Gideon's Promise (Sons of Judgment Book 2) (59 page)

Despite the tightness in her chest, Valkyrie couldn’t help laugh.

Grinning, Gideon raised his head and met her gaze. “It wasn’t until much later that I began to see some truth in the words. I watched every year as my friends all imprinted and settled down with their families. I hated all of them. Our village was small so I could never understand why my mate wasn’t there. The fact that none of my brothers had imprinted either made me feel a little better.” His smile slipped and a hollow darkness filled his eyes. “Then the war started. My race was eradicated until it was just us. Lilith knows how we survived when an entire race didn’t. But we did and with their death I had been so certain that my chances of finding my other half was gone.” He watched the lazy skim of his thumb along her knuckles and she watched him, her heart aching. “Then I saw her one night, putting her own life at risk to save a group of human women from a madman. She was beautiful. I think I fell in love with her on the spot.”

“She sounds amazing,” Valkyrie murmured.

Gideon chuckled. “She is. She’s also the only person I have ever wanted to be truly enslaved to, body, heart, and soul.” He raised his chin, but only barely so he peered up at her through wispy fringes and thick lashes. “What do you say? Can I be yours?”

Her answer was to crawl into his lap, straddle his legs, and lock her arms around his neck.

I
t took two months to confirm what she already knew and only after she found her head buried in the toilet more than not. However, the morning sickness was nothing compared to the cravings, the aches and pains, and the mood swings. By the fifth month, winter had melted into spring and summer was peeking at them from around the corner and the heat was already driving her crazy. Nothing fit and she could no longer wear her boots due to swollen ankles and crappy balance.

Gideon was elated about the whole thing. Every new symptom only heightened his excitement, and despite her foul temper, Valkyrie couldn’t help getting excited with him. There was something contagious about his happiness, about the way he cradled her expanding abdomen and peered into her eyes with the most ridiculous grin. With each new day, she became more addicted to his attention, to his love and adoration. The thought of having a baby still scared the shit out of her, especially when every time she looked at her hands, all she saw were killing machines.

“I don’t think I can do this,” she confessed.

“It’ll be fine,” Gideon promised, as he did every time she began to feel herself panicking. “Your hands are beautiful and oddly very soft.”

She looked at her palms with their long, slender fingers. “Why oddly?”

“No idea, but it made you stop thinking they’re going to magically grow minds of their own and strangle our baby, didn’t you?”

She frowned at his logic. “That’s not funny.” She sighed and let her hands drop into her lap. “What if I drop her?”

“I’ve seen you throw a blade with deadly accuracy from fifty paces ... I think you’ll be fine.”

“Stop pacifying me!” she snapped. “I haven’t seen a child since I was one. I don’t like them. They’re all small and fragile and they
cry
!”

Gideon, not taking her seriously at all, nodded slowly with a sort of contemplation that narrowed his eyes. “Well, between the two of us, I doubt she’ll be overly fragile, but if she does cry, we can always toss her into the well out back—”

She smacked him on the arm, twice for good measure.

“You’re horrible! And your mother is going to kill you once I tell her what you said.”

“Tell me what?” Kyaerin marched into the room, a box of bottles rattled in her hands.

“Only that you look radiant this morning,” Gideon announced.

Kyaerin narrowed her eyes as she set the box down on a nearby table. “Uh huh. I do hope you’re not threatening to toss my grandbaby into the well again, are you?”

“What?” Gideon gasped in feigned outrage. “Would I do that?”

“Yes,” Kyaerin and Valkyrie said simultaneously.

Chuckling, Valkyrie planted one hand on the table, the other on the back of her chair, and tried to wiggle herself up and out. But it was as though all the weight in the world had settled on her midsection and the slightest wrong move could send her plummeting face forward, or backwards.

“I got it!” she snapped when Gideon reached for her. “I can do this. I can get out of a damn chair!”

She couldn’t.

With a defeated sigh, she waited for Gideon to tuck his hands under her arms and heft her up. He was a smart man and kept his grin firmly tucked behind mashed lips.

Grumbling, she made her way to where Kyaerin stood at an awkward waddle that she would not miss.

