Content/trigger warning for mentions of pregnancy, panic attacks, throwing up, abortion

As the next couple of weeks passed, I found myself making plans to do something else whenever Lissa was around Dimitri, unable to put myself in a position that would have me be close to him. I knew a better guardian would shove it all down; after all, they come first, but I couldn't bring myself to be a better guardian. Lissa understood and knew that things would get easier once we left for Lehigh. She was so focused on getting Dimitri to be accepted again and getting his guardian title back before we left because we both knew there wouldn't be anyone at Court to keep petitioning for him after that. Tasha was around and was helping where she could, but nobody could beat Lissa's charisma.

A week before we left for Lehigh, I woke up with a churning stomach. For a moment, panic swept over me, thinking that my nausea was due to the nearby presence of Strigoi. As I leaped out of bed, I realized I could still see sunlight through the cracks in my curtains, and I knew that Strigoi couldn't be out right now. A glance at the clock told me the sun wouldn't be setting for at least another five hours.

I swallowed down the urge to throw up and stumbled into my kitchen, searching for tea to help calm my stomach. I managed to find a box of chamomile tea in the back of the cabinet, and I quickly brewed a cup, still holding back the urge to throw up.

I sipped my tea slowly, hoping it would settle my stomach, and put a piece of bread in the toaster. I didn't feel like eating anything, but I knew I had to. I was tempted to lather the toast in butter when it was ready but resisted, knowing that it would likely make my nausea worse. I ate my toast slowly, still sipping my tea, and when I was finished, I crawled back into my bed, praying for the nausea to go away.

I drifted back to sleep and was jolted awake a couple of hours later by my alarm. I noticed that the nausea had faded, which I was grateful for, but I also noticed that I was now stuffed up and could barely breathe through my nose.

"Fuck," I muttered.

I hated being sick, and while it didn't happen very often, it was always terrible when it did. I reached for my phone and quickly texted Lissa that I was sick and would be taking the day off. She texted back immediately, telling me to get better soon. She also offered to heal me, and I ignored her. I didn't want her wasting spirit on me for something like this. I felt like staying in bed all day and sleeping, and I figured that I would get better with some medicine and sleep in my system. I was also hoping that I had caught the sickness quickly enough that if I immediately started medicine, then I would feel better in a couple of days.

Despite taking medicine religiously and on schedule, I didn't feel any better. My nausea came and went, and I continued feeling stuffed up. I hadn't managed to eat more than some plain toast and crackers here and there, and I knew that I needed to find some form of protein, but it was a struggle keeping anything down. Two days after I first got sick, Lissa was at my door.

"Let me heal you," she said. "I hate seeing you sick."

"Liss—"

"You tried your way," she said. "Let me try mine."

"It's just a cold," I insisted. "I'll be fine in a few days."

"That's what you said a few days ago," Lissa said. "Please. I can't go to Lehigh without you."

She knew exactly what to say to get me to cave. I needed to be at my strongest for her. It had been enough of a struggle to convince Tatiana to reassign me to Lissa, and I couldn't blow it. Lissa had made it clear to Tatiana that I would be her guardian regardless of whether I was officially assigned and had given Tatiana an ultimatum of permanently assigning me or Lissa walking away. There had been a moment where I thought Tatiana wouldn't give in to Lissa's demands, but in the end, she reluctantly agreed, finding more value in keeping Lissa under her wing – and her control, to a certain extent.

"Fine," I said. "You can heal me."

She grinned and placed her hand on my shoulder. I felt the magic swell up in the bond and prepared myself for the tingling waves of hot, cold, and hot again. I felt it wash through me, but as the magic receded, I felt exactly the same. The nausea was still lingering, and though I had been breathing better today, I could tell that I was still stuffed up.

"Better?"

I shook my head. "I feel the same."

She narrowed her eyes at me, and I knew she was reading my aura. "It's like when I tried to heal your headache on the plane to Court during Victor's trial. I felt the magic, but it didn't have any effect on you." She continued staring at me. "Your aura's weird, too."

"Weird? Moreso than normal?"

Lissa nodded, biting her lip. "Maybe we should ask Adrian? He's better at reading auras than I am."

After a moment, I nodded reluctantly. I hadn't seen much of Adrian since I broke up with him nearly a month ago. I followed Lissa across Court to Adrian's apartment, and Lissa knocked twice before Adrian opened the door.

"Little dhampir, cousin, what a surprise," he said, stepping back so we could enter the room.

"Hi," I said.

Adrian's eyes met mine, and I could see the sadness in them. But I also saw acceptance, and I was grateful for the knowledge that he wasn't still upset with me.

