Spawned By The Dragon: A Paranormal Pregnancy Romance Read online

  I spent the rest of the morning in bed, just thinking, even though there really wasn’t much to think about. My pregnancy situation wasn’t an ideal one, to be sure, and it definitely wasn’t the one I’d always dreamed about, but I wanted my baby. I wanted to be a mom. I’d do whatever it took to to make things work and give my baby a loving home, despite the situation not being perfect.

  Later that day, I spent a few hours on the computer, once again searching for Gavin, though not in hopes of finding him so that I could ask for help, but just because I felt that he had a right to know that he was going to become a father. I also felt like I owed it to my baby to at least try to find his or her father and give him the chance to actually be a father.

  However, like the previous time, my search didn’t yield what I was looking for. No old articles about a standout high school baseball pitcher from Illinois or something named Gavin something-or-other. No helpful picture that would allow me to confirm that it was him. By the end of my searching, I was just taking random, stupid, impossible stabs in the dark, entering things like Gavin + pitcher + talented.

  The next day, I realized that it was possible that he might have played baseball at the collegiate or even pro level, and I began my search anew. After all, he hadn’t said that he had, but he hadn’t said that he hadn’t, either, and considering his skill, it didn’t seem like a completely crazy idea. No luck again, though. Just several hours spent combing through pictures of collegiate and pro baseball players with the first name of Gavin but who weren’t Gavin.

  After a few more days doing searches after work, I just had to stop. Just felt like it was necessary to stop for my own mental health, which would in turn affect my baby. I’d certainly tried to find his or her father, though, and I felt confident that I’d be able to tell him or her that with a clean conscience. I’d tried my best, but couldn’t continue beating my head against a brick wall, frustrated to the point of tears.

  After several months, when I began to show, people in Sandstone started buzzing about my pregnancy, speculating about who the father was. Some people even came right out and asked me.

  When this happened, I stated politely-yet-firmly that that was my business, then either ended the conversation or changed the subject. When speaking to people I was at least somewhat close with, I sometimes added that my baby’s father was not going to be a part of his or her life, just so they knew.

  Presently, some people in town started gossiping that maybe I didn’t even know who my baby’s father was, which angered and humiliated me. Also angering and humiliating me, one gymnastics mom took her two little girls out of one of the classes I taught, saying that she didn’t want them taught by an “unwed mother,” as she described me, as if I were seventeen, and as if it were the nineteen-fifties.

  “Especially one who doesn’t even seem to be sure who her child’s father is,” she added. While she told Betty this, I eavesdropped just a foot or two to the side the fully opened office door, fists balled and eyes filling, using every ounce of my self-control not to march into the office and tell this rude woman off. The only thing that stopped me was me not wanting to make a scene in Betty’s business, where children were children were tumbling not too far away, definitely within hearing distance of raised voices.

  Dana was one of the people in town who did not come right out and ask me who my baby’s father was. In the frozen food section of the grocery store one day, she congratulated me on my pregnancy, then chuckled a bit.

  “Well, between you and that guy from the bar, at least you know your baby will be really good-looking.” Instantly turning red, she immediately apologized, saying that she was sure she’d just had a total foot-in-mouth moment.

  “I’m sure your baby’s attractiveness isn’t your top concern right now, and maybe you also didn’t want to be reminded about you-know-who. I’m moving to Florida tomorrow to take care of my grandma, who just had a stroke, and I guess I have so much on my mind that I really wasn’t thinking a second ago. I’m really sorry for being an insensitive ass, Alyssa.”

  I told her it was completely fine, and to not even worry, and I meant it. Compared to things other people in town had been saying, her comment hadn’t even bothered me.

  Eventually, I told Betty and a few close friends about not being able to locate my baby’s father, and although I was deeply ashamed telling each of them this, not a single one of them made me feel bad about things. When I called DJ, who was still in Hollywood at this point, I cried after explaining things, more ashamed than I’d been while telling anyone else, and I told him this.