“Can’t wear my clothes, my shoes, and now I can’t get up without a crane.”

“Hey!”

She ignored Gideon’s insulted protest.

“What are we making today?” She stopped on the other side of the table, one hand resting over the bulge in her belly, the other against the small of her spine.

“Just labelling the jars,” Kyaerin said. “Some of the old ones are faded and nearly impossible to read.”

Nodding, Valkyrie reached for one bottle at random and turned it over to scan the yellow sticker peeling off the side. The ink had smudged, making the neat script illegible.

“Basil, or...”

The bottle tumbled from her grasp and shattered across the floor as her hands flew to her abdomen where the sharp kick had literally knocked the breath out of her.

“Valkyrie?” Kyaerin reached for her, but Gideon was faster.

His hands closed over hers. “What’s wrong?”

“I...” Her words trailed off as she waited for another, her heart thumping in excitement. “I think I felt the baby kick.”

“What...?”

She grabbed Gideon’s wrist and flattened his palms over the spot and waited. She was almost certain neither of them were even breathing as they waited. Then they felt it, the sharp, precise jab.

“Oh my God!” Gideon gasped, staring at her stomach like it held all the secrets to life.

“Let me feel!”

Valkyrie, without moving Gideon’s hand, settled Kyaerin’s alongside it and held both in place.

The wait was shorter this time and came in the rapid successions of someone annoyed at being disturbed.

“She’s strong,” Kyaerin said, her blue eyes bright and shiny with tears.

Feeling her own eyes filming over, Valkyrie laughed. Her gaze went up to the man standing next to her, his hand still cradled under hers, over the life they’d made together. His silver eyes bore straight into her soul, bright with a love that was almost too painful to stare directly into. He kissed her deeply and it was enough to give her all the confidence in the world that they would be fine. That
she
would be fine.

“I’m going to the pond,” he murmured, fingers brushing her cheek.

“Is it that time of the month?” she teased him.

He grinned and flicked her nose gently. “Not my fault you wear me out, especially now what with your hormones giving you extra juice. Remember, I have several centuries over you.”

Valkyrie hummed softly. “Practically my grandfather.”

Gideon burst out laughing. He skimmed another kiss to her mouth and backed away. “Hey, this grandfather can still make you—”

“Okay, stop.” Kyaerin hurried around the table. “I can’t pretend being deaf anymore.”

Exchanging a final amused glance with Gideon, Valkyrie turned towards the table. Her gaze dropped to the bottle she’d broken and she sighed.

“I’ll get the broom.”

Kyaerin waved her away. “I’ll get it. Why don’t you two go have fun? I’m going to be starting supper soon anyway.”

Elated by the idea of watching Gideon strip down and transform into his selkie form, Valkyrie didn’t object. There was little else that made her insides shiver with arousal than the sight of him in all his raw and unhampered power, looking wild and vicious as he cut through the water as easily as a hot knife through butter. She loved tracing the hard lines and grooves of his torso, loved the sounds he made when she got him all worked up. She knew he would punish her once he was human again. He would torment and terrorize every inch of her until she couldn’t take anymore and she loved it. Loved every second of it.

“My virtue isn’t safe with her,” Gideon remarked, even as he slid his hand along Valkyrie’s back and drew her into his side. “She’s really quite deviant and such a pervert.”

Valkyrie swatted him.

His mother shook her head, but said nothing as she settled down to start labeling.

Laughing, Gideon propelled Valkyrie through the kitchen and out the backdoor. It was the only one not sealed during the day so the boys could go hunting without having to keep reboarding the front. Soft, dewy grass rustled beneath their feet as they started towards the woods. Brittle twigs snapped and wet legs clung to their boots. Gideon kept a firm grip on her hand, guiding her over roots and down the steep incline. At the bottom, he caught her into his arms and held her with such care, she almost believed herself made of fine glass.

“Have I told you how much I love you today?” he asked as he did nearly every day.

But no matter how often he did, it still sent a thrill through her.

“You might have this morning, but that could have been yesterday so you should say it anyway.”

