Catalyst Ch. 52

Chapter Fifty-Two: Foreseen Unforeseen

Eric’s POV:

This is new, I think in surprise as Lust flares in the Bond.

True, my Bonded was particularly frisky this morning and has been every morning since returning back from Dallas a few weeks ago. At first I thought the increase in her sexual appetite stemmed from the espionage, but then I thought it was the disguises. After all, my wife is young, and I believed that the thrill, make believe or not, of taking a different lover seemed exciting to her. This did not unnerve me at all because I can become a different lover for her, and she can become a different lover for me as well.

However, my assumptions proved inaccurate. She chose my name to call out in our fantasy. Despite the fact she knew she was free to pick any name she wished, she chose her husband’s name. I will not pretend my love for her did not swell in that moment.

That was not the only proof of my miscalculations.

After my hair had grown back in my Death Sleep, I had risen to her bouncing on me like a star rodeo rider. She had said her husband was back and could not wait to have him again. This enthusiasm alone was enough to dash my earlier assumptions relating to her Lust.

Finally, after I had cut my hair to the length she had suggested (much shorter than I ever thought she would want) she had purred and bounced on me some more. Ever since the chopping of my Viking hair and adaptation of a style which Pam finally approves, Sookie has been climbing atop me endlessly ever since.

It has been a wonderful nuisance, but a curious one too.

Every day since our return to Ohio, Sookie has distracted me from my efforts at uncovering the root of our most recent problems. However, she is no mere distraction. Sookie is the cure to my distress. She is the remedy to my saddened soul. Losing the Ancient Pythoness is a burden much easier to bear with Sookie held tightly against my side. She holds the weight of my heart on her shoulders so I might hold the weight of the vampire world upon my own.

Perhaps this is where the Lust stems from? Is it her way of helping me through these past weeks of work? I wonder as I reflect on her actions these past weeks. Every time I receive updates from Isabel, Sookie has been there to alleviate some of the distress. For every ounce of sickening news Isabel gives me, Sookie is there with a pound of medicine.

It is not just Isabel who brings me troublesome news. Since the murder of the Ancient Pythoness, it seems that the entirety of the vampire community has reached out to us for information; either to receive or give it.

So far Isabel has concluded, through use of heavy glamour and light torture, that Hugo’s orders came from the state of Nevada. Some of his correspondence’s envelopes were still in his office, stuck precariously to the underside of a drawer. Whether those envelopes had latched opportunistically to the underside of its neighboring drawer, or if Hugo had retained the envelopes as some sort of leverage is unknown and inconsequential. Hugo’s fate is sealed. After this matter is cleared up and all responsible parties are apprehended, Hugo will face a tribunal. Whether that means a local hearing with the Magister or a national hearing with the North American Council has yet to be seen. Either way, Hugo is unlikely to survive the situation.

From informants other than Isabel, I have been updated on many movements. Particularly the movements of ancients and council members that have left the country as of late. My pool of potential Big Marks is now merely the size of a single ocean rather than all Seven Seas… I need more information!

Before I can succumb to the turmoil of puzzling out this latest mystery, I let my mind reflect once more upon my wife. I fantasize about her actions before she left for school.

This morning she was playful, cuddlesome, and absolutely delicious; a real lightness to my heart. She spoke all sorts of words about her desire to call off work and stay all day in our bed together. However, being the responsible teacher that she is, Sookie pouted as she slid out of our bed and prepared for her day at work.

Now it is almost noon, and that earlier friskiness has evolved into an earnest need. Her yearnings are nearly stifling, and without really considering the fact that I have work to do, I find myself snapping my laptop shut. Grabbing up my car keys, I head to the school and arrive just as her lunch break is beginning. She must have felt me arriving because she comes running out of the building, jumps into my car and kisses me feverishly.

“What has gotten into you?” I laugh as I pull away from our kiss and push her hair from her face.

“Hopefully you; right now,” She tells me urgently. “Go park down the street-”

“Sookie-”

“Eric, I am so serious right now,” She bares her teeth at me aggressively, and as her Bonded I feel no compulsion to question further.

Instead, I shift into gear and tear out of the parking lot. Thankfully I had the foresight to bring the SUV. Now I can pull off the road behind some covering foliage. As I do just that, Sookie wastes no time crawling into my lap.

“Thank God, you’re already hard!” Sookie moans as she starts opening my pants and pushing her panties to the side.

