Author's Note: I'm known for rollercoaster rides, so be forewarned ;) I got this chapter and the next done last night in a WC, so 17 will post tomorrow. Thanks to my pre-readers MissSherrie and Elohcin, and to the WC ladies who keep saying they enjoy this in spite of having never watched the show…and MizzDee, the only one who does whose excitement makes me smile wider. Thank you for all of your awesome reviews. They help me keep moving forward!

Chapter 16

I was done with playing hooky after my day off to go with Damon for the marriage certificate. I'd been a good girl, did all my homework, planning, and had perfect attendance after that. Things were good. We'd set a date, commissioned gowns for all the girls, and even had a few of the town's important members invite themselves to the wedding. By insistence of Mayor Lockwood, my small private wedding with just the people I cared about became a whole town event. She and the historical society ladies were horrified that I planned to wear the Salvatore dress in the ceremony, but eventually conceded and began working to make our wedding a historic event. I wasn't happy about that, but at least the ballroom would feel a little more like a true wedding celebration with a crowd of guests.

As difficult as the hoity toity women of Mystic Falls had been at the news, that was nothing in comparison to Jenna's reaction when Elena and I sat her down the night after Damon and I filed the paperwork at the kitchen table of the Gilbert family homestead. I was determined to catch her before the rumor could spread to her through the town gossip machine.

"Excuse me? Did I hear you right? Did you seriously just inform me that after knowing DAMON Salvatore, one of the biggest jerks to walk the face of the planet for less than a month you are now engaged to him? Who are you and what have you done with the intelligent Rebekah Gilbert I know and love? Have we done some sort of scary personality switch or something? This is so unlike you!"

She was babbling on so fast that I didn't get the chance to interrupt to explain, then when she did finally pause the look on her face made me pause in surprise. Her mouth hung open and her eyes bugged out before she slapped the table so hard it rattled, her goggling eyes staring at my stomach.

"Oh my GOD, Please tell me you aren't pregnant! Is this is shotgun wedding? Did he like hypnotize you, knock you up, and coerce you to marry him?"

At this point, I busted out laughing so hard tears came to my eyes. I could hear Elena giggle next to me as Jenna looked between the two of us in desperation.

"What? You think this is funny? This is SO not funny!"

I reached out to rest a hand on top of Jenna's, while still struggling to regain my breath. If only she knew how ridiculously off-base her assumptions were. I shook my head slowly as I keep my eyes locked with hers.

"This is not a shotgun wedding, Jenna. I promise you. I know you don't understand it because sometimes I'm bewildered by it myself, but I love Damon…with all my heart. He's different with me…we're soul mates, in the truest sense of the word."

I glanced at Elena who nodded her head slightly with a crooked smile. She agreed that the wording couldn't have been more perfect for the bond I shared with Damon. However crazy and messed up it might seem, we changed one another fundamentally in the course of just a week. No matter what lie ahead, we would never be the Damon and Bekah we had been before we found each other. Our hearts had real homes now, and that would never, ever change.

Jenna had been slow to convince, but eventually she agreed to not only attend, but stand up with me as a bridesmaid…and our wedding party was set. Elena would be my maid of honor, escorted by Stefan, Damon's best man, and then Jeremy would escort his Aunt Jenna as our other groomsman. In that one small grouping, all the people I truly embraced as my family would be by our side, and that thought made me happier than I had been in a long time. When Damon and I made things official, my family would then finally be whole. I didn't count my half brother brooding somewhere across town, hating me enough not to even make contact with me since my return, and we won't even discuss the mystical rapist with whom I share blood. No, I didn't want them; much less need them to make me whole.

We managed to arrange the entire wedding in three weeks…five weeks and two days before I turned 30…five weeks and two days before I would finally be ready to do whatever it was I had to do to end the curse for good.

I pushed back that thought as I clamored out of my car, tugging my heavy bag behind me. I had a lot of planning to do before the end of the week to provide for my sub while I was honeymooning with Damon. Due to the situation at hand, we weren't going far, but even a small getaway was better than nothing.

Damon greeted me with a kiss before taking my bag and leading me to the kitchen. My appetite had been insane the last few weeks and yet I didn't seem to gain any weight. I pondered the possibilities of a vampire metabolism kicking in and how awesome that would be if it meant I could eat my weight in chocolate and not have to worry about my waistline. I smiled gratefully, taking a bite of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the counter while Damon spread out my work on the large dining table. He was determined to help me sort out work so I would think of nothing but him for our short week away. Oh how far he'd come from the arrogant, self-serving ass he'd been when we met.

I took another bite feeling as if something was missing. Getting up from the stool at the counter Damon had settled me in, I moved to the fridge, opening it to stare in at the assortment the boys kept around for Elena and me. I scanned some succulent fruit, turning my nose up at it before my eyes fell on a glass jar of bread and butter pickles cut thin to put on sandwiches and my mouth watered. Grabbing the bottle, I pulled it out, popping open the lid and tossing two slices inside my sandwich. I was putting away the bottle when Damon walked in, looking at me as if I'd lost my mind.

"What on earth are you doing?"

I shrugged. "It just sounded like a good combination. You know me; I like strange things together sometimes."

He watched me with a cocked brow as I lifted the sandwich and took a bite, humming at my new taste creation while his face took on a revolted look. I giggled before taking another few bites. Stefan and Elena came in, giving me equally skeptical looks when Damon told them all about my new culinary experimentation.

"You know, Aunt Bekah, if I didn't know better, I'd say Aunt Jenna's first assumption wasn't so crazy."

"What assumption?" Damon asked, moving to rub my back as he sat a glass of milk in front of me.

I took another bite before chasing it immediately with the milk, swishing it all together in my mouth as Elena passed me a napkin and answered on my behalf.

