"Are you pregnant, Carmilla?"
Lucius's question left me completely frozen. Spinning on my heel, I bolted back upstairs to throw up again. They followed me upstairs, gently asking if I was alright and whether they could come in to help me. I refused, telling them I'd come downstairs as soon as I felt a little better.
I'm twenty, girl. I definitely don't want this—even though, like I told you before, my body instinctively responds to them and craves it. But no, no, and no. I need to think about something else, I told myself. But every time I tried, my mind flooded with images of beautiful, chubby-cheeked babies with an intoxicating scent, which only made me feel worse.
I decided to go downstairs without a script, not even attempting to prepare an answer for them. The moment I opened the door, both of them were standing there.
Killian asked, "Are you feeling better? Do you need me to check you over?"
I gave him a strange look. Lucius chimed in, "Let Killian look at you. Seriously, he's a doctor."
I laughed, thinking it was a joke, and snapped at them out of sheer annoyance. "And what, are you a schoolteacher?"
Lucius looked at me dead seriously. "No, I have a PhD in History and Economics. It's no joke. My father prepared us to—"
I pleaded with him to please be quiet. Irritated, I stared at them for a moment, then pointed a finger at Killian, narrowing my eyes. "Tell me something only a doctor would know."
He didn't miss a beat. "Symptoms consistent with early gestation, such as nausea and vomiting, correlate with a progressive increase in human chorionic gonadotropin. Nausea can be exacerbated by specific olfactory stimuli. Furthermore, dizziness can be explained by episodes of relative hypotension secondary to systemic vasodilation induced by hormonal changes characteristic of early pregnancy."
I burst into tears. Look, girl, I'm not going to lie to you; while I was crying, I was also praying. I love babies, I really do, but I don't want mine to have a mother who knows next to nothing about life. If only I'd had a normal upbringing... but I'm terrified.
Killian laid me down on the couch, took my pulse, and guided my breathing to calm me down. He told me that once I felt better, he'd share a secret with me.
I don't know if curiosity works like a placebo, but it worked.
"My secret is that I don't actually like doctors," he said. "I love mechanics, electronics, and business. But we bought up the top MedTech companies—all of them—and the Longfields dominate the biotech sector, so my father thought it was important for at least one of us to go to medical school. I was one of the youngest graduates in my class. That's my secret. But I don't like calling myself a doctor; the world has turned it into something arrogant."
"Okay, Dr. Killian," I said. "Am I going to survive?"
He smiled. "What will definitely give you some peace of mind is that several symptoms of premenstrual syndrome overlap with early pregnancy, which often causes clinical confusion. If you have mastalgia—breast tenderness—mild nausea, gastrointestinal discomfort, persistent fatigue, affective lability—which means those sudden mood swings like irritability and anxiety—mild dizziness, and cravings... like that terrible pizza Lucius made... well, without a blood or urine test, I can't rule out pregnancy, but..."
I threw my arms around him. Damn it, he's good at calming me down. "The pizza was delicious, stop lying," I whispered.
We all laughed. Lucius, who had remained quiet until then, took my hand and asked, "Why were you so scared?"
I sat up and looked at him. "What would you do if I really were pregnant? Celebrate?"
He looked at me with deep sincerity. "Hey, brat, look at me. Remember my dream? I'd go buy you a book right away and brew some coffee. Being a father doesn't scare me. I'm a real man, understand?"
I nodded, tenderly caressing his face as my eyes welled with tears. That dream where I'm pregnant, lying in bed beside him while he reads a book, sips coffee, and rubs my belly... strikes me as the most romantic scene ever, better than anything I've ever read in a novel.
I glanced at Killian. He didn't need me to repeat the question.
"Coffee? A book?" Killian asked, looking bewildered. "What the hell are you two talking about? I'd get straight to the important stuff and build the kid their first airplane. I can make a mini K-Longfield for the baby. Don't you worry about a thing."
We laughed. I gestured for him to lean in and kissed him on the lips. "Thank you both for being so good to me," I said from the bottom of my heart. "One cruel word and I would have been broken. I'll always remember this."
As night began to fall, the wind died down. The storm had passed, and we decided to celebrate with dinner and music. The three of us cooked together. It felt so surreal... One way or another, this ordeal had brought us closer. Neither of them questioned who the father would be; they each implicitly accepted the child as their own without arguing about it. There were no reproaches. Even though Killian leaned toward the theory that it was just a severe case of PMS, they poured me juice and kept me from having a glass of wine.
Lucius asked me to sleep in his bed. Killian did too. I wanted to sleep alone, and they respected that—though only halfway, because both of them crept in to check on me in the middle of the night, softly cracking the door open so they wouldn't wake me. I pretended to be asleep. I recognized them by their scents.
"Sleep, brat. Everything's going to be fine," Lucius whispered before slipping out.
Killian came in a few minutes later, placed his hand on my forehead, and kissed it. He stubbed his toe on a piece of furniture on his way out, and thinking he'd woken me, he turned back. I kept my eyes squeezed shut. He gave me another kiss on the forehead and left.
