My Husband and My Mate

Chapter Sixteen

*Chapter Sixteen*

*Not Edited*

*Victoria P.O.V.*

So what did I do when Damon threw that bomb at me? I ran. I ran like a scared little girl down to my living room. I ran into the room where my children were at. Where I had a semblance of normalcy. Alyssa was giggling to the same show I had put on. It felt like I was upstairs for forever, but it wasn't long. I've learned to tell time by cartoon. I guess all mother's do. It was probably only 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes, that felt like hours. That small space of time was enough to completely rock my whole existence.

Now, we had almost no time. Almost no time to come to grips with our new reality. To decide what we were going to do. Do we really have a choice anyway? Damon doesn't, at least not without becoming a martyr. I guess, the same goes for me as well. Michael, well he has all kinds of choices. The amount of choices presented the problem.

Michael, well, he could stay. He could accept Damon's place in my life, or ignore it and watch me die. He could leave me. He could leave me and expose our existence. He could leave and take the kids from me. He could leave me and take the kids from me and expose our existence. The latter causing me to become a labrat at some secret govermental lab where I would put through tests, until they wanted to see what made me tick and killed me. Paranoid, me? Wouldn't you be?

Damon came down the stairs just about the time the panic set in. He saw. He saw everything. The spastic twitching of my eyes as they searched the room for imaginary monsters. The quick rise and fall of my chest as I struggled to get enough oxygen in me. He must have heard the pounding in my chest. It certainly felt like my heart was trying to pound it's way to freedom.

He rushed to me and pulled me in his arms. The sparks and tingles and just the plain old warmth of him calmed me a bit.

"Match your breathing to mine." He whispered in my ear. He said it with all the power of being alpha, and I had to listen. My wolf, Snow, forced me too. I strained to ignore the pounding in my ears and the rush of my own breaths, to feel and hear the slow steady pulls of air he was doing. To listen to the slow and steady heartbeat.

"That's it. That's my girl." He whispered. When he said that, I noticed that my body was calming. Finally, I was back in my head. The situation still sucked, but I was in charge of my own body again. I pulled back and sat in my favorite chair. Alyssa crawled toward me.

"Ma ma. Ungee." She called out. Damon looked down at her confused.

"She's saying she's hungry." With the translation, came understanding. Doesn't everyone speak baby? I picked her up and made my way to the kitchen. I looked over at the timer on the stove, seeing there was still about an hour till dinner. I set her down in her highchair and went to the fridge. A few bites of something won't spoil her supper. I cut her off a bit of cheese and made that into Alyssa sized pieces. Then put it all in a bowl with a bit of cheerios. I placed it all down in front of my angel and was a bit shocked to see Damon standing in the doorway.

He watched me with an almost tender glance and a small smile on his face. I made sure Alyssa had some watered juice in her sippy and grabbed a cup of coffee. I looked over, arching my eyebrow in question and holding my cup up. He nodded and I poured him one as well. We met in the middle of the room at the table and I handed him one. Maybe it was the heat or whatever, but I seemed almost hyper-attuned to him and where he was to me.

"You're an excellent mom" he said almost casually. "I can't wait to see you with our pups." He was smart. He waited for me to swallow that first bit. If he hadn't, he would have had a face full of hot liquid.