"What's going on?"

"Rose is sick," Lissa said. "But I can't heal her, and her aura is weird. I can't quite read it, though, and thought you might be able to help."

Adrian nodded, looking back over at me. He studied me, and despite knowing that he was reading my aura, I still shifted, uncomfortable under his intense gaze. His eyes widened a moment later, a frown appearing on his lips shortly after. He glanced between me and Lissa before speaking.

"Your aura looks weird because it's not just your aura," he said. "You're pregnant, Rose."

"Pregnant?" Lissa and I both spoke at the same time.

"I can't be pregnant," I said.

Lissa looked between me and Adrian. "I didn't know you guys had—"

I cut her off. "We didn't."

Her brow furrowed.

"You can pee on a stick if you don't believe me," Adrian said. "But you're definitely pregnant."

"Yeah, no offense, but I'm going to need a second opinion," I said, getting dizzy.

Adrian pointed towards his bathroom. "There are tests in there."

As I walked towards the bathroom, I heard Lissa ask him why he had pregnancy tests.

"Rose isn't the first one who's come to my doorstep needing to confirm if they're pregnant – or rather, not pregnant," he said. "I've always been careful, but shit happens."

I tuned out the rest of the conversation and closed the bathroom door behind me. I found the box of pregnancy tests under the bathroom sink, and I pulled out a test, my hands shaking. Three minutes later, the two pink lines on the test were unmistakable. I was pregnant.

I felt a dull pain in my chest building as I counted back the days. I couldn't be more than four weeks pregnant, but I still lifted my shirt and turned sideways to look at myself in the mirror. I didn't notice a difference; my abdomen looked as flat and toned as always. I sighed, dropping my shirt. The pain in my chest was still there, and I rubbed at the spot where it hurt the most, but that made it worse. The pain was in the center of my sternum, where my bra band sat.

When I came out of the bathroom, Lissa and Adrian were waiting in the living room, and I didn't say anything as I sat down on the couch next to Lissa. One look at my face, and she knew that Adrian hadn't been wrong about my aura. I could sense the questions flying through her mind, and she kept getting stuck on the same thing I was. Dimitri was the only person I had ever slept with, and it was a well-known fact in our society that dhampirs couldn't get dhampirs pregnant.

As we sat there, I could feel Adrian studying me, and I risked looking at him. He wasn't dumb, and I knew he had to have figured it out since I hadn't slept with him. He wasn't angry when I met his gaze, though. I could still see the sadness there, but not anger. I thought I also saw resignation there too.

"How did this happen?" I whispered.

"Spirit," Adrian said after a moment. I jerked up, and he shrugged. "There are flecks of gold in your aura. That's the only thing that I can think of. You're shadow-kissed, and Belikov's been restored. He is the father, right?"

I nodded, absentmindedly still rubbing my chest. The pain was getting worse, and I tried not to let it show on my face.

"That's the only thing that makes sense. Maybe Lissa changed something when she brought you back or when she restored him, or maybe it's a mixture of the two," Adrian said. "It's going to change everything."

I instinctively wrapped my arms around my stomach, not wanting any harm to come to the child inside of me. I didn't know much about raising a child, but I instantly knew I didn't want them to become a science experiment.

"Nobody can know," I whispered. "Nobody can know that this baby has two dhampir parents."

Lissa immediately caught on to what I was saying. "We won't let anyone do crazy experiments," she said. She bit her lip. "But you have to tell him."

I didn't have to clarify what she was talking about. "I will," I said.

"Are you okay?" Adrian asked softly.

"I don't know," I whispered.

I tried taking deep breaths to alleviate the chest pain, but it wasn't helping. Before I could speak again, I felt saliva pooling in my mouth, and I knew I had about five seconds before I would start throwing up. I had thrown up enough over the past couple of days to recognize the warning signs. I bolted for the bathroom, barely making it before I started throwing up. I was expecting to throw up my breakfast, but instead, all that came up was white, foamy liquid. I stayed in the bathroom for another few minutes, and I threw up twice more before I finally felt like I was safe enough to leave the bathroom.

Lissa was nervously waiting outside of the bathroom when I came out.

"Morning sickness?"

I shook my head. "I don't think so."

"Probably a panic attack," Adrian said.

"What?"

"You have chest pain, right?" Adrian said, gesturing to where I had subconsciously started rubbing my chest again. I nodded. "That, combined with the throwing up, sounds like a panic attack to me."

"It would make sense," Lissa mused. "There's a lot going on that could cause it."

"It's going to be okay," Adrian said. "We'll help however we can. You're not alone in this."

I nodded. "Thank you."

