EMERGENCY, MY APT NOW.
Not five minutes later, he heard running footsteps in the hall. Someone pounded on his door. He distinctly heard Aryal say, “Kick it in.”
So much for his calm and soothing act.
Don’t kick it in! he shouted telepathically.
He was too late. The door splintered. Aryal, Quentin, and the on-call healer—Peter—rushed in.
At the crash, Bel startled violently. She lifted her face from Graydon’s neck to stare at the three intruders. When she spoke, she was back to enunciating again. “What. On. Earth.”
They had upset Bel. He snarled wordlessly at the trio.
Eyes widening, Aryal threw out her hands. “What?! You said it was an emergency!”
“Yes,” he snapped. “I’m sorry.” He turned to Bel. Her mouth hung open again. “I’m sorry,” he told her. Unable to resist her beautiful, astonished face, he kissed her soft mouth quickly. “I’m still calming down. Aryal and Quentin, get out. Peter, come here.”
Quentin and Aryal backed out of the apartment.
“Just you wait,” the harpy said bitterly to her mate as they left. “Like everything else, somehow this is going to end up being my fault.”
Quentin retorted. “Seriously? Somehow, like everything else, this has become all about you?”
“That’s what I’m talking about!”
Their arguing voices faded.
Graydon met Bel’s brimming gaze. Self-consciously, he told her, “I’ll acknowledge I might have overreacted a bit.”
Her face shook. Oh gods, she wasn’t going to burst into tears again, was she?
Laughter pealed out of her. Bright and silvery, the sound danced around the room, like bubbles floating in a glass of champagne. Hanging on his neck, she laughed so hard tears came to her eyes.
It was such a happy sound, it took him over completely. Entranced, he soaked up every delicious, intoxicating moment.
The healer, Peter, had relaxed. Laconically, he said, “I’m pretty sure someone who laughs that hard is going to make their medical emergency worse. Maybe burst a spleen.”
Bel hiccuped and stared at Graydon accusingly.
After a moment, he offered her a small, sheepish grin. “There could have been one. You never know.”
She broke into peals of laughter again.
“Looks like my work here is done,” Peter said. “You’re welcome.”
When he started to edge toward the broken door, Graydon told him, “Not so fast, bucko. Come over here.”
Sobering, Peter strode over and squatted beside them. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Despite himself, Graydon bristled at the other male’s nearness.
Wiping her face, Bel sobered too. Stroking Graydon’s arm, she told Peter, “Nothing wrong, exactly. I just think I might be p-pregnant, but I can’t tell for sure and we both panicked. Can you help us?”
Like virtually everybody else in the Tower, Peter’s expression softened as he looked at her. “Obviously, I’m not an obstetrician. My specialty is acute trauma—all of the Tower’s on-call healers are essentially ER doctors. But I might be able to give you a simple yes or no, so you can at least sleep tonight. Then you can follow up with a doctor of your own choice. How does that sound?”
“Okay, yes,” she said. “Thank you.”
Peter looked at Graydon. “If I’m going to scan her, I’m going to have to touch her. Get in control of yourself, or leave the room.”
With an unpleasant shock, he realized he was growling, low in his throat. Bel hooked fingers underneath his chin and turned his face back to her.
“Hey, you’ve got this,” she said softly. “You can do it. Don’t drive the nice healer away, especially after you were the one to call him here—stop that, don’t look at him. Eyes here, Graydon. Look at me.”
He concentrated on the sound of her voice, the delicate rose color of her cheeks, the expression of love and lingering laughter in her eyes.
“That’s it, I’m done,” said Peter. As his head snapped around, the healer stood and backed away rapidly, hands up. “All I did was a quick scan—a peek in and out again.” As they stared at him, the healer grinned. “Congratulations to both of you. You are, in fact, pregnant. I couldn’t be happier for you.”
Pregnant. Or, as Bel had said, Preg. Nant.
“Holy shit,” he whispered.
He met her incredulous, joyful gaze. She started shaking again, and burst into tears. As he snatched her close, she started to laugh too. She threw her arms around his neck.
“I’ll let myself out, shall I?” Peter muttered. “It’s not a big deal, especially since there’s just an open doorway to walk through. I’ll pull the pieces of the door sort of back into place for you.”
Now that the other male was well and truly leaving, Graydon ignored him and concentrated on kissing Bel breathless.
Preg. Nant.
TWENTY-ONE
Healing did happen, over time. So did happiness.
Graydon would never stop missing Constantine, but over the next several weeks, the nightmares did eventually fade.
He and Bel began to search for a small house outside the city, with a big private yard, where they could go sometimes for weekends and vacations. When they found a charming little Cape Cod cottage, she moved what furniture and artwork she wanted to keep into it.
At her request, he also took her shopping so she could buy several pairs of jeans. He didn’t have room to consider that she did it only to humor him. She was too transparently gleeful when she slipped on her first pair of Levi’s. As he watched her simple, grinning pleasure, he began to realize Ferion hadn’t been the only one who had lived a life constricted by a narrow role to play.
After they went shopping, he took her out to Ruby’s Diner for lunch. To his mild surprise, nobody recognized her. She had wound up her distinctive hair into a bun and tucked it into a Yankees’ baseball cap. She ordered apple pancakes and coffee, and polished off the meal while she laughed at Ruby’s ribald sense of humor, and it was easy.
Loving her, letting her light up his life, was so easy.
As March came and winter relinquished its snowy grip on the city, gradually, life in the Tower began to assume something of a new normal.
He called Lake Tahoe several times to keep in touch with Julian’s progress. After surgeries and grafts, along with healing spells and copious amounts of blood, the doctors had managed to save Julian’s hands.
He would need several months of physical therapy to gain back the strength and flexibility in his grip, but his long-term prognosis was excellent. Julian himself was not very talkative about the subject, so in order to get any real news, Graydon learned to chat with Melly either before or after he talked to Julian. He was intensely glad to hear the relief and hope in Melly’s voice. That old Vampyre was a hard son of a bitch to kill.
Bel stayed in close contact with Ferion. Gradually Graydon watched her relax, releasing the anxiety she had carried for so long. Optimism entered her eyes and voice whenever she talked about the Elven demesne, and her son in particular. He was not only adjusting. After having his soul shackled for so long, he reveled in his freedom.
It appeared he had also learned from his mistakes. Word came to them from a variety of sources that the new Elven High Lord was making considered decisions, marked with temperance and restraint. The news coming out of South Carolina gained a positive forward momentum.
Like Graydon, the Elves would never forget, but after such a dark time in their history, he did believe they had begun to thrive again.
While he and the rest of the sentinels hired new staff, delegated work and generally figured out how to give Dragos the year he had promised Liam, Bel started a massive project of her own.
Architectural drawings and plans took over the dining room table. After approaching Dragos via email, and arguing with him over the course of several days—she swore she would never have followed through with her original inquiry if she’d had to talk to him in person—Dragos allocated a budget for her project that was large enough to make Graydon’s eyes widen when she showed him the approval letter.