The Seed of the White Tiger (8 page)

Chapter8

It didn’t take long for people to come out of the office. It had felt like the situation had lasted hours, but in reality it was only a couple of minutes. Anna exited the building and managed to pry Dom out of his hands. Gregor was in shock and Dom was unconscious, and it looked like she was dying. He howled again. Anna started to shout. 

The pair was taken someplace safe, a nice apartment in a good part of town. Gregor felt the time go by in a blur; he just wasn’t quite there.

He stayed with her. Nothing in the world could drag him away from her side. He held her hand as the doctor looked over her, a house call to a safe house. He said that everything was ok, she was going to be fine. She woke up about half way through the examination. “The baby?” She asked.

“The baby is fine. Would you like to hear the heartbeat?” The doctor pointed at the ultrasound machine.

Dom glanced at Gregor, his eyes were wide, but he didn’t say anything. “Yes, I’d like to hear the heartbeat.” Dom knew that a hard conversation was going to happen as soon as the doctor left, but she still wanted to be sure that her baby was doing alright. The pair listened to the heartbeat together, closing their eyes to hear the rhythmic beating of the heart of the child that was inside her.

The doctor left soon after, telling her that she was going to be sore for a while and prescribing a foul smelling tea for her to drink if she was in too much pain. When he left the room, Gregor and Dom were alone. “How far along are you?”

“A little over a month along.” Dom hung her head, not wanting to look him in the face.

“Is it mine?” He asked calmly, even though his heart was skipping. He felt like he had just been handed the world. If that child was his, and he honestly believed that it was, he was going to be a determined and good father. Even though the thought of having a child made him a little nervous, he knew that he was up to the challenge.

“Yes.” Dom admitted, her voice was a whisper, afraid of his response to the answer.

Gregor smiled, but Dom wasn’t looking at him, she didn’t see the joy fill his eyes. He reached in and lifted her chin up, forcing her to look into his eyes. She smiled a little when he saw the look in his eyes. “What can I do to help?” It was the only question she needed. It let her know that the decisions were hers to make and he would be there for her no matter what.

She sniffled and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “I don’t know.” She looked at the snot on her wrist. “I could use a tissue.”

“Your wish is my command.” The words were foppish and absolutely darling. Dom couldn’t help but laugh as he rushed to the other side of the room and swooped back over to her with the tissue held out like a flag. “Your tissue, m’lady.”

“Thank you sir.” She adopted her terrible British accent, enjoying the play. She wiped her hand and her face and looked at him again. “Are you mad at me?”

“Why would I be mad at you? We barely know each other. You didn’t know how I was going to react.” Gregor was taking the diplomat tone, until Dom started to frown. “What I’m saying is that I understand, and I want you to know that I would do anything for you.”

“That makes me feel a little better.” Dom told him, telling the truth.

“When did you find out?”

“When we got checked out from the spell, before you left. Anna was able to tell before any tests. I didn’t want to say anything before I could find out for sure.”

“Have you gone to the doctor?” Gregor touched her stomach gently.

“Yes.” Dom put her hand over his and the sparks were gentle, sending waves of caring and trust between them. The situation seemed to be in the midst of a great change. “I’m keeping the baby.” She told him.

“I want to be a part of his or her life.” Gregor’s voice was determined.

“I don’t have a problem with that.” Dom told him, her smile widened a little. She seemed happy about the situation, she was ready to be happy for once, tired of being alone and miserable. She thought about it for a while. “That would make me happy.”

“I would like to move down here.” Gregor told her. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I didn’t know how to tell you. I can get my own place if you want me to. We’ll take it slow and hope it goes somewhere.”

“What about your life up north?” Dom asked.

“I’m a traveling negotiator, my home can be anywhere.” His explanation made sense. “Your home is here, in a house that has been in your family for generations, a place that has magic in the very foundations of it. I couldn’t make you leave that. Hopefully, someday it will be my home too.” He added the last part hopefully.

“Maybe.” Dom was still thinking about the changes her life held at that moment. It was nice to have the father of her child in her life. It was wonderful that he would be with her for the life of the baby. “I never knew my father.” She told him, “and my mother died when I was very young.” Her words were soft as if she was trying to explain her resistance to his presence.

“That must have been very hard on you.” He told her, finally starting to understand. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know how to do this.” Dom explained.

“I have ten younger siblings; I’ll be here to help you out.” Gregor’s voice was comforting. “I’ve been changing diapers since I was barely out of them.”

“Are they tigers, like you?” Dom leaned forward a bit, eager to hear more about his family. Needing to know more about him.

“Yes, four of them are, but none of them are white tigers except for me.”

“Why aren’t they white?” Dom asked, curious. She knew that white tigers in nature were born because of a genetic defect, but there were often entire families of them, the defect was passed down through generations, and there was so much inbreeding caused by illegal tiger breeders that they were starting to be born with horrifying deformities.

“Why do you want to know this?” Gregor didn’t know why his family was so interesting to her, but he quickly remembered that she had almost no living family. She might have a few cousins out there in the world somewhere, but there was no one in her family that she was exceptionally close to. He could imagine how lonely that would be for a small child.