“Of course I am hard. Do you feel what you have been sending to me all morning?” I chortle as she holds my cock in her impatient hand and quickly impales herself upon me. “Fuck, Sookie,” I snarl as I grab her hips.

“Shut up, and just fuck me,” she pants into my ear as she grinds recklessly above me. Without another word, I grasp her sides that much harder and begin bucking my hips upward. “Yes, yes,” she mumbles against my ear as she snakes her arms around my neck. “Just like that!” she is already clenching around me in preparation for orgasm. “AH!” Her cry fills the car, and I am surprised by the abrupt intensity of her clenching walls. It is very much like the orgasms she experiences when I stimulate her ears. However, I have hardly been inside her very long and she is strangling my cock with her vice-like pussy.

“Sookie,” I snarl as she drags my own orgasm from me without my realization. It is not until I feel my shaft pulsing and emptying inside her that I realize that she has turned me into a one-pump-chump. “The fuck you just do to me?” rumbles from my lips in both surprise and unbidden exhaustion.

“You’ve been hangin’ with Jason too much,” she mumbles tiredly, her dwindling backwater accent re-emerging with her own fatigue. “That’s his catch phrase.”

“Sookie, even our quickies have never been that quick,” I tell her.

“It’s for the best. I gotta get back to the school,” she tells me as she climbs shakily from my lap and back into her own seat.

“Mm, but you smell too good to let go,” I reply, leaning toward her seat and inhaling the freshly fucked scent she is emitting.

“Eric, I can’t go missing like this for very long. Please?” Sookie asks me sweetly and I sigh.

I pause only a moment to watch her clean herself up a bit. Then I throw the vehicle back into gear, I pull back onto the road and return my Bonded to the school.

“Thanks for the quickie, Darlin’,” Sookie smiles at me a bit shyly. Though she often humors my enjoyment for “naughty public play,” as she calls it, she has never desired it to such a degree. I never believed before this moment that my Sookie would have ever needed it so intensely.

It is not until she is back at work and I am driving home that I realize the peculiarity of the situation. That was not a whim. It was entirely instinctual. It was need not mere desire. An instinct rises inside me. Her desire for me might be indicative of her body finally preparing for reproduction!

Taking out my phone, I dial Dr. Ludwig.

“What?” the doctor snaps as she answers her phone.

“This is Northman. I think you should do Sookie’s evaluation today,” I tell her without hesitation. Her last one had been the weekend before our trip to Dallas.

“She is not due for another week. Do you have reason?” Ludwig asks with more curiosity than irritability this time.

“It is more of a feeling than a reason,” I confess. “It is very strong, however. After years of being Bonded to this woman, I have never felt her like this. That is saying something because I have felt many a thing from my Sookie, and this was definitely different.”

Ludwig snorts, “I know your former reputation with the female populace, Northman. That does not mean you know a woman’s body better than she knows her-” The doctor pauses a moment. “Hold on, I have another call.” Ludwig puts me on hold as she accepts the other call. I am home by the time she picks up my line again. “That was your Bonded.”

“Oh?” I can feel in the Bond that she is not unwell, in fact she feels rather giddy.

“She just made the same request for an evaluation. Apparently your instincts are not far off the mark. I will meet you at your home when she has returned.” With that, Ludwig hangs up on me, and I find myself laughing.

A baby! I think with wild excitement and a little trepidation. For the first time in over a thousand years, I will have a child of my own flesh and blood!

It takes all of my willpower not to start researching pregnancy and infants. I decide that I should wait until conception is confirmed. After all, with our different… heritages, we might not manage to conceive the first time around. You should probably wait until ovulation is confirmed, I berate my impatience.

The excitement will not be contained, however, and I cannot help the whimsical musings of watching my wife growing round with our child. She will be lovely when she is heavily pregnant, but I feel a concern grow with my excitement. Many years ago we had discussed her career and motherhood. She loves her job, and I find myself worrying that she will not desire to give it up like we had discussed.

Then again, I think wildly, I am not all that busy during the day. I require absolutely no rest, and I am old enough that it hardly effects my feeding habits.

There are plenty of ways for me to continue running my businesses while raising our children. The only thing that I am adamant about is that our children are raised by their parents. That does not mean the one to stay home with them all day must be Sookie!

All the remaining work day, I accomplish little more than analyzing Sookie’s every mood and plotting ways to bring a baby with me to business meetings. How hard could that be?