"Jenna immediately thought that she was pregnant and it was a shotgun wedding. It was hilarious actually…but now I'm beginning to wonder."

I rolled my eyes before eating the last corner of crust and picking up my glass of milk to disappear into the dining room. There were a few more hushed comments before Damon came out to sit beside me, eyeing me closely.

I sighed, setting down my papers before looking at him through my eyelashes. "You said it yourself, Damon. Vampires don't reproduce."

He just stared at me, in that Damon way that made my inside turn to goo and also made me feel like I was under an interrogator's light all at the same time. I ignored it and went back to my work. Eventually he tugged over another pile and started grading a test for me, dropping the subject for the time being, but I could tell he was still worried.

I ate a normal supper before going to bed with Damon, but woke up just before the dawn with my stomach rolling in discomfort. I sat up and covered my mouth just before I jumped out of bed and ran to slide in front of the toilet, all the contents left in my stomach from the night before coming up in violent torrents.

I didn't think it would ever end and felt mortified when Damon showed up behind me to hold my hair before handing me a damp cloth that he had flashed to grab for me from the sink. I wiped my mouth, thanking him with a slurred tongue before flushing and shuffling to the sink to rinse out my mouth. It took three rounds and a hurried brushing before my mouth felt fresh again.

I looked up into the mirror after spitting the last rinsing to see Damon standing behind me looking terrified. I turned slowly to lean against the sink, crossing my arms.

"Damon, humans get sick. It's not the end of the world. I'll be fine."

He shook his head slowly as he stared at my stomach. "Don't you HEAR that?"

I listened around the room and didn't hear a thing. I watched as he stared at me in surprise before moving to kneel in front of me, resting his ear against my stomach. He was the palest I had ever seen him when he pulled back again, his pupils mere pinpricks in a sea of blue sapphire.

"How can you not hear that?" His eyes began to water before he rested his ear over my stomach again.

I relaxed my body and listed. Eventually I stilled enough to hear the steady thud of my own heart, but not far away was the teeny, tiny, barely audible triple time thud coming from inside me.

I gasped my eyes growing wide and filling with tears, as I had honestly believed that this was impossible. "How?"

Damon looked up at me in surprise. "You're an anomaly?" It seemed to be the only thing he could come up, but he seemed question the theory himself.

I lifted my hands to my face and sobbed. "I never…why didn't I think of this? How? What?"

Then realization really began to set in and my heart picked up speed so it was nearly as fast as the tiny thud far below my navel. "The blessing…Emily said to protect the blessing…that the blessing will save me. Do you think?"

Damon stood up then, his face serious as he cupped my face with his hands. "She's right. This is a baby, a life we made together. It's a miracle that I never in a million years ever dreamed…and you…you CAN'T risk his or her life on this curse thing. You can't…Oh God."

He pulled me into his arms; his face nestled in the crook of my shoulder as we both sobbed. It was a bittersweet combination of amazement and awe mixed with fear and confusion. Eventually we pulled apart to stare at each other, Damon's eyes looking pained as he saw to look in my own.

"I can't walk away from this. Even with the baby. Emily said to protect the blessing, that the blessing would keep me safe, but she also said I had to solidify the curse and kill Katherine to ever have peace. Obviously I'm still going to have to do this even though I'm pregnant."

Damon's eyes grew wide and panicked. "No, you can't. I can't let you. You can't do this! That's MY baby in there…I can't let you walk up to death and tap it on the shoulder while you're carrying my child."

I was crying again, my sobs making my entire body shake. "I'm sorry, Damon."

His pain and terror disappeared as his eyes went blank, his face cold as the mask I hadn't seen in quite some time slid back into place. "You will be sorry. You're not going to do this to us. I won't let you."

With that, he flashed to the closet, changed his clothes before I could register the movement, and disappeared through our bedroom door. Everything was falling apart and only two days before the wedding. My stomach clenched and I turned toward the toilet, heaving into the bowl but getting nothing but thin yellow bile that tasted like rotten eggs.

I gagged a few more times before I moved to the sink to brush my teeth again before calling the school. At this rate, I was going to be fired, but to be totally honest I didn't care anymore. I dressed slowly and shuffled out into the hallway, making it to the staircase just as a laughing Stefan and Elena came from the other wing. When they saw me, they rushed to my side, Elena asking what was wrong as Stefan froze and stared at me in surprise before blinking down at my stomach.

I began to sob again, nodding through my tears. I let them lead me downstairs before telling them the entire story. Elena cried next to me while Stefan promised to be back soon and disappeared into the morning sun in search of his brother, who we all knew was no longer in the house. I didn't know where he was or what was going to happen, but I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that had nothing to do with morning sickness. I didn't want to believe it, but a part of me worried that I might have just lost my soul mate forever, and in a way I really couldn't blame him.

I felt more trapped in that moment than ever before in my life. Risk myself and the baby to save several innocent teenagers and the rest of humanity from the slaughter that would follow, or put my baby first and step away from the entire situation? It was a question without a real right answer and yet I knew that there was. The mother in me, as tiny as she was since I had never had any real maternal instinct in my life, screamed for me to run, to protect my baby, to fight tooth and nail to keep him or her safe. When I considered the world that would arise if I didn't take action, I knew it was no life for my child. I knew that we didn't know what was going to happen to the two of us, but there was a chance we would be fine. There was a chance we would escape unscathed. It was a chance I was going to have to take, because the alternative was unfathomable.

Emily Bennett had told me that I would have to sacrifice and it might be something I didn't expect. Would my sacrifice be Damon? The thought alone tore me to pieces inside, my soul literally rendered in two at the thought of life without him…but I had no choice. Whatever repercussions, my path was set, and I had to believe that in the end, at the very least, my baby would be saved. It was my only hope.