Chuckling, he lowered his head and rested his brow against hers. “I—”

A resounding crack of wood splintering shattered the moment. It froze both of them even as an unnatural silence descended upon them. The air had shifted, growing fraught and dangerous.

“Gideon...”

“Get back to the house.” He shoved her towards the incline. “Go and don’t stop.”

No sooner had she turned when something shrieked through the trees. The air whistled.

Valkyrie whipped around, his name perched on her lips, but he had already gone down on his knees. The arrow jutted from the place between his shoulder blades.

“Gideon!”

“No! Run!”

The second arrow lodged into his lower back. His scream echoed hers.

“Run, Valkyrie!”

Blinded by tears, Valkyrie turned and ran. Her heart roared in her chest, pounding with an urgency that burned. Fear clawed with razor sharpness up the soft tissues of her esophagus, filling her mouth with the vile tang of bile. Her boots slid on wet leaves, stealing her momentum and driving her every progression back several steps. Damp earth sunk beneath her nails and soaked into her pants as she clawed her way to the top.

Below, she heard Gideon give another piercing cry as a third arrow penetrated into his body. The sound bore straight into her very soul and she nearly turned back.

The baby!
was all the voice in her head had to say and she knew she couldn’t. She had to protect the life inside her no matter what the cost. That was what Gideon would want, no matter how much it killed her.

Her lungs were throbbing by the time she scrambled her way to the top. Her hands left dirty smears across the front of her coat as she clutched her middle and ran for the manor.

“Magnus!” she screamed, not even sure if they could hear her in that enormous place. “Help!”

Pain exploded across her back in a shower of flickering embers that sent her crashing to her knees. It was pure reflexes that propelled her arm out to catch most of her fall. The world cartwheeled in a repulsive whirl of brown and gray and it took her a moment to realize someone was wrenching her over. There was a violent tug at her back and the pain ... oh, the pain was beyond any world. It ripped through her with such violence, she vomited. Her entire body seized. Blinding pools of light shattered through the knot of branches above and transformed the hulking figure above her to a black smudge. It reached for her.

“No...!”

Her movements were dull, like she were fighting through sludge. A few times she got him, but it couldn’t have been more than a child’s swat.

“Calm down,” a booming voice told her. “The poison will only pump faster through your veins if you fight.”

Poison?

“My ... baby ... Gideon...”

He was jerking at her clothes, tearing open her coat and yanking her top up to the cold air. He didn’t speak again. Valkyrie kept trying to fight him, but she wasn’t sure her arms were even lifting anymore. Her entire body seemed out of her control, frozen from the neck down. But she could feel everything he was doing to her, could hear the rip of her pants, the tug as it was jerked down around her thighs.

“No...”

Everything swayed between light and dark. Her heart was slowing. She could feel the weight settling over it, crushing it into stopping. Somewhere, through the haze, an angry scarlet haze rose up into the air. It bloomed over her as she fought to stay conscious. But the pull was just too great. It overpowered her and she crumpled into a black pit.

S
he didn’t wake gently. She woke with a choked cry, reaching and fighting an invisible force as her mind and body rampaged between reality and dream. Her own breathing splintered through the inky calm before it was interrupted by a rustle, a creak of weight shifting on wood. Then there was a dip in the mattress and familiar hands were pulling her to them.

“It’s all right.”

Woozy, Valkyrie clung to Gideon. “I had the worst dream,” she gasped into his shoulder. “I thought I lost you and our baby.” She squeezed him tighter. “I’ve never been so scared.”

He said nothing. The only sound came from his breathing and the quiet, rhythmic strokes of his hand over her hair.

“Gideon?”

His hand tensed. The fingers curled into her hair. His heart escalated against hers. Still he never spoke.

“Gideon, what...?”

Her hand froze at her stomach. Where there should have been a smooth bulge was nothing but flat, toned muscle. There was no indication she had ever had a baby inside her, no swelling in her breasts, no flare in her hips. Nothing.

“Gideon...?” Her voice was small and weak even to her own ears. The fear that wove through it broke her. “Where’s my baby?”

Gideon shook his head. “I don’t know.”