.” It was her experience that people were more than willing to blame the most innocent of people merely because they could. Her sister wives used to blame her for bad weather, uncooperative animals and misbehaving children.