44

44

UNNI'S POV

I felt the twins shift together in my body, a synchrony that no Creator-given pregnancy should exhibit. When one would kick, the other would respond in kind, and as a result they established a rhythm that seemed less like life than the taut precision of machinery. I put my hands to my own swollen belly, feeling their incredible power straining at the edges of my new form.

“Mom,” they said in unison, their voices projected to my mind as if my dragon babies could speak while still being born. "Mother, we are hungry."

The hunger they described wasn’t for the usual food. My hybrid body needed blood, now—not just to sustain myself but to nourish whatever was percolating inside me. I should have been empowered by the vampire conversion instead I was enslaved to desires I couldn’t resist.

I tripped my way over to a makeshift medical station in the abandoned building, and grabbed another bag of stolen blood out of the cooler. You could still see the hospital logos on the packaging because they were the result of my desperate midnight raids.

“Please,” I begged the twins, myself, whatever force had carried out this to me. “Please let me sleep one hour without the hunger.”

But they were endless, those needs of theirs, draining me even as I grew stronger. I could sense their strength, preternatural gifts born in the womb, and that terrorized me even more than any vampire plight.

As I touched my stomach, reaching to console them, their power lashed me. Silent wires And-fire shot through my hands, and I pulled back with a cry. They hadn’t meant to hurt me — I had to believe that — but their powers were no longer under command.

“I’m sorry, my babies,” I shuddered. “Mommy’s sorry she can’t pick you up without it hurting.”

"Don't cry, Mother," they said together perfectly, their telepathic voices full of an adult comprehension no fetus ought to have. From the moment you are born we will protect you. We will make them all pay for what they did to us.”

Its threat of violence sent a chill through my veins. What have you done to them, vampire queen? What had I done by taking her "blessing"?

I felt my phone buzz with another rejection from former pack allies. I had worked the phones and called everyone I could think of — former friends, long-lost family members who might offer sanctuary for me and my children. But they always got the same response: polite refusals that thinly veiled their terror and revulsion.

"We can't have someone in the close-knit pack who has gone back on their loyalty.”

“The offspring you bear don't deserve to live. We are not going to expose our territory."

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you decided to party with the damned.”

With every rejection, I fell further into isolation, deeper into the desperate arithmetic that had become my only calculus of survival. If no one would assist me in my struggle to save my children, I'd have to destroy the threats by myself.

And the greatest threat of all was Linda — the perfect child of perfect parents, embraced and cherished while my babies were spurned before they’d taken a breath.

"Mother," the twins murmured, "we can teach you to hurt them. The ones who rejected us. We let them see what we are."

“No,” I said defiantly, with as much good and solid sense of what made me human. “We don’t attack people because they are scared of us.”

But the laughter of the twins rang in my head, young and old, and terribly knowing. "You already hurt people, Mother. You betrayed your pack, you put a child in danger, you chose power over principle. We’re what you left us — survivors ready to do anything necessary.”

All the same what they said felt like acid in my veins. They were right. But I had made choices that put me in this room and now I had to tote the consequence around in my belly.

I dragged the papers I’d collected on Linda’s family line across the tabletop in front of me—the proof of her unique ancestry, a case I could make to the Crimson Council that she was dangerously out-of-balance and needed to be neutralized. If I could make them fear Linda more than they feared my twins, perhaps there might yet be room enough in this world for my children.

“We'll have to kill the girl first," proposed the twins, their thought voices most logical and convincing. "Its not time for political maneuvering, its time to eliminate the threat."

"She's an innocent child."

"So were we until the vampire queen twisted us into weapons. Why should she be spared what we went through?”

I had no answer for that. The injustice of it — that Linda would be feted as a bridge between species while my children were considered abominations — let a fury punctured with physical heat burn into me.

“It’s not three hours until the Crimson Council makes its opening gather,” I replied, "We'll go there, present our case, make them understand that Linda is the danger here. And if that doesn't work..."

"Then we'll show them what we really know," the twins ended, their voices filled with excitement. "We can touch minds, Mother. Let us let them see what we want them to see. Make them feel what we want them to feel.’ ”

"You can control people's thoughts?"

"We can influence them. Sow advice that is nothing of the kind, amplify existing fears, turn allies against each other. The vampire queen didn’t just make our strength, Mother. She gave us dominion over consciousness itself.”

I should have been terrified by the revelation. Instead, I felt something start to bloom in my chest, something like hope. If my children were able to sway the Council members, persuade them that Linda was dangerous and my twins could be valuable allies, perhaps we had a chance yet.

"Show me," I said. "Show me what you can do."

The ground twisted, and I watched as reality shifted before the Tweedle boys were revealed in their true forms. Suddenly I was viewed through their perspective— not as an impoverished, wretched woman — but as a strong matriarch of her children come hell or high water! The self-loathing I’d carried with me for weeks dissipated, replaced with righteous resolve.

“That’s what we can do, Mom. We can make them perceive strength and not weakness, hope and not threat. We can reframe how they see us so that they no longer fear us, but welcome us.”

I gazed at my reflection in a shattered mirror, staring back was the woman I’d become — hollow-eyed, pallid, one touched by change and desperation. But by the twins I also saw a woman who was fierce and unstoppable, a mother who would burn the world to protect her children.

“Well then, that’s what we’ll do,” I told him, taking the papers regarding Linda’s background. "The Crimson Council would sit in judgement of the threats to supernatural order? Let’s give them a true one to measure against.”

Driving to the Council place was weird, I felt like my body was driving and I sort of watched from outside. The twins purred in my womb, not yet released into this world’s madness, their strength accumulating like thunderheads.

"Remember, Mother," they would whisper to me as we drew near the grand structure that had been used for centuries by supernatural leaders. "We are survivors. We take care of our future. "To hell with sentiment: it's a luxury when you can afford it and we can't."

I entered with my pride in tact, evidence of Linda's lineage and otherworldly twins whose powers had surfaced. The members of the Council all turned to look at me, their faces a wide array of surprise and horror.

“I have news,” I called out, my voice too calm for the shaking inside of me. "The Alpha King's daughter, and what she really is. Information that will alter the way you perceive the threats to our species.”

And as I was speaking the twins got to work. And I could sense them stretch out with nascent awareness, touching the thoughts of all in the room. The faces of the Council members changed slightly—fear, doubt, willingness to hear what I would say.

And for hours, through it all, my babies smiled identical smiles that no fetuses should have made.