Total pages in book: 254
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
My best friend growled.
I growled right back. Or at least, I tried to.
But it just made him laugh like it had since we’d been kids, like he thought it was so dang funny I “sounded like a chihuahua,” as he liked to say. Fortunately, I knew I’d gotten my point across. I set my shoulders and began. “You’re all being really accepting of Duncan, but I don’t want to start here with secrets,” I warned them as gently as possible. Too many secrets.
I took a breath and palmed my donut’s back for support. He stopped nibbling and peered up at me. His steady breathing calmed me.
He loved me for who I was, and so did the man beside me and the woman behind me, and that gave me more strength than all the weightlifting in the world could have.
“Many beings don’t appreciate what I am, but I can’t change that, no matter how much I might wish I was something else. If there’s a name for what I am, I don’t know what it is. I never met my biological parents. But there’s something I need to be upfront about.” I swallowed. “Women who spend a lot of time around me get pregnant easily. Is that going to be a problem?”
Someone snickered. Everyone else made a face that said they didn’t understand or didn’t believe me. But it was a real thing.
Beside me, Matti reluctantly nodded.
“Maybe I affect men’s sperm count, maybe women are just more fertile… I’m not sure. But women between the ages of twenty and mid to late forties end up getting pregnant like—” I snapped my fingers “—when I’m around them.” It was part of the reason why I moved so often and preferred to stay around people over certain ages. I wasn’t making people have unprotected sex, and it wasn’t my fault condoms and birth control weren’t 100 percent effective on their best day, but….
Enough things had happened that had convinced me, and everyone who knew me, that this was a very real occurrence after a while.
When we’d lived together and Sienna had a boyfriend, she had been on birth control, bought mega packs of condoms, and had been a firm believer in the pull-out method. She hadn’t put her whole trust into anything. I hadn’t either, not trusting my body. I hadn’t dated much, but when I had, I’d done the same as her. Since then, we hadn’t been around each other long enough for me to affect her and Matti, but in her words, “You could never be too safe.” They just didn’t have sex when I was around.
The elders still looked to be in a state of confusion. Cyclops’s eye was squinted. Silver-Blue Hair and another woman started whispering to each other. Glasses had his arms crossed over his chest, that wary expression was plastered even more strongly over his features.
“I can’t control it. It isn’t something I knowingly do. I just want to be upfront. Maybe you can put out a warning so there aren’t any unintended surprises.” I laughed a little nervously. “Normal people, the magical… it affects everyone.”
Murmurs spread among the members.
Eventually, it was Glasses again who spoke for them after clearing his throat. “Whatever effects your presence could have on our members—”
“I don’t mean to cut you off, but it isn’t a ‘could have.’ It happens. Sienna, back there, used to live with me when we were in an apartment complex. Eleven months after we moved in, almost every female tenant in the complex under the age of fifty and over twenty was pregnant. The same thing happened in every other apartment building we lived in after that.” It wasn’t every woman I lived by, but it was enough of them for it to be suspicious.
And people weren’t always happy about it.
“We meant what we said. We’re a community for all magical beings, especially those who have a harder time being accepted by the outside world, and I’m sure you’ll see that here. Fertility is not an unwelcome gift.”
So he said.
I wasn’t sure he believed it from the way his eyes searched mine. Was I overthinking it?
I pressed my lips together, fully aware they weren’t taking this seriously enough, and I would just need to warn anyone who spent a lot of time within fifty-ish feet of me. Shifting blame wasn’t something I wanted to do, but I had tried.
Silver-Blue Hair nodded. “You don’t need to ‘classify’ yourself to us if you don’t want to.”
But they had questions; it was obvious on their faces.
I thought about calling out Henri who had literally asked what I was when we were outside, but unlike him, I wasn’t a snitch.
The thought of it made me smile, and I let the implication hang in the air. I was what I was, and they could only guess for now.