The King(138)

But what had come before her needing was getting crystal clear. Like someone whose symptoms didn’t tie together until they received a diagnosis, she thought back over the previous four months … and strung together the mood swings, the yearning for a child, the cravings, the weight gain.

PMS, vampire style.

This whole getting-fertile thing had been on its way for a while. She just hadn’t strung together all the signs …

Refocusing on the mirror, she went in for a close-up. Nope, her features were all the same. She just felt as though they should be different.

Like with her transition.

Wrath had helped her through all that as well. And it was funny, as with the needing, she’d had vague weirdnesses for some time before her change had come, too: restlessness, appetite stuff, headaches in the sun.

She had to wonder if finding out she was pregnant was going to be as big as discovering she was a vampire.

Putting her hand on her lower belly, she thought … actually, it probably would be.

For some reason, she went back to waking up after her transition. First thing she’d done was go into the bathroom for the mirror. At least then she’d had fangs to show for all of it. Now, any changes that might be going on were on the inside.

At least her abdomen was still swollen. Although that was more likely just the weight she’d put on thanks to her Breyers diet.

Or she could be pregnant. Like, right now.

As she pictured the guy in the AT&T infinity x infinity commercial, she knew that even though Wrath had serviced her, she’d be crazy to think he’d magically turned a corner in the road and was suddenly going to be all happy-happy about starting a family.

Again, assuming she was pregnant.

Meeting the reflection of her own eyes, she wondered what the hell she’d put into motion. There were things in life you could undo.

This was not one of them—

Her stomach let out a noise like her heart was spelunking down to her butt. Glancing at the thing, she muttered, “Okay, people, let’s all get along.”

With her guts grinding on the food she’d thrown into them, she turned around and walked back for the bed.

Except that was not where she ended up.

Instead, she went into the closet, pulled on a blue bathrobe and shoved her socked feet into a pair of pink UGGs that Marissa had gotten all the females in the house as a joke.

The First Family’s quarters were so sumptuous that Beth didn’t spend a lot of time looking or thinking about the way they were turned out, and as usual, she was relieved as she left them. Yeah, sure, the place was lovely—if you were a sultan. For godsakes, it was like trying to sleep in Ali Baba’s cave, jewels twinkling on the walls and the ceiling—and not fake ones, either.

And no, she’d never gotten used to the gold toilet.

The whole thing was absurd—

Holy crap, she thought as she locked the vault back up behind her. How did anyone raise a kid in that environment?

A kid that was halfway normal, that is.

Heading down the stairs to the second floor, she realized there was another aspect of the whole child thing she hadn’t considered: She’d been so focused on getting one, she hadn’t considered having one in this kind of life.

They’d be a prince or a princess. The former the heir to the throne.

Oh, and P.S., how do you tell a kid his or her father had been shot in the throat by someone who wanted the crown?

God, why hadn’t she thought about any of this?

Which was Wrath’s whole point, wasn’t it.

Stepping out of the staircase, she went to Wrath’s office, only distantly aware of conversation rising up from the foyer.

She was a little surprised that he wasn’t behind the desk. She’d assumed when Fritz had brought up the food that her hellren had gotten sucked into work.

Stepping into the room, she stared at that huge wooden boat of a throne and then squinted, trying to imagine a son—or a daughter—sitting behind it. Because screw the Old Laws: If they had a little girl, Beth herself was going to make sure her hubs changed the rules.

If the British monarchy could do it, so could the vampires.

God … was she really thinking like this?

Rubbing her temples, she recognized that all of this was the tip of the iceberg Wrath had been crashing into—and meanwhile, she’d been Fisher Pricing it in her head, enjoying an internal debate on cloth diapers versus Pampers, what kind of video monitor to buy, and whether or not she liked the new crib styles at Pottery Barn.

Infant and baby stuff. The kind of things she’d watched Bella and Z wrestle with, and purchase, and use.

None of what had been on her radar had been about raising children into adulthood. Which was what Wrath had been focused on.

Suddenly, the pressures inherent in that great carved chair had never seemed so real: Although she had witnessed them firsthand, the true burden of it all didn’t really set in until this moment … as she pictured a child of hers sitting where her mate did every night.