I know that I should be hunting through all the information Isabel gave me regarding Hugo’s anonymous contact. I am well aware that I should be going through Compton’s emails about the vampires forced to meet the sun, and looking for clues coming out of Louisiana. I certainly should at least be checking to see if the mysterious Nevada number has made any calls since our trip to Dallas a few weeks ago!

However, Sookie is still greatly aroused, and I cannot wait to make love to her when she gets home. If she is actually fertile, I want to beg her to take off work the remainder of the week and pump her full of every drop of my seed that I can provide. Anything to ensure that my first born is in my arms before the end of the year!

My fantasies are interrupted by a POP, and I turn to look down at my left side to the little doctor who has arrived.

“You are early,” I say, but with excitement rather than annoyance.

Ludwig shrugs, “It was one thing when a man thought himself more aware of his wife’s body than she was. It is a completely different matter when husband and wife both notice a change in a woman’s body. I am just as impatient and excited for this as the two of you,” She points out.

“I severely doubt that,” I shake my head, and despite my annoyance at her assumptions, I cannot stop myself from grinning.

The doctor stares at me an extra moment and then gives me a rare smile, “I suppose you are right,” she relents as she begins removing equipment from her enchanted doctor’s bag. It appears that she has brought along her entire lab to perform tests she normally does at her office.

By the time Sookie arrives home, she is bounding through the door excitedly and flinging her purse and tote onto the front entryway table as I have finally grown accustomed to over the years.

Ludwig holds out a specimen cup as my Bonded bounces toward her, but the doctor’s face has transformed into a frown.

“What is it?” I ask of the doctor when my wife has banished herself to the powder room.

“I,” Ludwig seems at a loss for words, and rather than reply beyond that, she begins rifling through her bag for a file.

Sookie returns, eagerly holding the cup of urine, but Ludwig is ignoring her and thumbing through pages within the file she has begun reviewing. She seems to finally notice Sookie, and quickly begins loading the applicators so she may return to her notes.

“Sookie,” I take my wife’s hands as Ludwig goes about performing her tasks.

“What is it, Eric?” Sookie is barely paying attention to me as Ludwig has not said a word to her yet.

“Before any results come through, I want to tell you something,” I finally earn Sookie’s focus and she tilts her head curiously at me. “When we do become pregnant, I want you to know that I am aware that things have changed. I know that your mind may have changed over the years, and I want you to know that if you wish to return to work sooner than we originally decided; I am entirely committed to becoming a stay at home father.”

Sookie’s eyes widen at my declaration, and I do not miss Ludwig looking up from her work to gape a moment.

“You’d do that so I could keep teaching?” she asks softly.

“If it is what you want, then I will do so happily,” I assure her. “If you want to become a stay at home mother, then that is fine too. I just want you to know that I am not going to push an agreement we made ten years ago. We are husband and wife. We are Bonded. We will raise our family together.”

Sookie can only stare at me in surprise, but I can feel her love for me bubbling over inside the both of us. Suddenly she is distracted and peers around me.

“Doctor, what is it?” Sookie asks, having must seen the doctor doing something behind my back. I turn to look at the tiny doctor and can see the astonishment on her face.

Ludwig says nothing but picks up the applicator and stares for a long moment.

She is fertile! She is fertile! I think with wild, uninhibited excitement.

“You are-” despite everything, I hold my breath with my wife, “already pregnant.”

“B-b-b-but-” Sookie starts to babble in confusion and all that I can think to do is keep my own mouth shut because I am just as flabbergasted. “When!?” Sookie finally manages to spit out.

“I would guess some time between now and your last exam,” Ludwig replies, clearly concerned by the absence of any warning about the impending event. “My best guess, since you are showing positive on the pregnancy test is that you conceived either the week of or the week after your last check up,” Ludwig confesses.

“There was no indicators in my blood or urine?” Sookie asks a bit shrilly.

Ludwig fumbles with her papers a moment, “There was a modest increase in your hormones, but nothing indicative of ovulation, let alone an increase I would have expected to see for a vampire pregnancy!”

“But I am pregnant?” Sookie demands.

The doctor fumbles for a moment and I see her apply the remaining urine onto three more tests. She takes a needle to my wife’s arm and draws blood for other tests as well.

“I haven’t felt nauseated or tired or anything,” Sookie tells me, and I can tell that she is confused and disoriented by the news. To be truthful, so am I! Never would I have expected to have been so blindsided by our first pregnancy!