  Having told me a few shameful things in the past, concerning his prescription drug use, he told me that he understood feeling shame, but it had to stop. “You should be proud of yourself instead. You’re going to be bringing a whole new life into the world and raising him or her all on your own. Well…not all on your own.”

  “What do you mean?”

  There was a long pause.

  “I’m gonna get clean for good this time. I know you probably don’t believe me, but I am. And once I get all straightened out, I’m going to come back to Sandstone and help you out with your new little guy or girl. I’m going to be a good uncle. I promise you I am.”

  Sniffling, I smiled. “I like the sound of that, ‘Uncle DJ.’”

  He and Betty were at the hospital, in the waiting room, when Tommy was born, which was the happiest day of my life, by far. DJ and Betty were also Tommy’s first visitors once my midwife had helped get both him and me all presentable.

  Somehow, despite a short labor and a routine delivery, I looked like I’d just possibly survived a horror movie, with smudges and drops of blood from the top of my hospital gown to the hem. Some of it was because I’d insisted on trying to get Tommy to nurse first thing, before he’d even been “toweled off,” because my midwife had told me that was best.

  Later that evening, once DJ, Betty, and the midwife had gone home, I just looked at Tommy sleeping, marveling at how beautiful and perfect he was. Soon a nurse came in, asking if I needed anything, and after thinking briefly, I asked if she could please get in Tommy’s little bag of clothes and bring me the teddy bear from the top of the pile. This was the bear with the little blue bow tie that Gavin had won for me at the fair.

  Once the nurse had brought me the bear, smiling, she left, and I tucked the bear between my arm and my precious sleeping boy, then spoke with a large lump in my throat. “This is from your daddy. I wish he were here to see you.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Back in the present, escaping Sandstone in the old sedan with two-year-old Tommy, everything that had happened with Gavin was just a distant memory. I had immediate problems to deal with, and these problems were numerous. First, I needed to find out if the car that had suddenly appeared in the rearview mirror was full of government agents who wanted to take Tommy from me.

  Based on what DJ had said about the sedan not even being registered to Bill, I was fairly sure the government agents being on my tail already was an unlikely scenario, but unlikely didn’t mean impossible. I realized that maybe they’d even somehow bugged my phone before they’d come to the apartment, and because of that, had heard my entire conversation with DJ.

  My second problem was that once Tommy and I were a good distance away from Sandstone, a good enough distance away that I felt at least semi-comfortable, I needed to find an inconspicuous place to pull over and get Tommy a snack from the big duffel bag I’d packed. He’d probably also be needing a potty break soon. Fairly recently potty-trained, he needed to make pretty frequent trips to the bathroom.

  Right on cue, he piped up from the backseat right then. “Mama, me need go pee-pee. Me hungry, too.”

  Resisting a slight urge to groan, I glanced up at him in the rearview mirror. “I know, baby. I know you’re hungry, but we just need to wait a little longer before we can pull over and get you a snack. You can go potty then, too.”

  “Okay.”

  Another glance u
p at the rearview mirror told me that the car behind us was gaining on us, speeding, but I just couldn’t get the old sedan to go any faster. With my nerves just about shot, I’d already accelerated to sixty-five, which seemed to be the fastest the old car was willing to go. Which I guessed was fine, because sixty-five was about the max I’d feel comfortable driving an old car with Tommy inside. I didn’t really have a good feel yet for exactly how good the car’s brakes were, or weren’t, and if the rest of it would hold up mechanically at a high rate of speed.

  While I held my breath, the car behind us soon passed, speeding by us in a blur on the back country road. It didn’t speed by so fast, however, that I wasn’t able to catch a glimpse of the driver, who appeared to be a teenage boy, not a government agent. A baseball cap and a flash of bad acne had told me that.

  Immeasurably relived, I exhaled in a rush, then told Tommy to just keep holding on. “Won’t be much longer now, and we’ll be able to pull over. Maybe just ten minutes or so.”