When I went to the bathroom the next morning, I realized my period had started. I don't know, girl, I hate being the kind of woman who flips back and forth. Don't judge me—I don't have anyone else to confess this to—but deep down... I didn't celebrate. No, in fact, I actually felt a little sad.
I took a shower and went downstairs, where they were waiting for me with breakfast. Trying to sound casual, I told them, "False alarm, I'm not pregnant. Dr. Killian was right. I'm sorry about the scene yesterday."
Neither of them popped a bottle of champagne, nor did they even crack the slightest smile of relief; they just kept right on doting on me. You have no idea the wave of peace that washed over me. It's so obvious that they love me. The sun was shining outside. Killian made a point of kissing me every single time he walked past. Lucius went out to scout the grounds and check for property damage. He came back reporting that the hangar and the plane were untouched.
Moetia, "the little mermaid" architect, arrived around sunset. She brought a whole crew of workers to clear the runway and the debris scattered outside. I looked like absolute hell, while she looked radiant—wearing a long, flowing beach dress in shades of sky blue and a smile that must have been engineered by Aphrodite herself. After Lucius and Killian walked her through the issues with the house, like the rattling upstairs windows, she left them to approach me.
"Hi, Carmilla. Are you okay? Did the storm scare you?"
"I feel terrible," I replied. "I barely slept because of the wind, plus I'm on my period, and..."
She stopped, pointed out the window at her crew, and said, "See all of them? When it's that time of the month, they literally tremble. My temper gets awful; I can't control it. I turn into this short-fused dictator who just wants everyone else to suffer more than I do. Honestly, I feel like it's some kind of punishment from God. One time I even went to this workshop that was supposed to teach us to embrace our bodies and our femininity as 'menstruating individuals' or whatever, and not only was it completely useless, but I came back meaner and more convinced than ever that this whole thing has to be a major design flaw. A detail evolution completely botched."
She made me laugh. Sitting back down beside me, she asked, "Do you guys want to have dinner at my place tonight? Come on! I'm asking you first because the Longfields drop your name every two sentences. It's clear they adore you. You're going to love Papeete; you can stay over and head back tomorrow. The sea is calm, and besides, the workers need to fix those upstairs windows anyway. What do you think?"
I agreed. She went over to tell Lucius, and after introducing him to the foreman of the crew staying behind to do the repairs, she waited for us on her speedboat.
I changed into a short black dress and, for the first time in ages, put on a bit of makeup. I don't know, girl, I wanted to look better than her. Is that awful of me? I don't think I pulled it off, but those two gorgeous gods told me I looked beautiful and offered me their hands to help me aboard.
I was stunned by how breathtaking Papeete is. Moetia lives in paradise, no doubt about it. Her house is mammoth, nearly as big as the one on Lucius's island, and you can see the lights of luxury yachts twinkling right from her kitchen. Her father came over to pay his respects to the Longfields and excused himself from dinner. He's some high-profile politician, or at least that's what she implied.
The wine was exquisite, and a private chef prepared fresh tuna marinated in lime juice with vegetables and some coconut detail I didn't quite catch. I have to tell you something: the little mermaid moves with this seductive, rhythmic cadence. I don't think she does it on purpose; it's just something in the air here. And the reason I'm bringing it up is because I caught Killian checking out her ass. Honestly, I was checking it out too. Should I have caused a scene? I was actually contemplating it, ready to blame it on my hormones, but by that point, Moetia had either had too much to drink or she just completely transformed at night. I don't know, but she was getting incredibly cozy with me.
The first thing she told me was that my dress looked gorgeous on me and that she envied my ass. I thought she was mocking me, because hers is incredible. Then she immediately blurted out, "Tell me the truth, do you keep your hair short like a guy to attract women? Because it's working on me, Carmilla. But no, I've never hooked up with a girl. Have you? Are you into them?"
I told her I'd never thought about my hair that way, that it was the first time anyone had ever mentioned it, and that I'd only ever felt attraction toward one woman. She instantly guessed it was Evangelina Bance. Moetia congratulated me. She told me she'd seen pictures of her in the news during the coverage of our rescue mission for the kidnapped women and that she thought Evangelina was the most flawless woman on Earth.
Using Evangelina as a springboard, and two glasses of wine later, the four of us were deep in a conversation about intelligence as the ultimate tool of seduction—and how being an idiot instantly makes anyone unattractive. Killian was the one who proposed the premise, arguing, "No one in the world is beautiful enough to earn the right to be completely brainless. No one. And they say intelligence is measured by the ability to adapt quickly to your environment and new situations, but is it really intelligent to adapt when the world you live in isn't even worth adapting to?"
A heavy silence fell over the room... He looked me dead in the eye, and I am certain he was about to deliver the most romantic line on the planet, but Moetia—as if she possessed a sexual toggle switch that just flipped on automatically—stood up. Without a single word of explanation, she unzipped her dress, letting it fall to expose her bare breasts.
It took me a few seconds to process whether this was some bizarre local custom or if the wine had just completely turned her on. But the crucial part here is that I watched her walk straight toward Lucius, leaning in to kiss him.
Killian watched in utter shock, shrugging his shoulders as if to say, What the hell is happening?
But me? I reacted, girl. Oh, I reacted big time. And like a total fool... I walked right into her trap.