20
Rayne
The moment Piper turned her back I dashed away. If I had a heart it would be running a mile a minute. As it were it took less than a dozen heart beats to get from the upstairs to barreling down the basement stairs.
When I came barging in, everyone in the room jumped to their feet in alert ready to fight whatever was coming our way. Thankfully, Antoine for once was downstairs and not in his office. I didn’t want to have to repeat this.
“What is it Rayne? What’s the commotion?” Wynn asked from this bed, placing the book he had in his hand on the side table.
If I had to breathe I would have been out of breath from running so quickly down there. In fact, I wished I did breathe so that I had a moment to collect my thoughts. Cause honestly I wasn’t even sure I knew what the hell I was going to say.
“Just spit it out already,” Drake said, leaning against the back of the couch.
“Piper,” I got out, my eyes darting to each of my brothers in turn. “Piper’s pregnant.”
The entire room went still. Not the kind that happens with humans where you can hear the heart beats still. Vampires were different. We didn’t have to move or breathe any of those little twitches that humans had. We did them because it made us less alarming to others. To be perfectly still as the dead like right now was a gift only vampires had.
“Well?” I spun around in a circle, searching for some kind of reaction. “Piper’s pregnant. Someone say something!” I grabbed the sides of my hair, pulling at them frantically.
Antoine walked up beside me, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Are you sure?”
I shrugged his hand off. “What do you mean, am I sure? I just heard it from the source’s mind. Piper is one hundred percent pregnant.”
“Maybe you heard wrong?” Allister moved away from his bed toward me. “Maybe she was thinking of something else?”
I shook my head, anger welling up inside me. “I didn’t mistake this. Plus you didn’t see the way she looked when she got home. She looked like she saw a ghost.”
Drake snorted. “Well, I would too if I was pregnant out of the blue. I mean, Piper doesn’t know she’s had loads of sex, like I mean a whole lot of sex in the last month alone. She probably thinks she’s going crazy.”
“Or worse,” Allister said quietly.
Crap. I hadn’t thought about that.
Turning to Antoine, I begged, “We have to fix this. We have to explain it to her. We can’t let her think she was…” I swallowed hard, unable to make myself say it.
“Violated,” Wynn supplied for me.
I nodded.
Antoine followed my sentiment and turned away for a moment before turning back to me. “You are sure this is what you heard?”
“I wouldn’t lie about this.” I shook my head and then sighed. “I try to stay out of her head for the most part but she seemed really off when I was waiting for her to get home from her…” I paused and looked around the room. “Does anyone know where she went?”
“I believe she went to a doctor’s appointment,” Marcus provided, staring down at his hands.
I angled my head to the side. “Why would you know that?”
“I heard her telling Darren this morning.”
Frowning, I pushed at Marcus’s head, searching for answers. I saw a flash of Piper’s nude body and knew what had happened. “You and Piper almost banged in the library?”
“Ah, you sly dog you.” Drake chuckled, clapping Marcus on the shoulder. “And in the library? Couldn’t use one of the dozens of beds in the house huh?”
Marcus pushed away from Drake. “Nothing happened.” We all stared at him expectantly. “I stopped it before anything could happen. I didn’t want her to…” he sighed and shook his head sadly. “It’s not the same.”
“I get it,” I told him, giving him a sympathetic smile. “She’s Piper but not our Piper. I think I’d have a hard time doing it too with this version of her.”
“Can you hear what she’s thinking now?” Allister asked, staring up at the ceiling.