Disclaimer: I don't own VA. I do own this plot.

26

"This feels surreal," I commented as I thumbed through the maternity clothes in a mall near Lehigh, eying the baby clothes section above the racks.

Dimitri chuckled but didn't disagree. "I never thought I'd actually need to buy anything from a store like this unless it was for someone else," he agreed.

"Technically it is for someone else," I said as I pulled a long chevron skirt from the rack and held it up to myself in the mirror. I wrinkled my nose in distaste and put it back. Why did maternity clothes have to suck so much? I was going to be as big as a whale come summer time and it would be killer with the sticky Pennsylvania heat, yet most of the clothes here were made of thicker material that would definitely not breathe. If I wasn't already stretching my wardrobe to its limit—meaning that I'd surreptitiously bought the only passible maternity shirt at Court and was wearing my jeans unbuttoned—then I wouldn't bother at all.

Dimitri passed me a shirt and I mentally applauded myself for managing to pick a man with some sense of style as I approved it and added it to the cart.

"You know what I mean," he said, endlessly patient with me. "It's exciting to look at an outfit and think that our child will wear it one day."

"Yup. To spit up on and poop through!" I may have joked about it but I really did agree with him. I longed to go search through the baby clothes more than clothes for myself. "But I refuse to buy any clothes until I know the gender. I don't want to end up like Karolina," I reminded him.

Satisfied that I had enough clothes to get me through the next stretch of time Dimitri and I moved away from the clothes and towards the other necessities that a baby would need—which I was starting to realize—was a lot. Car seats of every color, pattern and safety rating, strollers that advertised the best storage capacity or size limit. Though I was pretty certain that if our baby was a girl I wouldn't buy a bright pink car seat, I wasn't ready to pick out one of those yet either.

We ended up in the bedding section, walking among rows of cribs, mattress sheets and bumpers. We'd been moved into our new apartment for a little over a week and while the rest of the place was settled the nursery remained completely empty. We seriously needed to start filling it and though I thought that stockpiling diapers might be a good place to start I couldn't help but run a reverent hand over a particularly cute espresso colored crib.

"It's nice," I said when Dimitri came up to my side. It would hide dirty little fingerprints and it had drawers for storage underneath.

Dimitri nodded in agreement and inspected the dresser that matched it. Like everything else in life, Dimitri was serious about everything related to the baby. He studied the furniture and I could practically see the mental list of pros and cons he constructed regarding it.

"I like it," he agreed. "It might be a good place to start by putting the basic furniture in the room."

"You don't think we should wait until we know what Kumquat is?" I asked. I'd fallen into using my old nickname for the baby in the days since my return. Dimitri had found it ridiculously funny the first time I let it slip but now he joined me in avoiding gender-neutral pronouns in favor of it. It also made it somewhat possible to make comments around Court without people knowing what we were saying.

"Unless it's a pink crib like that one," Dimitri nodded in the direction of a crib that was indeed very pink, "I don't think that a crib is very gender specific. Its fine."

We ended up buying the crib and dresser. As an employee loaded the boxes into our car I felt accomplished that we'd have the first things to add to the nursery. It felt real, finally buying stuff for the baby.

We'd ended up at the mall because it was Thursday and Lissa and I had class on campus. Dimitri and I had left early since I was no longer on active duty with Lissa, to run our errand and now we rejoined our friends on campus. Lissa had managed to somehow excuse our two-week absence from our classes and after a few mind numbing days of playing catch up we were up to date and still on track to graduate in a few weeks. The longer I thought about it the happier I was about this. There was some level of satisfaction in managing to graduate from college before I had the baby. Sure I was already employed full time and wasn't going to use my degree but it was the principle of the thing. I'd get to tell my child one day that if someone who hated school as much as I did had managed to get a degree then they could do anything they damn well put their mind to.

I was antsy as Lissa and I sat in class. I was still acting as the eyes inside the classroom despite my order to stay off active duty. I knew we wouldn't see any Strigoi activity today, the days had gotten longer and we always made it back to Court with plenty of time before sunset. However, I still worried that the traitor inside Court might be working with humans too. Nothing seemed too low for them. While I knew we couldn't keep Lissa locked up inside the wards all the time (she had another big meeting coming up this summer but this time in Boston) I still felt uneasy every time she passed through them.

Hans, Dimitri and Mikhail had questioned Adrian's father about his presence at the guardian building the day of the briefing. I had watched a recording of the interview, unable to attend thanks to all three men in charge of it. They'd argued that my presence there might provoke him and nobody wanted him to lash out—unpracticed or not he was a fire user—and hurt me. While I'd been offended that they thought I couldn't evade a desperate attempt at magic the interview had happened only a few days after my release from the infirmary and, while I had still been shaken up, I was able to recognize good advice when I heard it.