  “Okay, Mama. Ten minutes.”

  Even though I was sure that Tommy didn’t yet understand increments of time like ten minutes, I was still surprised that he’d been able to even parrot the words. Mustering a smile, I glanced up at him in the rearview mirror and told him that he was such a smart boy.

  He really was. Up until earlier that day, when he’d apparently showed himself to be a dragon shifter-in-the-making at the daycare, his intelligence had been the most remarkable thing about him. He’d started talking very early, so early that his pediatrician had said she was astounded. Now, at twenty-seven months old, Tommy had a vocabulary much larger than many toddlers his age. Which wasn’t to say that he always spoke clearly, or with proper grammar, because he definitely didn’t, but as far as the words he used and understood on a daily basis, he was ahead of many of his peers.

  He was also remarkable for how well-behaved he was compared to many of his peers. He was the kind of child who was naturally cooperative and who generally followed directions well. This wasn’t to say that he was a perfect angel behavior-wise at all, but his daycare teachers and I thought his behavior was pretty darn good for his age. The lead teacher in his daycare classroom often told me how Tommy was the only two-year-old that she’d never seen have a “complete and total meltdown,” or even anything close.

  This unusual toddler maturity had also been apparent in Tommy essentially potty-training himself a few weeks after his second birthday. At the store, he’d seen toddler underpants with cartoon characters on them, and he’d said that he wanted them. I’d explained that underpants were for bigger kids who went to the bathroom in the potty, and Tommy had nodded.

  “Me want potty. Me want underpant.”

  A little dubious as to whether he was really yet ready for potty-training, I’d bought the underpants and a potty seat anyway, thinking that maybe being read a book about potty-training at daycare had really gotten his wheels turning. And when we’d gotten home, he showed me that it really had. After ripping off his own diaper, he’d asked to be put on the new potty seat, and then had promptly tinkled in the toilet, grinning at me.

  “Me get underpant.”

  Learning to aim and urinate from a stepstool had taken a few more days, and he had a couple of near-accidents with “poo-poo,” but by the end of the week, he was fully potty-trained and wearing “underpant” with extreme pride, even at night. And so far, he hadn’t had a single accident, at home or at daycare.

  In all possible ways, he really was a dream child. He wasn’t just smart and fairly well-behaved, he was a beautiful boy, too. From birth, he’d resembled Gavin, and his resemblance had only gotten stronger, which I’d sort of had to come to terms with by making a conscious decision to forgive Gavin and let go of my residual anger toward him for lying to me and never coming back. Otherwise, I knew it was going to be difficult to look at his mini-me on a daily basis without feeling a tiny little twinge of something unpleasant, at least on a subconscious level.

  Eventually, when Tommy and I were at least five or six miles outside of Sandstone, I pulled over in the deserted dirt parking lot of an old country church, figuring this was as good a spot as any for a snack and potty break. A few minutes later, after Tommy had urinated on a shrub adjacent to the parking lot, he toddled around the car, happily eating yogurt from a tube. Lost in thought watching him, I just about jumped a mile when my phone began going off.

  It was DJ, and he began speaking rapidly in a low voice the second I said hello.

  “I’m fine. Had to let them take me to the hospital to keep up with the act and buy you a little more time before the feds connect the dots that I gave you a hand. I’m alone in an exam room right now, but I expect they’ll be here before long.”

  “And what then? Can they jail you or something?”

  “I doubt it, especially since they won’t be able to prove anything. They haven’t bugged our phones yet, because if they had, those two agents outside your building would have known our plan and wouldn’t have come running when I crashed. I bet they’ll soon be pulling our phones records, though, and they’ll figure things out, but like I said, they won’t be able to prove anything.

  And right now, my concern is for you and Tommy. The way I see it, you’ve got to get him to the FDS. I don’t think they’ll want the American government to get one of their own. I think they’ll take you in and keep the two of you safe.”

