Submitting to the Shadow (Kindred Tales)

“Why not?” Meg demanded. “You’re gorgeous! What’s he waiting for?”

Meg smiled a little at her best friend’s indignant endorsement of her.

“Thanks, Meg, but it’s not his fault. It has to do with him being a Shadow Twin. They have a hard time, uh, bonding a female to them.”

Which was as much of Roark’s secret as she was prepared to tell. He had told her about his infertility and inability to bond in private. She wished he would at least try to Claim her despite his difficult past, but she couldn’t force him to. And she also couldn’t spill the beans about the big Shadow Twin’s infertility to Meg—at least not completely.

But her friend was giving her a skeptical expression.

“Well, he might not have Claimed you but he’s certainly done something to you.”

“What?” Sammi put down her mug, her heart pounding. “What makes you say that?” she demanded, frowning.

“Well, I’m not the one saying it—not to start with, anyway,” Meg said. “It was something that Berik said to me the other night, after you had dinner with us.”

“What did he say?” Meg demanded, frowning.

“He said that if Commander Roark hadn’t Claimed you yet, then he certainly would soon. When I asked him why, he told me he could smell Roark’s scent all over you. His scent and his seed. Like he’d been marking you on purpose.” Meg widened her eyes at Sammi. “So what’s going on with your boss, Sammi? Care to share?”

Sammi felt her cheeks getting hot. All this time she had been hiding the truth of what she and Roark were doing from Meg, partly out of embarrassment and partly because, while she loved Meg dearly, she did have a big mouth at times. Now it felt like she had to tell her friend something but she wanted to be careful to limit what she admitted to.

“Well…” She cleared her throat. “Roark and I have been running some…experiments lately. Fertility experiments,” she added, because she knew Meg was about to ask. “But he wasn’t using his own, uh, seed,” she added quickly. “It’s fake seed—just lubricant with compounds in it—that he puts in you.”

“Fake seed?” Meg frowned. “That sounds really fishy to me, hon. Are you sure he’s not using the real stuff on you? Because if you’re getting sick every morning for no reason…”

“That’s crazy!” Sammi protested. “Roark would never—”

She stopped abruptly as an idea flashed across her brain.

Roark had told her that he was using Beast Kindred compounds in the precum in order to help her open up for the huge phalluses he was using on her. Sammi assumed the compounds were extracted from real precum—what if some live sperm had somehow slipped through the extraction process? All it would take was one to do the job, especially since Roark was injecting the compounds directly into her womb. So what if…

“What if I’m pregnant?” she whispered. She tried to take a sip from her mug but her hand shook and mint tea spilled all over her plate and the table. “Oh, my God, what if I really am?”

“But you can’t get pregnant by a Kindred unless you’re bonded to him,” Meg protested. “That is, I don’t think you can,” she added with a frown.

“But what if I somehow am?” Sammi demanded. Now that the idea had taken hold in her mind, she found it impossible to ignore.

A host of other signs and symptoms began occurring to her. Her breasts and nipples had been increasingly tender lately and her peaks had gotten larger and darkened from a pale pink to a much deeper shade. Sammi had assumed it was because of how long and how often she wore the nipple caps, which teased and stimulated her constantly, but what if that wasn’t the reason?

What if her nipples had gotten larger and more tender and turned a darker shade of pink because she was pregnant?

And then there was the fact that certain foods she used to enjoy made her nauseous now. She couldn’t stand the smell of eggs or beef or jarred spaghetti sauce. She’d tried to eat a steak just last night and had nearly gagged on the first bite. What was that all about?

Also, why was she suddenly craving pickles? Not the dill kind—the sweet, bread and butter kind her mom used to make from scratch? Sammi had made herself a big batch just for something to do when she had first moved into the Mother Ship, assuming they would last her all year. But for the past week, she’d been eating a jar a day—sometimes more. Why would she crave something so badly that she usually only ate a few times a month?

Also, she had been wanting sauerkraut lately which she normally hated. She—

“Come on.” Meg was tugging on her arm.

Sammi looked up at her in confusion.