Mulan's POV

The morning in question had started with my morning sickness in full force. I'd been up guarding with Shang for several hours before the princesses and guards all got up.

When we were saddling up to leave, I'd stopped to throw up again. Shang had to open his big mouth and remarked that I hadn't gotten sick like that when I'd been pregnant at Wu Zhong. I'd glared at him to be quiet, but it was too late.

Yao was quickly in his face confronting him, and was joined by Chien Po and Ling. He admitted that he'd insisted I sleep with him to stay alive.

I burst into tears and took off on Khan. The last thing I saw as I rode away was the three of them beating Shang. They were like the older brothers I'd never had. I hated to see my husband being hurt, but I also knew he deserved it.

He had made me choose between my virginity and my life. To protect my father, I'd saved my own life and started having sex with him. What choice did I have? Would other daughters have done the same thing in my shoes? I think many other daughters my age would have done the same thing.

Riding alone on the road to Qi Gong, I let my tears flow freely. I'd known all along that Shang had acted badly. Now he was being forced to face what a creep he was. I was grateful to my three friends for not being afraid to confront him.

The day after our wedding, after I had pulled the ruse with cutting my finger, my mother had looked at my hands and fussed about the condition of my fingernails after months of military camp. I realized later that day that she would have seen the cut on my finger, and probably put it together with the blood on the bedsheet.

I knew her and my father and grandmother didn't like Shang very much. Even though we both separately had told them that nothing had happened at Wu Zhong, none of them had believed our lies.

My tears had been flowing so thickly that I hadn't been paying attention to where I was going. When I finally stopped and looked around, I was in a gorge, surrounded by tall rock walls.

Bandit country! Not a place for a woman to be alone. I turned Khan around and headed back the way I came. A few minutes later, I saw ropes drop in front of me and several bandits suddenly appeared.

I screamed and kicked Khan to take off, which he did immediately. One of the bandits fired an arrow that hit him in the flank, and he fell. They immediately ran towards me. I pulled out my sword and was able to kill two of the bandits.

I had wounded a third and a fourth one was closely approaching me with a lustful look in his eye when I heard the sound of horses and shouting. It was Yao and Ling, galloping towards me. They quickly dispatched the other two bandits and finished off the one I had wounded.

Chien Po came riding up a moment later, driving the carriage. After the three of them made sure I was alright, they all looked at me and then looked down, at the sky, the cliffs, everywhere but in my eye. I knew right away why.

"Where's Shang? What did you guys do to him?"

"He's back there" Yao pointed the direction they'd come from.

"I saw you guys beating him up as I rode away. How badly did you guys hurt him?"

Once again, they looked around at everything but me.

"Guys?"

"We knocked him out and left him by his horse. He'll wake up eventually, probably very sore but hopefully a little wiser."

"Mulan, why didn't you tell us what was going on?"

Now it was my turn to avoid eye contact. I stared at my feet.

"I was afraid of what you guys would say if you knew my secret and I was ashamed of my own behavior. I'm such a whore." Tears ran down my face and my voice was so quiet I wasn't sure if they'd even heard me. I was too ashamed of myself to look up at them. They knew what I had done with Shang. I had whored myself to stay alive. My silent tears turned to sobs.

Chien Po put an arm around me and I grabbed onto his robe and cried into his chest. He held me and let me cry for a few minutes before talking.

"You chose to do it because you would have been killed, otherwise. You really didn't have any choice except to sleep with Pretty Boy and live or die and let your father be drafted. We made sure he faced the consequences of his behavior. What he did was not ok."

He put a finger under my chin and lifted my face up so he could look at me.

"We don't think you're a whore, Mulan. You did what you had to so you could protect your father.

Ling walked up to me, followed by Yao. "We didn't kill him. He'll wake up."

I looked around at the dead bandits and at my horse. My beloved horse Khan was dead from the arrow they'd fired when I'd tried to ride away. My husband was laying on the ground somewhere unconscious. I buried my face in Chien Po's robe again and continued to sob for several minutes while he held me and patted my back and let me cry. Ling and Yao stood by quietly. I heard Chien Po start chanting a quiet mantra and it soothed me. I finally let go of his soaking wet robe and wiped my eyes.

"Thank you for letting me cry on you."

"Anytime. That's what big brothers are for, little sis."

The princesses finally got out of the carriage.

"Is everything ok?" asked the oldest, Princess Ting Ting.

"Yeah, it is now. Mulan got ambushed by bandits, but she managed to kill two and wound a third before we got here. Yao and Ling took care of the other two."

I realized my gut was hurting, the same way it had when I'd taken the Dong Quai at Wu Zhong. I felt something dripping from me and looked down. My robe and pants were soaked with blood.

The gorge walls around me were starting to press in. I started feeling really weak and dizzy, so I grabbed Chien Po's arm as everything went dark and I fell.

I woke up in the carriage, with a woman I didn't recognize. She told me the guards had seen her riding nearby and hollered that they needed help. When she reached them, they told her I was pregnant. This woman just happened to be a midwife. The ancestors must be watching over me.

She told me I'd miscarried. By the time the guards had gotten me into the carriage, my clothes and the ground around me were soaked with blood. She sat me up and shoved a cup of tea in my hand.

"Drink it. It will help you stop bleeding."

I did as I was told.

"I really wanted this baby."

"The guards told me you were pregnant recently, but it wasn't the same pregnancy. What happened with that one?"

I stared at the tea in my hands, deciding if I should tell her the truth or not. I figured I probably should. She had to be able to properly treat me.