Dimitri had been avoiding me as much as I had been avoiding him. The benefit of going out of my way to avoid him meant that I now knew his schedule by heart, and I knew there wouldn't be a moment where I could get him alone. I decided that cornering him in public, where he couldn't push me away without making a scene, was the ideal choice.

As I made my way down his pew the following Sunday, the day before we were supposed to leave for Lehigh, I kept reminding myself that it was important that he knew, no matter how much he hurt me, he deserved to know about the child I was carrying. The rest of his pew was empty; the other Moroi and dhampirs around him were still too unsure about his status to sit near him. The fact that he was standing in the church should have been more than enough proof, considering that Strigoi couldn't enter holy ground, but at that moment, I was thankful that nobody had chosen to sit there. I sat next to him silently. Dimitri looked over at me when I sat down but said nothing. He did shift over slightly, creating a bigger gap between us, but it wasn't enough to cause a scene.

I tried to focus on the sermon but found my mind wandering. I knew that Dimitri wanted children, but I didn't know how he would react, especially with all he had been battling since the restoration. I also didn't know how he would react to the child being ours. It wasn't something that we had ever talked about since dhampir infertility made it impossible to have children, and he hadn't made the fact that he wanted nothing to do with me a secret. I still wasn't sure how he had managed to get me pregnant, but Lissa had already started looking into Adrian's theory of it being spirit's fault.

I was brought out of my thoughts by the other churchgoers standing to take communion, and I turned to Dimitri. I could feel the dull pain starting in my chest again, and I prayed that I would be able to make it through this without throwing up again.

"We need to talk," I said, my voice pitched low. There was a low level of chatter around us as communion took place, but I still didn't want to risk anyone overhearing us.

He didn't look at me when he spoke. "I have nothing to say to you, Rose."

"Well, it's about more than just me," I said. "Do you remember that thing we did a few weeks ago?"

"We can't be friends," Dimitri said tightly.

"I'm not asking to be friends," I said, starting to get angry. I needed to get the words out, but Dimitri wasn't giving me the opportunity. I didn't think I'd get another chance, and I wasn't entirely sure I could muster the courage again, even if I did get a second chance. My stomach was in knots as it was. "Whether you like it or not, we had sex again, and that has consequ—"

"Rose, please stop," Dimitri hissed, cutting me off. "I don't want this. I don't want you."

"But—"

"No buts," he said. He finally looked at me, a hard look in his eyes. "Love fades, mine has."

The words tore through me, and I jerked back as if he had hit me. I thought I saw a glimmer of regret on his face for a second, but he quickly buried it and turned away from me with a sense of finality. I couldn't hold back my sobs this time and left the church with tears streaming down my face, not caring who saw me.

I wasn't entirely sure how I made it across Court when I could barely see, but I was at Lissa's door minutes later. I had stopped twice on my trek across Court to throw up, and I banged on the door, hoping that I could get inside before I had to throw up again. She opened it, surprised to see me. I could barely see Christian behind her, and with one look, Lissa was sending him away, giving us privacy. She invited me into the apartment, and I collapsed next to her on the couch. Lissa held me, soothing me in a way that only she knew how. Slowly, the chest pain started ebbing away, and I noticed then that Lissa had been slowly healing me, taking away the panic attack.

"I told him," I said finally, the tears slowing as I leaned out of her embrace. "Or tried to tell him at least."

The look on Lissa's face told me that she could guess the outcome, but she still asked. "What did he say?"

"He didn't actually let me get the words out," I said. "He pushed me away, told me he didn't want me, and didn't want this. His love has faded."

I said the last bit bitterly, and sympathy fell over Lissa's face.

"I'm so sorry, Rose," she said. "What are you going to do?"

As I stared at her, I knew part of her wouldn't understand, but I knew what I had to do. I had spent the past few days considering every option under the sun. I think I realized what I had to do as soon as Dimitri turned me away, though I hadn't wanted to give it much thought before now.

"I'm leaving," I said. "I can't stay around here, and I'm no use to you as a guardian while pregnant. I'll talk to Hans and get reassigned until I have the baby. And then I'll be back, I promise."

"You don't have to do this," Lissa said softly. "You have other options."

"Like what?"

She bit her lip as if second-guessing what she was going to say. After a moment, she spoke. "You could always end the pregnancy."

I had actually already considered that. It had been the first thing that I thought of. I shook my head. "No, I can't. With the dwindling dhampir numbers, it wouldn't be right. And, well, it's a miracle that I'm even pregnant. Who knows what this could mean for our society. I can't be a mother; I'm not ready. But there are others who can raise this baby."

"Who?"

I took a deep breath. "Dimitri's family."