Orc Of Mine - Book One - A Breeding Monster Fantasy Romance

Chapter Thirty-seven

My lips curled downwards. "Are you still feeling sick all day long?"

"Yup. It's so bad I almost wish—I would just—I'm almost hoping to have a miscarriage and be done with it..."

"Oh, don't say that, Amira."

Her eyes went shiny. "I don't want to think like that. I really don't. A-and I feel horrible that I do. But I just feel so bad all day long. I- I just want this horrible feeling to stop."

Beatrice caressed the top of her daughter's head, her fingers slowly running through Amira's curls. "You're struggling. Oh, my poor little chick. My baby." She kissed atop Amira's head.

"Mom, please," Amira scoffed.

"What? You are my baby and always will be. Even if you have babies of your own. It's not pleasant to see your child in misery."

Amira rolled her eyes before looking at me. "She's been a little emotional since the attack."

My friend might roll her eyes, but I couldn't help but find them endearing.

"Can you blame me? That bitch hurt my girl." Beatrice smiled softly at Amira, then at me. "And my friend."

"You took most of the hits, Ma." Amira closed her eyes and made a sound that was somewhere in between a gag and a swallow. "Oh, I shouldn't have eaten that piece of pie an hour ago."

Beatrice grabbed the pot with tea herbs. "Do you want some tea—"

"No, Mom. I don't want your bloody tea anymore. I told you this morning that it doesn't help!"

"But you have to drink enough or—"

"I just had a cup of water, okay? Don't worry about me. Anyway... Let's talk about something else, please." Amira took a big breath while looking at us with pleading eyes. "What was your dream about, Gyda?"

Amira clearly wanted a distraction, so I told them the entire story, not just what I'd seen in my dream. I informed them that the ring looked familiar to me when I saw it for the first time last week, about my meeting with Zachary, and how it worried me that a man like him wore the same jewelry as someone who had tried to murder Beatrice.

Beatrice frowned. "And you've seen it before? Can you really not remember where? Was it on paper? Or another piece of jewelry?"

"I've been studying a lot of books lately, so maybe I saw an illustration in one of them, but I'm not sure. And that bugs me so much, you know? I feel like I know the answer, but it's stuck at the tip of my tongue."

"What about your dream?" Beatrice asked. "What if it was no dream, but a memory? What if you've seen the symbol, not in books or jewelry, but carved in stone?"

"I don't think it's a memory." I bit my lip, thinking. "At least, I can't remember any of it really happening."

"Sometimes memories come back through our dreams."

"I... I really don't think so," I replied.

Perhaps I should ask Mother? I could tell her about my dream. There was no need to tell her anything about what happened in the swamp. I could say I saw Zachary's ring and had a dream after that.

Last Saturday, I confessed to my family that I left the house but obviously failed to mention my true reasons for going outside. Mother's eyes had twinkled like little stars when she heard I'd talked to Zachary, and that the man had even escorted me home!

I still had no clue why he insisted on doing so, but he had done me no wrong. He was mostly talking about himself.

There was one thing that left me shocked. I'd already known he had children, as most men became fathers at a young age—because they breed a lot of women at once—but when Zachary told me he had sixteen children already, at twenty-eight, I released a little gasp. Sixteen!