  “That’s what I’ve been thinking, so I’ve been heading north out of town.”

  “Good. Keep heading north. Just make a beeline straight to Mackinac City, only stopping for gas if you can help it, and try to hit tiny, hole-in-the-wall sorts of places that might not have internet and TV to see the ‘missing woman and child’ bulletin that I’m sure the feds will put out before long.”

  “Okay. And then what once I make it to Mackinac City? Is the bridge still accessible to Americans, or-“

  “No. There’s a checkpoint now where FDS citizens have to show their passports to get back home after traveling abroad.”

  “So, what do I do?”

  “You’re just going to have to tell them about Tommy and beg them to-“

  DJ abruptly stopped speaking, and I briefly heard a female voice in the background before hearing DJ again.

  “Oh, that’s no problem. I can wait for the doctor a few minutes longer. I’m just on the phone with my wife, letting her know I’m all right.”

  The female in the background said something else, and then I heard a door shut before DJ spoke again.

  “We’re running out of time, ‘Lyss. Just get to Mackinac City and the bridge. Do whatever you need to do, within reason, to get past the checkpoint. Have them call their damn commander-in-chief, if need be. The Canadians seem to think he’s a reasonable man and a good leader, which makes me think he won’t order his men to turn you back around to the States without at least investigating your claim that Tommy’s a shifter child first. He won’t want one of his own to become property of the US government.”

  “Okay.”

  “Where are you right now, by the way?”

  “The parking lot of some old country church in the middle of nowhere…several miles north of Sandstone, several miles from Pennington.”

  “You’re way too close to have stopped. You need to hit the road again…now.”

  “Okay.”

  I’d already picked Tommy up and was situating him in his car seat.

  “Drive fast, Alyssa, but don’t get pulled over. I think the sedan will make it to the bridge.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you have cash on you for gas? They’ll trace your credit cards.”

  “I have cash.”

  “All right, then, go, and don’t stop until you need fuel. Ditch your phone right now, too. Turn it off and smash it if you can.”

  “Okay.”

  “Bye, sis. Love you and Tommy.”

  “We love you….”

  I realized DJ had already hung up.

  “Too.”
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  A little over six hours later, Tommy and I had made it to the FDS checkpoint right before the bridge. The trip north on I-75 had gone well, so well, in fact, that I’d even found myself slightly enjoying it at times. With the sun brightly shining, warm, not-too-humid air rushing in the open car windows, and the dense trees “up north” in their full summer splendor, all jewel green and lush, it was hard not to enjoy the trip at times. Once or twice, I’d even caught myself reminiscing about all the many times our mom had taken DJ and me “up north” for weekend summer trips to Mackinac City and Mackinac Island, or across the bridge to St. Ignace.

  In these charming tourist spots, the three of us had shopped, goofed around, and had just about eaten our weight in the regionally-famous Mackinac Island fudge. I remembered one particular trip, the last one before DJ had moved to Hollywood, when the three of us hadn’t even made it to the island the first day we’d been in the area, because we’d been having such a good time riding the ferry across Lake Huron, just talking and laughing, that we’d decided to ride it all afternoon.

  Tommy’s and my ride north in the old sedan hadn’t been quite as fun, but I was pretty sure he’d “slightly enjoyed it” like I had. He’d slept for a bit, had sang along to songs on the radio, and had spent a lot of time just looking out the window, periodically pointing at big red barns, which he’d always liked to see for some reason.

  We’d stopped for gas and a few potty breaks, and had scarfed down a very quick dinner of chicken fingers and fries at a Dairy Queen. Throughout all the driving, the rusty sedan had managed just fine, with only a faint knocking sound coming from the engine every so often.

  As far as police, not only had we not been stopped, we hadn’t even seen a single cruiser. About four hours into the trip, when we’d been getting into “upper up north,” even other cars, period, had become so rare that Tommy had started exclaiming when he saw one.