“I want to know more about your family.” Dom explained, she didn’t know why she needed to know, even though he understood her deep-seated motivations.

“It’s a genetic mutation. It doesn’t happen all the time; it’s kind of like a recessive gene, or something like that. I don’t understand a lot about genetics or why this happens. We just know it does. If I knew more about it, I would have studied to be a scientist instead of majoring in liberal arts.”

“OK, I get it.” Dom added, unsure of anything else she wanted to know. It wasn’t so much what she wanted to know, but how to ask about every detail. “Is there anything you need to know about me?”

“All I need to know is how special you are, and I already know that.” He told her. “You need to keep that child safe for right now. I don’t think that it’s safe for you to go home.”

“I know it isn’t, especially right now. They’re willing to kill me over this. The reasoning seems a little odd.”

“I’m known for my ability to solve problems.” His words were sure of themselves. They carried the weight of expertise surrounded by a tiny bit of arrogance. Dom smiled again as she watched, so confident, so sure of himself. She knew that his confidence was necessary in his job and it must translate into the rest of his life, at least a little bit.

“How much longer will the peace talks take?”

“I don’t think they’ll take long now, especially if I’ll be moving to the area. I’ll be able to maintain the peace. I might just be able to bestow a special honor on the coyotes that they can trade for the land.” Gregor’s mind was already working. He wanted to help the people here, he wanted the coyotes to have the land they had grown up on, the land their parents and grandparents had been raised on and he wanted the tensions to end. He needed the tension to end.

“I just want peace.” He muttered, thinking of things that he could do.

“We all want peace, sometimes it just isn’t possible.” Dom reminded him.

“No, it’s always possible. Sometimes we just can’t figure out how to make it happen.” He reminded her of a diplomat’s need to make everything right.

Dom frowned, trying to think, wanting to help. “I think that if you gave them an honor for them to trade away the wolves would take offense to it, like you were trying to cheat on the deal.” Dom bit her lip. She knew something that might help him, but wasn’t sure about it yet, she needed to tell him any way. “I know something that might help.”

“What’s that?”

Gregor didn’t chastise her for not being a diplomat or treat her like she had no idea what she was doing. It came with the territory, and she was used to it. She cleared her throat and was ready to tell him the truth.

“I’ve been doing some reading.” She said it, and it was obvious that there was something that came after her statement. Gregor nodded and waited for her to finish her statement. “Isn’t it customary?” She paused again, gathering her courage. “For shifters to give presents, or to make offerings in the name of the parents of a Doppel?”

“A Doppel?” Gregor was in a tiny bit of shock. “A Doppel is going to be born here?”

“It’s not confirmed yet, but supposedly there is one that is going to be born soon.” Dom was being purposefully evasive.

“Whose pregnant with a Doppel?” He asked, wondering how he could convince someone to give up a gift to the coyotes. “Is it one of the coyotes or the wolves?”

Dom looked down as she sat up; her hands were folded in her lap. She examined her hands carefully, stretching her fingers and looking at her nails. She had been biting them lately, and they had become ugly and jagged. She gathered her courage, to tell him what Anna had told her.

“I was told that our child is the Doppel.” She moved her hand to her stomach as she spoke, indicating her own child.

“Does this mean?” Gregor gaped at the idea. “I can’t believe it. This child is a Doppel? Are you sure?” He asked the question several times. He couldn’t believe the news.

“I’m not far along enough to confirm it, but according to the divinations, he is a Doppel.”

“How did this happen?” He sat down hard in the chair.

Dom smiled at him. She just couldn’t keep the slight giggle out of her voice as she answered him. “I think you know how it happened.”

Gregor smiled a little too. “Well, yes, I know how that happened, but I don’t know how I could be the father of a Doppel.”

“No one really knows the cause of it.” She answered, looking at him, trying to help him understand something that no one knew much about. “I think that it might be because we’re both something special. I’m a witch and you’re a white tiger. Perhaps that’s what it takes to create a Doppel.”

“That makes sense, but they’re pretty hard to come by. It doesn’t happen every time something like that happens.”

“No, probably not, but it might be a genetic mutation, like being a white tiger. We might never understand it fully.” Dom told him.

“That might give us the edge we need, but we will need to confirm it first. That means that I have to continue these peace talks. Hopefully we’ll find a better way to solve it in the meantime.” Gregor reached up and hugged her, wrapping his strong arms around her and hoisting her off of the bed. Once her body cleared the bed he swung her around. “Wow, I can’t believe this! I can’t wait to tell my family all about you. They’ll want to come down and meet you.”

He put her down. She smoothed her clothes, a set of sweats that she had been changed into while she was unconscious. “I don’t have any family for you to meet. I don’t want to tell anything about the Doppel yet, not until we know for sure. It’s harder to take back that kind of news if it doesn’t turn out to be true.” She was being honest, but she didn’t know how he would take it.

“That’s probably for the best, but this is going to be hard not to talk about.” Gregor was being honest, eagerness filled his voice.