“Yes, but that’s all I’m saying on the matter.”
“Of course,” I muttered.
He rubbed his nose against my cheek. “Are you sure you’re ready to give up your humanity?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “I made my choice. I’ve chosen you and our family forever. I won’t change my mind. I’m already twenty-one. That’s three years older than you I don’t want to put any more of a gap between us.”
“Are you sure? You were so bent on staying human. I wouldn’t be angry.”
I gave him a small smile. “You mean you wouldn’t be angry if right now I said that when I have the baby I don’t want you to save me, that I want to die?”
“No, just sad,” he kissed my temple. “But I love you enough to give you the choice.”
“And I told you that I’ve made mine.”
“You can always change your mind,” he whispered.
“Never,” I said fiercely. “I have you, and the baby, and our whole family. I’m not leaving that behind.” A sudden thought occurred to me. I pulled away from his arms and brushed my hair behind my ear. “Jonathon? It’s not that you don’t want me, right?”
He sat up straight and put his hands on my arms and looked me in the eye. “I have wanted to spend every moment of forever with you from the second I saw you in that taxi. It nearly killed me when you told me that you wanted to stay human but I didn’t blame you. Selena had shown you the dark side of what I am. How could I blame you for wanting to keep your soul? I want the world for you. You deserve a beautiful life. You deserve to be happy after all the grief my existence has brought you and if that meant letting you live a human life I’d let you do it. I wouldn’t say a thing. And when you would go, I would follow gladly behind you into the afterlife. I would have to. I wouldn’t let myself become Selena. How could you think that I don’t want you? You saved me. You gave me a reason to live again. I guess live isn’t the right word since we aren’t really living. Exist, I guess I should say instead. You gave me a reason to exist again.”
“I love you,” I said and meant those three words more than anything else I had ever said in all my life. “And I will spend forever by your side.”
He pulled me back against him and we resumed our original position. “And I love you, beautiful principessa and I never want to live without you.”
I sighed and rubbed the bulge of my stomach. “And I love him too. Despite everything I love him more than I can imagine and he’s not even here yet. I don’t care what’s to come. I just want him to be healthy. I don’t want to lose him. I’ll take on all the Originals on my own if it means he’ll live.”
Jonathon’s nose rubbed my neck, inhaling my scent. “What comes will come. Everyone cares about him and wants him to be safe and you too, of course. A baby is a joyous moment in one’s life and I’m sorry it didn’t start out that way for you.”
I stroked my stomach lightly. “I just didn’t want to think that I, that our baby, would be the cause of the end of everything.”
“But it’s not the end,” he breathed into my hair. “It’s the beginning.”
“How can a sweet innocent baby be the cause of a war with the Originals?” I asked.
He stiffened against me. “I don’t actually know. The seer never saw the flame that ignited the war, so to speak. All you can deduce is that the baby is the cause, but none of the prophecies actually say what the event is that triggers the war. She may have seen it but it’s not in the book which makes me think she didn’t. She wrote down everything that she saw.”
“But how come she wrote it in poem form. Why not just transcript what she saw?”
“I thought of that. Gabriel said that since no one is supposed to know the future except for the seer, she transcribed her visions in a manner so that one may interrupt it differently than another. Therefore making the book of prophecies. She didn’t want the Originals to get their hands on it, but they did at one point in time. Simone gave the book to Gabriel and then had him kill her. Gabriel always has to evade the Originals, though, and so that made the book unsafe. Occasionally, they forget him for a time and he can settle down but they always resume their search for him. Gabriel has spies you see, so he knows when they’re searching for him. They wanted him for their Guarde but if they got their hands on him now they’d kill him. He’s a danger to them. A danger that they want eliminated. But anyway, there was a time when they caught up to him, him and the book. Gabriel finally escaped but they still had the book. He found a way to steal it back, but it was too late anyway. They had already read the whole thing and dissected it bit by bit. So, they know what’s coming.”
“It’s going to be bad isn’t it?” I asked.
“I have no way of knowing but I believe it would have to be.”
“Ugh, I don’t want to think about this anymore,” I groaned.
He chuckled and the movement shook me. The baby moved, obviously displeased at being bothered. “Okay, let’s talk about something else. Like your birthday.”
I groaned. “I let you guys throw me a huge party last year. Can we just keep it quiet this year? I’m tired,” I grumbled. “I’m getting hardly any sleep thanks to little junior here. Apparently he has his days and nights mixed up.”
Jonathon laughed. “Okay, we’ll keep it quiet. Just the family. I know your brothers are looking forward to seeing you,” he nuzzled my neck. “It will probably be the last time you see them before you’re turned.”
“Why?” I asked.
“They’ve decided not to wait.”
“They’re going to be turned,” I stated.