"After the Huns invaded, I had pretended to be a man and went to Wu Zhong in my father's place so he wouldn't have to go to war after he got a conscription notice. He's badly disabled. The captain saw me getting out of the pond once after I'd gone in there to bathe and told me he would keep my secret if I slept with him. After I got pregnant, he got some Dong Quai from the medic and I took it and miscarried. After the war was over, we got married."

"How far along were you this time?"

"About 6 or 7 weeks."

"Where is your husband?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

"This morning, before we broke camp to head to Qi Gong, he accidentally made a comment about how I didn't get this sick when I'd been pregnant at Wu Zhong. The guards heard him, and they knew we just got married not that long ago. They realized that meant we'd been having sex at the camp and confronted him about it. They somehow knew right away that he'd gotten me to sleep with him by telling me he wouldn't take my life if I did. When they confronted him, he admitted it, and I burst into tears and took off on my horse.

As I was riding away, I saw them beating him up. After the bandits attacked, I'd screamed, which the guards heard, and they got here after I had killed two and wounded a third. They killed the other two. Then they told me they had knocked him unconscious and left him to wake up on his own."

"You weren't raped by the bandits, were you?"

"No, but one of them was approaching me like that was his intent. The guards arrived before he could, though."

We both heard Shang's voice outside asking where I was.

"She's in the carriage. She passed out."

"Mulan? Are you alright?"

The midwife shoved a second cup of tea in my hand and got up and left the carriage. "I'll be back. Drink that tea while I make you more. We have to stop the bleeding and that tea will help."

I nodded. "I lost the baby. That's why I passed out. I started bleeding and the guards saw a woman riding by and hollered to her that they needed help. She happened to be a midwife and came right over."

I looked at Shang's face. It was swollen and black and blue. One eye was swelled shut. His lips and nose were puffy and there was blood on his face and shirt. He moved as if he was in a lot of pain but was trying to hide it.

"They really beat you good, didn't they?"

"Yeah. Twice. The second time, they knocked me right out. But, they were right. I acted very selfishly. I should not have put you in a situation where you had to choose between saving your honor or saving your life. I'm truly sorry, Mulan. Are you angry with me for how I treated you?"

I took a deep breath. "Yes, I am. That was an impossible situation to be in. I felt like a filthy, disgusting whore to have sex with you every day to stay alive."

"Do you still love me?"

"Yes. It might take a while to forgive you, though."

"I'm truly sorry."

I looked down at my tea and then at him again. "I really wanted this baby."

"So did I. We'll try again. We'll have another one." Shang put his arms around me and I cried into his chest for a second baby that we would never get to know.

I didn't care that it wasn't custom to mourn miscarried babies. I would weep for this child that we had lost.

The midwife poked her head into the carriage and handed me two more cups of tea. "Drink up. It's herbs especially for stopping this kind of bleeding. I always carry them with me, since I never know when I'll need them, like today."

Shang looked up at her. "Thank you for helping my wife."

"You're welcome. It looks like you took quite a beating. I can make a poultice for that eye, if you would like."

"That would be great."

After giving me a quick kiss and once again whispering that he was sorry, he followed her out. I drank up all the tea in my hand and laid down. I was exhausted, physically and mentally.

More tears slid down my cheeks as I placed my hands over my empty womb. I'm sorry, my child. If I hadn't ridden away in tears earlier and then been ambushed by the bandits, maybe this wouldn't have happened. But it was awfully hard to know if I could have prevented it.

I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, Shang was shaking my shoulder asking if I was alright.

"Yeah, I'm just tired."

"We're gonna make camp and head to Qi Gong tomorrow. You need to rest tonight. Midwife's strict orders."

We headed out through the gorge to the other side, and made camp by a river. The princesses rode on horses, since I was in the carriage. A while later, we stopped. Shang came in and carried me to our tent.

"Shang, I can walk."

"The midwife said you have to rest and take it easy tonight. She wants you up only when necessary. Just lay down, me and the guards will take care of everything."

I noticed there was a lot of blood on the floor of the carriage. Then I realized why he was carrying me with a blanket over me. My pants and the lower part of my armor were off and also bloody and on the floor of the carriage. I must have bled a lot, but it seemed to be slowing down. Shang laid me down on a mat and covered me up with a few blankets. I was shivering. I was still recovering from the blood loss of my last miscarriage and the battle wound, and now my body had to deal with this.

A while later, he came in with rice and dumplings and more of that tea. "She told me to make you drink more of this tonight and then tomorrow as well." He pulled the blankets away. "Good, it looks like the bleeding almost stopped. She doesn't live very far from here and told me to come get her if it didn't. She also told me not to touch you for several weeks. Just like before, only this time for much, much longer. Your body has been through a lot the last couple months and you have to recover."

I was actually thankful for that. I did not feel up to any kind of sex and knew I wouldn't for a while.

"Mulan, I'm truly sorry for how I treated you."

"I've been angry over it for quite a while, but I didn't know if I would ever be able to tell you. I think I forgive you, Shang.

"Thank you! Although I don't feel I deserve it when I treated you so poorly."

"But you can't change it. So stop beating yourself up."

"I'll try. I love you, Mulan."

"I love you, too, Shang."

After he left the tent, I realized my family was going to blame him for my losing the baby because he had insisted I accompany him. Of course, the Emperor had personally requested that I join Shang on the mission. But I wondered if that would matter to them. They were really going to hate him, now.

But, I was too exhausted to worry about my family's reactions right now. After a while, Shang came in and laid down by me and I curled up to him. The blood loss had left me freezing, even with many blankets, and he helped warm me up. As he put his arm around my back and I started to drift off, I felt him kiss my head and he whispered, "I'm sorry, Mulan. I love you."