The Clash of Yesterday (Chronicles of the Stone Veil 0.5)

“Maybe some magical potion or amulet someone gave him,” Ronan says, his voice deep and lazy as my fingers stroke his hair.

I watch him for a bit as his eyes go soft and hazy. My heart squeezes, and I can’t deny what I feel for him.

I can’t quite tell him that yet either because we’ve spent millennia hating each other and only a handful of weeks loving on each other. In our eternal lifetimes, we’ve only been together the equivalent of the blink of an eye.

And yet… there’s something else that’s going to potentially cement this relationship.

“I have something to tell you,” I say softly, and he’s instantly alert. Pushing up from his reclining position, which dislodges my hand from his hair, he leans toward me on the couch.

He doesn’t look alarmed by my tone—which he shouldn’t as it was non-threatening—merely interested. “What is it?”

My hands fold in my lap and my gaze drops there, a rare moment in my life where my confidence is a bit shaky. Ronan knows me well from our run-ins throughout history, and he knows lack of confidence isn’t my jam.

So his hand comes to my jaw, thumb under my chin, and he forces my eyes up to his. He doesn’t say anything, but that push to make me look at him is all I need.

I take a deep breath, and the words come out in a quavering rush. “I’m pregnant.”

I’ve seen enough movies, read enough books, and seen enough humans go through this big type of announcement to know there can be a myriad of reactions. The one I expect from Ronan is for him to reel back as if I’d just punched him, but not because I doubt his ability to be a dad.

I’m expecting gut-punching shock because fae don’t easily get pregnant. It’s like a miracle when it happens because the angels who were cast from heaven to earth weren’t meant to procreate. Of course, evolution happened, they became known as Light Fae, and generations eventually came, but it was a painstakingly slow process over thirty thousand years—since the dawn of modern man—for our numbers to increase. For our families to be built.

My parents were like double-down miracles, having two children, albeit four hundred years apart.

And so I expect Ronan to rear back in shock that this could happen, because while we’ve had a lot of sex in the last few weeks, it’s absolutely unheard of for two Light Fae to get pregnant so fast.

But Ronan doesn’t jerk back. His hand stays on my jaw, his eyes slowly going round with astonishment, before glancing down at my belly. My hands move there protectively, and his eyes slide back up to meet mine.

“Can I?” he asks, nodding back down again.

Asking for permission to touch me there.

I nod, a small smile breaking free. “Of course.”

Taking his hand from my jaw, I bring it down to the lower portion of my stomach and flatten his palm there.

He feels what I feel when I touch it… a warm, almost bubbly sensation. But he doesn’t feel it in his hand, he feels it in his blood.

Fae pregnancy resembles human pregnancies in some ways. For example, our gestation is roughly the same time as a human’s, and I suspect we evolved that way so we could stay hidden in plain sight while blending into the human world. The actual birth is the same, our bodies having the same parts and mechanics that will deliver the baby from my uterus through the birth canal and into someone’s waiting hands. Even the way immortal fae children grow is on the same pace as a human child, again so they can blend in. When a fae reaches somewhere between their mid-twenties to mid-thirties, the body stops aging and becomes frozen eternally in time.

The big difference is conception… when my fae egg joins with Ronan’s fae sperm, I can feel it. That same warm, fizzy sensation in my blood that I know Ronan is feeling right now as his hand covers our child.

I knew it this morning after we had a quickie in the shower while getting ready for work. Ronan, getting ready much faster than me, gave me a long, searing kiss before walking out the door. I was still in my bathrobe, combing out my wet hair, when it hit me.

That sensation started as a tiny spark and grew infinitely brighter until I could feel it spread all through my belly and through my entire body.

And I just knew.

We had created a fae baby.

I wondered if I should call Ronan to tell him, or maybe even go to his work. But I knew this would be too shocking and needed to be done in private.

“Say something,” I murmur as Ronan continues to stare at his hand covering my stomach.

“It’s amazing,” he drawls slowly, his eyes now sparkling with awe. He lifts his gaze back to me. “We’re going to have a baby?”