Chapter 225

Justin’s POV

After cleaning her hands off, Dr. Myles placed two fingers in the center of Helen’s abdomen and started muttering. I waited to see if I could visualize the magic, but whatever she was doing wasn’t something that was apparent on the outside. The only indication that the doctor was doing anything was the changing look on her face.

She kept her fingers there a minute before she pulled her hand off, cleaned her fingers again, and replaced two fingers on the other hand on Helen’s stomach. The same display of unreadable emotions, or rather, disconnected emotions, flitted across her face.

I couldn’t pick out whether it was good or bad or what was going on, but whatever it was, she must have found something interesting. Otherwise, why bother doing whatever she was doing twice?

“Well?” I demanded when my patience ran out.

She waved me quiet with her free hand. After a moment, she washed up and handed Helen a cloth. “This is to clean the herbs off your stomach. Would you like privacy?”

Helen shook her head. “Not this time. You were there for a long time. Did you find something bad?”

Dr. Myles let out a sigh and leaned against the counter with the sink on it.

“Well, this can’t be good,” I snapped. “Just out with it. We can both see the bad news, and you’re driving me nuts.”

She nodded slowly, stalling. “You guys have some difficult choices ahead.”

Helen reached over and squeezed my hand, once again popping the bones against each other. Except that this time, I squeezed back. Her nerves were as much my nerves at this point.

“There is a problem with one of the babies,” Dr. Myles said. “It’s not that your babies aren’t both healthy. From everything I can see via magic, their magic is, or their power signature is, thriving.”

“The problem is you have two different power signatures in there. One is definitely lycan,” she said. “The other I don’t like the feel of. I’ve never felt anything like it before. It’s definitely magic, and it’s not lycan nor is it werewolf.”

She squirmed in her discomfort. “And the only explanation that I can come up with, based on your medical history, is that Justin is not the father of one of those twins.”

I bit back the roar of rage and jerked my hand out of Helens before I hurt her. “That’s not possible,” I snarled.

Dr. Myles gave me a steady look as if willing me to be calm. I sucked air in through my nose and blew out through my mouth, hoping to keep from shredding her.

“It is possible,” she said calmly. “It’s not common, but on occasion, if a woman is ovulating and she has multiple partners during her fertile days, it is possible for the sperm from one father to fertilize one egg and sperm from another man to fertilize the other, giving her twins with two separate fathers.”

She twiddled her fingers, looking at the floor before glancing back up to meet my gaze again. “I think all four of us know who that other father would be and why the magical signature would be so unpleasant.”

This time I did roar out. Spinning, I punched a hole in the drywall behind me. Immediately I regretted the reaction. This wasn’t my building. I’d have to pay the doctor back for that.

“You mean to tell me that one of my twins is going to be a part demon,” I yelled.

Helen burst into tears.

“Unfortunately, that’s exactly what I mean,” Dr. Myles said. “But here’s the thing, and I need you guys to listen very carefully while I say this.”

I turned around and looked at her, trying not to glare. I don’t think I could help the scowl on my face, though. Helen wiped at tears. She had stopped bawling, but her cheeks refused to stay dry as silent tears dripped down.

Dr. Myles fixed each one of us in a hard gaze before continuing. “This baby is still yours.”

“Like hell,” I snapped.

“Listen,” she snapped back. “First off, the baby will only be a one-quarter demon. It will also be a one-quarter human and half werewolf. That’s the mix that the baby will have gotten from the Huntsman and from Helen. So it won’t even be as powerful a being as the Huntsman was.”

She stared hard at Helen and me. “And I don’t know the Huntsman’s history very well. Did he have a happy childhood?”

Helen and I glanced at each other, and both of us shook our heads. “Why would that matter?” I growled.

“It matters a lot what a child goes through during their formative years,” the doctor explained. “If he had a hard childhood, and you add that to his genetics, it could very well have turned him from a decent person into the beast that he was.”

This time she stared hard at me. “Think about your own self. Your father constantly told you that lycans were a beast and that you needed to be chained up. What did your lycan act like?”

“A beast,” I muttered grudgingly.

“Exactly,” Dr. Myles pointed out. “And your father made that happen. Who you are right now is proof that it didn’t have to be that way. If King Juden had loved you and taught you how to manage your lycan properly, you could have lived as you are now for your entire life up to this point. There was no reason that you had to become a beast other than your father told you that’s what you were.”

Her gaze went hard, scolding. “If you treat this child just like your other, if you raise them both the same, then there’s a good chance that being one-quarter demon will never matter. Don’t turn this poor child into a beast like your parents did to you.”

Raw, ragged guilt settled on my chest, making it hard to breathe. On two sides, my emotions clashed. On the one hand, I really didn’t want to be like my father. No child deserved what I had been through just because of who they were. I would know better than anybody what that felt like and what that could do to a person’s mind.

But on the other hand, this child was the son or the daughter of a half-demon. It was, by definition, demon spawn. What was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to love a child like that?

Dr. Myles sighed and rubbed her face. “I took a moment and did a further examination of Helen, too. I agree with what Lisa has said. There are what I would call lingering traces of the Huntsman’s power within her. But it seems to have settled well with all of the other power in her.”

“Because of the two men she’s mated with, Helen has an interesting signature that I haven’t seen before. But that’s because she’s been absorbing power from a lycan and from the Huntsman in addition to her own genetic makeup of specialty werewolf.”

“Get to the point,” I snarled.

Dr. Myles continued, “It remains to be seen whether this will impact Helen’s pregnancy, especially since one of her children is part demon. And whether, in reverse, that will impact her at all. So I’ll be doing frequent monitoring of her and the babies, twice a week for the rest of the pregnancy, and more often if I see concerns.”

I nodded my head, unsure of what to say. Anything that came out of my mouth now was likely going to be hurtful, and the doctor didn’t deserve that. This wasn’t her fault. I’d also have to be careful when speaking with Helen because it wasn’t her fault either. None of us could have foreseen this outcome.

And even if I hadn’t mated with Helen, it sounds like she still would have ended up carrying the hellspawn. So regardless, we would have had to deal with this problem in our lives.

I cast Helen an apologetic look. “I need to go cool off. Can you ask the doctors anything else you have to ask, and I’ll see you later?”

She nodded, tears in her eyes, and didn’t say anything. Feeling slightly guilty, I stomped out of the room and down the hall, trying to keep a handle on myself. What a mess it all turned out to be, yet again.