Lover at Last (Black Dagger Brotherhood #11)(109)
Author: J.R. Ward

Sola jerked back into her seat and let out a scream.

When Qhuinn returned to the mansion with the others, he broke rank as soon as he was through the vestibule and into the grand foyer. Moving at a quick jog, he mounted the staircase and headed directly to Layla’s room: According to her texts, she’d decided to leave the clinic after all, and he was anxious to find out how she was doing.

Knocking on the door, he started praying. Again.

Nothing like pregnancy to make an agnostic religious.

"Come in?"

At the sound of her voice, he braced himself and ducked inside. "How’re you feeling?"

Layla looked up from the Us Weekly magazine she was reading on the bed. "Hi!"

Qhuinn recoiled at the cheerfulness. "Ah…hi?"

Glancing around, he saw Vogue, People, and Vanity Fair on the duvet around her, and across the way, the TV was nattering on, a commercial for underarm deodorant segueing into one for Colgate toothpaste. There were ginger ales and saltines on the side table next to her, and then, on the opposite stand, a cleaned-out carton of Haagen-Dazs and a couple of spoons on a silver tray.

"I’m feeling really nauseous," Layla said with a smile. Like that was good news.

He supposed it was. "Any…you know…"

"Not in the slightest. Not even a little. I’m not throwing up, either. I just have to make sure I eat a little all the time. Too much and I feel sick – same if I go too long without putting something in there."

Qhuinn eased back against the jambs, his legs literally wobbling from relief. "That’s…awesome."

"Do you want to sit down?" As if he were looking as pale as he suddenly felt.

"No, I’m good. I’m just…I’ve been really worried about you."

"Well, as you can see" – she indicated her body – "I’m just doing my thing – and thank the Virgin Scribe for that."

As Layla smiled over at him, he really liked the way she looked – and not from any sexual sense of the word. It was just…she appeared calm and relaxed and happy, her hair down loose over her shoulders, her coloring perfect, her hands and her eyes steady. In fact, she seemed…really healthy all of a sudden, that sallow cast to her skin now noticeable for its absence.

"So I guess you’ve had some visitors," he commented, as he nodded to the mags and the dead soldier of ice cream.

"Oh, everyone’s been by. Beth stayed the longest. She stretched out right next to me – we didn’t talk about anything in particular. We just read and looked at pictures and watched a Deadliest Catch marathon. I love that show – it’s where all these humans go out on boats into the sea? It’s very exciting. Made me feel glad to be warm and on dry land."

Qhuinn rubbed his face, and prayed that his sense of balance began to return quick: Evidently, his adrenal glands were still struggling to catch up to reality, the idea that there was no drama, no emergency, no dire anything to react to curiously hard to handle.

"I’m glad people are dropping in," he mumbled, feeling like he had to say something.

"Oh, yes, there’ve been" – Layla looked away, a strange expression tightening her features – "quite a number of them."

Qhuinn frowned. "Nobody weird, though, right?"

He couldn’t imagine that anyone in the house would be anything other than supportive, but he had to ask.

"No…not weird."

"What." As Layla just fingered the cover of the magazine in her lap, some brunette, bubble-headed, blank-eyed bimbo’s face distorted and went back to normal, distorted and went back to normal. "Layla. Tell me."

So he could go lay down some motherfuckin’ boundaries if he had to.

Layla pushed her hair back. "You’re going to think I’m crazy…or, I don’t know."

He went over and sat down next to her. "Okay, look. I don’t know how to say this right so I’m just going to get the words out. You and I? We’re going to be facing a lot of…you know, personal shit in connection with…" Oh, God, he really hoped she kept the pregnancy. "We might as well start being fully honest with each other now. Whatever it is? I won’t judge. After all the crap I’ve done in my own life? I ain’t judging no one over nothing."

Layla took a deep breath. "All right…well, Payne came and saw me last night."

He frowned again. "And."

"Well, she said she might be able to do something for the pregnancy. She wasn’t sure whether it would work, but she didn’t think it would hurt me."

Qhuinn’s chest tightened up, a stab of fear making his heart pound. V and Payne had things about them that were not of this world. And that was cool. But not around his young – for f**k’s sake, V’s hand was a straight-up killer….

"She took her hand and laid it on my belly, right where the young is…."

A sensation like Qhuinn’s inner toilet had flushed all the blood out of his head hit hard. "Oh, God – "

"No, no." She reached for him. "It wasn’t bad. It felt…good, actually. I was…bathed in this light – it flowed through me, strengthening me. Healing me. It focused on my abdomen, but it went so much further than that. Afterward, I was so worried about her, though. She collapsed on the floor next to the bed…." Layla motioned downward, to the floor. "But then I lost consciousness. I must have slept for a long time. When I finally woke up? That was when I felt…different. At first, I assumed it was because the miscarriage had stopped because it was…over. I ran out and found Blay, and he took me down to the clinic. That’s when you came and Doc Jane told us that…" Layla’s elegant hand touched her lower abdomen, and then lingered there. "That was when she told us that our young is still with us – "

Her voice broke at that point, and she blinked quickly. "So you see, I think she saved our pregnancy."

After a long moment of shock, Qhuinn whispered, "Oh…shit."

Back in the parking lot of the restaurant, Assail loomed over the hood of his burglar’s Audi, standing fully in the glare of the headlights.

Much as he’d done the night before, he locked eyes with her by instinct rather than by sight.

And as he stood in the cold, he was hot from his temper, and so much else: As that sack of excrement on two legs had escorted her to her car, and had the insanity to kiss her, Assail had been confronted anew by two choices: Track the man into the night and follow through on all that throat tearing, or wait until the human left, and…

Something deep inside of him had made up his mind: He had been incapable of leaving her.

His burglar put down her window, and the scent of her arousal made him hard.

It also made him smile. It was the first time all night he’d caught a whiff of it – and that cooled his temper more than anything else could have.