Pregnant for the Alpha and Vampire

Chapter 3. The earrings errands

Furia walked through the village with her head down and her shoulders hunched, and she prayed to any god who might be listening that no one had seen her climb out of that carriage.

She had been grateful that the carriage came along but in essence that she was safe, what would have happened if the man in the carriage was a Vampire or other creature? Surely, she would have been a corpse by now and but the claiming Night Rite was coming and most creatures would not want to disrupt the ritual.

The cobbler’s shop had been empty when she stepped down, thank the fates, so she had slipped into the alley beside it and waited until the carriage pulled away before she walked the rest of the way home. Her legs were still shaking when she reached the side gate, so she stopped for a moment to press her hand against the cool stone and steady her breathing before anyone saw her.

She slipped through the kitchen door and dropped the things she had bought from the market onto the counter, the thread and salt and honey all accounted for, and she arranged them on the shelf where her stepmother would see them and count them and find nothing missing.

Marta was at the stove with her back turned, so Furia did not wait to exchange words with her but walked out of the kitchen and up the back stairs to her room, closing the door behind her and leaning against it with her eyes shut and her hand pressed against her chest.

She sat on the edge of her bed and pulled the locket from beneath her dress, holding it up to the thin light that came through the window. The silver was cool against her palm now, the warmth from the carriage ride gone, and she turned it over and over in her fingers while looking for a clasp or a seam or anything that would let her open it, but she found nothing.

The locket was smooth all around and sealed shut, and no amount of pressing or scratching or prying with her fingernails would make it budge.

She flipped it over and saw the writing on the back, small and faint and worn down like it had been touched a thousand times before: For my daughter, who will need it.

She stared at the words for a long moment with her jaw tightening and her fingers curling around the small silver disc until her knuckles went white, and then she let out a breath that was half laugh and half frustration. “Trash,” she muttered while walking to the corner of her room and dropping the locket onto the pile of old cloth and broken combs that had accumulated there over the years. “Old, useless trash, that old quack should rot in hell with his piece of thrash.”

She pushed herself off the bed and walked to the window, standing there with her arms folded and her forehead pressed against the cool glass while she tried not to think about the old man’s face when he told her she was pregnant, tried not to think about the three women who burned for just not being pure, tried not to think about anything at all.

A knock on her door made her jump, and Rhys called through the wood with his voice low and careful. “Furia, my mother is back and wants you downstairs. She says you are going to the seamstress for the dress fitting.”

She straightened her dress and smoothed her hair and walked out of the room without looking at the locket in the corner, and she found Lady Marguerite waiting in the front hall with her coat already on and her gloves already buttoned. Celeste stood beside her stepmother, already dressed in her best day gown, and her eyes moved over Furia with the same lazy contempt she had worn at breakfast.

“Finally,” Lady Marguerite said while walking out the door without waiting for Furia to fetch her coat.

The seamstress’s shop sat at the other end of the village, a narrow building with a red door and windows full of dresses that Furia had never worn and never would, and the woman herself was old and thin and moved like a bird, quick and sharp, with eyes that missed nothing.

She measured Celeste first with her tape and her pins moving in practiced efficiency, and Celeste stood on the platform with her chin lifted and her shoulders back, the perfect picture of a girl who had been prepared for this moment her whole life.

She has been telling her friends who choose to listen that with her recent trips to the seamstress, she had told her that with her shape, non lowly wolves or Vampire would claim her but the Lord Vampire or the Alpha Wolf themselves. Furia snickered, the old woman was just pandering to her for the sake of her business.

Furia stood in the corner and watched, and when Celeste stepped down and the seamstress turned to her, she felt the woman’s eyes on her body the same way she had felt Lady Marguerite’s eyes at breakfast. The seamstress looked at her face and her shoulders and her waist, and Furia saw something flicker in her expression, something that looked like recognition or suspicion or both, so she held her breath and waited for the woman to speak.

The old woman said nothing and measured Furia in silence with her hands quick and professional, and when she was done she wrote something on her paper and turned away without a word.

The fitting was over within the hour, and Furia walked toward the carriage with Celeste beside her and Lady Marguerite behind her, and she was reaching for the door when her stepmother’s voice stopped her.

Furia turned with her hand still on the handle and her heart already beginning to pound. “What?”

Lady Marguerite pulled a small pouch from her coat and held it out with the leather worn and the strings tied tight. “The earrings Celeste ordered from the jeweler are ready, so you will go and fetch them.”

Furia stared at the pouch and then at her stepmother’s face, and she felt the weight of the woman’s gaze pressing down on her like a stone. “The jeweler is on the other side of the village,” she said with her voice coming out flatter than she intended. “It will take me three and half an hour to walk there and get back.”

“Then you had better leave now,” Lady Marguerite said while turning toward the carriage and not looking at Furia anymore.

Furia looked at the carriage and at the empty seat beside Celeste, the door that was closing in her face, and she felt something cold settle into her chest. “How am I supposed to get there and back before dark?”

Lady Marguerite smiled in a way that did not reach her eyes while climbing into the carriage and settling herself on the seat, and her voice was soft and made Furia’s skin prickle. “Perhaps the same carriage that brought you home earlier can take you again.”

She pulled the door shut, and Celeste laughed from inside with a bright and brittle sound that cut through the evening air, and the driver flicked the reins and the horses began to move, and Furia stood in the dust with the pouch in her hand and the looking at the evening sun going down.

Nobody takes the path that leads to the jeweler's store by this time, most carriages wouldn't even attempt that but she was to go on foot and come back. Was she meaning for her to die?