minutes and already there’s a baby coming. Who wants that?” She pressed her fingers to her mouth and to her horror, they were trembling.
“I want that, Julija. I hope you want it as well. Neither of us planned for it . . .”
“But we didn’t do anything to not make it happen. That was irresponsible of me. Of both of us. I knew I wasn’t on birth control. I had been, but the shot wore off and I didn’t get back in because . . . well . . . for reasons.” She hadn’t wanted the doctor to see her with bruises and lacerations from the shadow cats. They hadn’t accepted her help easily. If the doctor had told her father, they all would have found out. “That doesn’t matter. I should have been careful.”
He shook his head. “It would not have mattered how careful you were. You are Carpathian. Your birth control did not prevent you from getting pregnant. In your case, your dragon did. Or maybe both, your Carpathian nature and your dragon. We do not have the exact same concerns as humans. Perhaps mages do, but we do not. A Carpathian’s body releases the egg only when it believes it is the right time for that being to come into the world. Sometimes it is only one every fifty years or so. Sometimes longer. A few lucky ones are close together and raised that way. You do not have the control.”
She shook her head. No matter what he said, it didn’t take away from the fact that their child was barely a thought and yet already he or she would be going into a very dangerous situation. If Anatolie or Barnabas found out she carried a Carpathian child, one fathered by a powerful ancient, they would move heaven and earth to get her back. She knew both would abandon their quest for the book, at least for the moment, in order to secure her. Like Elisabeta, she would become a prisoner.
Isai framed her face with both hands and gently ran his thumbs over her cheeks. “Like Elisabeta, you have been a prisoner your entire life. You tried not to look at it that way because you had some freedoms, but that was what it amounted to. It will not happen again. They cannot have you. You are free now, Julija. You can soar through the sky or lie with your feet up in a house of your choosing. You will meet many men and women back at Tariq’s compound. They will offer you sincere friendships and you will be able to wreak havoc with the other women and laugh about it. Our child will play with their children in a safe environment, well protected from vampires, mages or any other danger. As for me, I want you with every breath I take. Not just your body, but your heart and mind. You bring me joy. This child, our child, how could it not bring the same to me? To us?”
“This book . . .” She tried to hold on to fear and distress when he was so matter-of-fact.
“We have a plan to destroy this book. The very fact that you are pregnant only reinforces that we are on the right path. I have absolute confidence that we can destroy it.”
“I’m so afraid,” she admitted, trying not to let her teeth chatter.
“You should have told me. Come to me when you have these fears. We are meant to face them together.”
“If we’re wrong about Iulian and this isn’t where he was last?”
He shrugged. “Then all along we were not meant to destroy it. We leave fate to find another couple and we return to the compound. Ferro will not wait much longer for Elisabeta, and you need to be there to help her through her transition. It will be very hard on her.”
Julija appreciated him understanding about Elisabeta. She had never had such a friend. They hadn’t really spent any time in physical form together, it had almost always been telepathically, but the conversations were meaningful, and they told each other almost everything. Elisabeta meant quite a lot to her and Julija had given her word that she would be there to help her when she rose. Of course, at the time, neither knew of the complication that her lifemate would be right there in the same place where they had put her to ground.
Isai brought her in close to him, his arms around her. “You have to