I was more shaken up over my kidnapping then I let on but I knew Dimitri wasn't fooled. I'd woken up on more than one occasion with nightmares, reliving Marlen's cruel taunts and cold hands on my belly as he threatened my child. I dropped a hand to my belly now, stroking it in an attempt to rid myself of the memory. A potential threat from Lord Ivashkov could have set me off and I would have reacted out of turn. They hadn't gotten anywhere during the interview in any event; Lord Ivashkov remained as tight lipped as ever, deigning it beneath himself to talk to dhampirs about his own business.

"He's definitely hiding something," Hans had confirmed afterwards. Part of me had wanted to ask him how he knew but I remembered his intuition when it came to interviewing my friends about me during my Honda-sponsored trip across the American Mid-West. He had good instincts and I was inclined to agree with him. Aside from the fact that Lord Ivashkov was always hiding something his business outside of Court had increased as of late and his comings and goings were unpredictable. I also hadn't forgotten Sydney's comment about how he'd cut himself off completely from Adrian after their marriage. Maybe he was mad at Lissa for consenting to their union and sullying his family's reputation with the scandal.

Han's had also called his guardians in for interviews on their charges behaviors as of late but they'd been pretty unhelpful. With nothing further to go on he'd ordered constant surveillance on Nathan Ivashkov when he was on Court grounds. He wanted to know when he came and left his house, who he talked with, the works. I wasn't very optimistic. If he'd survived living under the nose of the public for so long as a traitor then he was definitely careful.

I was tired of worrying. I just wanted to enjoy life for once. But a quick glance to my left reminded me of another concern. The guy two seats down had been pretty obvious in his appraisal of me all semester and I'd seen him try to pluck up the courage to talk to me on more than one occasion—attempts I'd thwarted by immediately rushing Lissa from the room and joining my male companions. He was looking at me again but not in his usual appreciative way. Instead his eyes were fixed on my midsection and the curve of my belly that showed through the loose fabric of my shirt. I could see the immediate recognition of my current condition in his eyes. My pregnancy was becoming very obvious. It was actually a surprise to me that nobody at Court had noticed, or at least been vocal about it. I'd been largely absent from the gym anymore as well as my duties though I did spend a good amount of time at Lissa's and I still ran with Dimitri in the mornings. I was sixteen weeks as of the day before. At four months there was no mistaking the signs of the baby I carried; I'd even had to go up a bra size last week. I gave the guy a frank stare, letting him know I'd caught him.

With a shrug the guy turned away, no longer interested, and I returned to my worrying.

I'd decided to distract myself from my worries by focusing on what I knew I already had figured out: Dimitri. It had been two weeks since my return and while there was no doubt about how much he loved me and Kumquat he hadn't allowed us to resume our physical relationship. That, quite frankly, was killing me. I'd always loved the physical side of being with him but my sex drive was in overdrive from the pregnancy—something I hadn't realized during the early stages. I was fully aware of it now, however, and it was an itch that Dimitri was unwilling to scratch.

Unwilling might have been the wrong word; it was more like he was worried. Worried that I still wasn't fully recovered from my experience at Marlen's expense, worried that he'd hurt me or the baby. I wasn't worried one bit. I'd discussed it with my doctor during my last check up and she'd assured me that we'd be fine until much later in the game. Nearly five weeks without him was longer than we'd refrained from each other since openly exposing our relationship and I was determined to go no longer.

Dimitri had a shift on grounds after we returned from Lehigh so I decided to take the day to finish unpacking the last few things in the new apartment and prepare a romantic dinner for us. I was pretty pleased with myself that I had managed to actually plan out a meal and had every intention of cooking it myself. I dressed in one of my new shirts, the flowy red top that he'd picked out. It hid my belly fairly well and that was my goal: to distract him from reservations he might have about sex during pregnancy in lieu of our usual passion. Besides, the shirt actually used my larger bra size as an advantage.

I was in the process of folding a blanket that we'd been cuddling under on the couch the night before when someone knocked at the door.

Knowing it wasn't Lissa—she let herself in nowadays—I hurried to answer it. Sonya was supposed to stop by sometime in the next few days to give me pointers about pregnancy since she was my closest (and only) friend who'd actually experienced it. If it was her though I'd reschedule. I was much more concerned with my plans for Dimitri.

It wasn't Sonya at the door. Or at least, not the Sonya I was expecting.

I opened the door and nearly slammed it shut again when I saw Olena Belikova and her daughters standing on the other side.