The Breeding Experiment - Laurann Dohner Page 0,55
their cell. Her clothes had been on, and she assumed they hadn’t messed with her.
“Watch.” Jessa started to slowly spread her gloves farther apart, and it caused the sphere to grow larger, magnifying whatever was inside. She kept doing it until the object was about a foot and a half wide.
“Can you make out the oval-looking shape at the center?”
Darla nodded, horrified. Something was inside her, but she could see it. “Yes. Did I pick up alien worms or something from eating the horrible food they gave us?”
“Um, no. Darla—that’s the very beginnings of a Veslor baby.”
She stared in shock at the small shadowed shape inside the…sack.
Jessa suddenly turned the floating holographic sphere a bit with her gloves, blowing it up more. “Area 51, we have a secondary problem.”
Darla saw it. It wasn’t just one oval shape with something inside it. There was another one behind it, just slightly smaller. There were two.
She gasped.
Her friend suddenly slapped her gloved hands together and the sphere burst, disappearing. Their gazes met. “I’d say by the looks of it, you got pregnant with one baby, and then the second egg was fertilized soon afterward. It happens in humans. Hell, it probably happens in Veslors, not that they’re great at sharing anything about their reproductive information. I could be wrong. Maybe it’s twins and one is just larger. Like the bigger one’s taking after daddy and the smaller one’s taking after you.”
Darla just lay there, mute and stunned.
She was pregnant with two babies. Two.
Emotions hit her fast and hard. Fear swiftly followed the shock. Would Gnaw be angry that she’d gotten pregnant? She’d been the one to talk him into having sex with her.
Jessa began to remove the gloves. “Don’t freak out. We’re the only two who know, and we can fix this.”
Darla blinked rapidly. “I’m not eating toxic mushrooms!”
The doctor’s eyes widened. “I’m not asking you to kill yourself. That’s never an option.”
“The mushrooms don’t kill. They rid a body of unwanted pregnancies. My mother told me what to eat in our greenhouse if I ever accidently got pregnant, to protect myself from being arrested. Unmarried mothers are criminals.” She reached down and protectively cradled her flat belly, shaking her head.
“I am not that kind of doctor. What I meant is, we can alter the pregnancy data to keep the fleet from realizing we lied about you and Gnaw having sex. Those are alien babies inside you, which means I’ll be your doctor, fortunately. I can totally upload scans to make them believe you’re a week less pregnant than you really are, if anyone goes snooping into the medical file I started on you. That’s what I meant by fixing this. You need to tell Gnaw right away. The two of you can make a big deal out of dating, and just pretend the fucking started later.”
“Would that even work? I mean, if I could talk Gnaw into it?”
“Comforting each other and bonding is a frequent occurrence between crew members on these vessels after a mission goes bad. I’d say the Elth were bad. You two endured serious trauma, being kidnapped. It’s believable that you’d hook up. You’re a civilian, so they can’t penalize you for not having a birth control implant, and there’s no requirement for you to have one. You were kidnapped on a fleet transport. Who gives a shit if you had some comfort sex afterward and got knocked up?”
Darla bit her lip hard, fighting tears. “I don’t know how he’s going to take it. What if Gnaw refuses to pretend to date me?”
“I haven’t spent any real time with the Veslors, but from every bit of research I’ve learned about their culture, they’re a pretty moral race. He will take responsibility for you and those babies. That means he will go along with our plan. I have a gut feeling that I’m right.”
“He’s probably going to resent me.”
“He can get the hell over it. His ass is on the line, too. You just need to act quickly and tell him so we can keep it secret of when you really got pregnant. You’re carrying his cubs.”
“Cubs?” Darla felt faint, glad to still be lying down.
“Veslors call their infants cubs. You admitted during the interview that you saw Gnaw shift into what they call their battle form, while you were escaping from your cell. It’s rumored their babies are born that way. I’m guessing at some point, they shift into their human-like form. There’s a lot I’m still trying to