Machines are whirring, and the mad scratch of Ludwig’s pen in her notes is filling the stunned silence between myself and my Bonded. Finally everything seems to occur at once and Ludwig is saying all sorts of words that, for the first time in a long time, I am unable to absorb through my whirlwind of thoughts. My wife is going to have my baby…

“Northman?” Ludwig snaps at me.

“Yes, Doctor?” I jolt back to attention.

“Did you hear what I just told you?” she demands shortly.

“No,” I admit, still too overwhelmed.

“Sookie is pregnant,” Ludwig confirms concretely.

“All right,” I whisper, feeling like a lost boy adrift on the ocean.

“That means a lot of changes going on between now and the birth,” Ludwig says slowly, as if she has realized that I am not as quick minded as usual.

“Yes,” I agree automatically.

“Sookie,” Ludwig tries her instead.

“Huh?” is my wife’s eloquent reply. At least I am not the only one who has just had the rug pulled out from beneath them.

Ludwig claps her hands in front of our faces, and I finally rein in my bedraggled mind and focus. Now is Sookie’s time to be confused and uncertain. My entire existence must focus all of its will upon making sure she stays safe and healthy. Currently Ludwig is trying to tell me exactly how to do that.

“She needs to begin sleeping regularly again. Growing an immortal child is not something someone does without plenty of sleep,” the doctor begins. “Also, there is no way she will be able to consume enough calories in a day to keep her body running twenty-four hours, six days a week and simultaneously giving enough of those calories to the baby.”

“Yes,” I agree firmly.

Ludwig reaches into her bag and extracts a paper, “This is a list of foods that are considered unsafe for pregnant women to consume. I’ve added a few over the years that I would like Sookie to avoid because of her ancestry.” I see that lemons are on the list and am not surprised. “Weekly blood exchanges to keep you two calm and your connection strong. I have read in the other Ludwig’s notes that irregular blood exchanges lead to your other versions being temperamental with one another.”

“Yes, Doctor,” I commit her suggestions to memory.

“I will continue my monthly check-ins. In four weeks we will do your first ultrasound.”

“I have never heard of you using ultrasound,” I frown. Ludwig has always been able to feel unborn children to know if they were in distress.

Ludwig scowls, “Apparently one of the children born to the other version of you was known as a Mirror Twin-”

“I have heard of those-”

“No,” Ludwig shakes her head. “Not just a run of the mill mirror twin. The child had the ability to mask their presence within their own twin. They could disappear from their own parents’ perception at will. Apparently that Ludwig could not even sense the child’s existence before or after it was born. However, I should be able to see the fetus or at least the amniotic sack in an ultrasound.”

I nod in mild understanding. It will be another thing to research. I have known for a while that the children Sookie will give me must be special, and this information on a Mirror Twin only cements that suspicion.

“Are you certain nothing happened in the last two to three weeks?” Ludwig asks. “She has not been any different?”

I lift my shoulders in an uncertain shrug. Our sex life has always been very consistent, and with her living immortality, Sookie usually gives me sex twice a day. The only time she might skip a day is Sundays because she sleeps Saturday evenings.

Grasping for any explanation, I offer the single anomaly involving our sex life, “The only notable variation was the Sunday we were in Dallas. Sookie woke some time in the early morning despite having fallen asleep at sunrise and raised me from my Day Death for sex. She has never broken a sleep pattern herself for sex. I believe the last time she had sex after interrupted sleep was when you took her temperature by ear her first year of college.”

“Ah, I remember that,” Ludwig chuckles. “Still, that is something. Once I can do an ultrasound, I will have a better idea of when the conception date was.”

“Is there anything else we should know?” I ask as Sookie continues to sit in stunned silence.

“I do not know when the fetus will receive its immortality,” Ludwig tells me. “For all I know, it is already invincible. However, for all I know, she is still capable of having a miscarriage. We will work under the assumption that you are two weeks pregnant until evidence says otherwise. That means your body might not be showing any symptoms. What clued you in that she might be fertile?”

Carefully I glance at Sookie who is still staring at the pregnancy test, and I can see her eyes growing into big orbs of emotion. “She was insistently aroused today. Her scent was practically irresistible, and she was urgent to be with me.”

Ludwig takes some quick notes, nodding her head. “It could be the extra blood flow to her reproductive organs that brought on the urgency. There’s a chance that may wane as other pregnancy symptoms come about. Nausea can kill arousal quite effortlessly.”

I slowly nod as I look between my wife and her doctor. What I would not give for Sookie to say something. Anything!

“Well,” Ludwig begins packing away her portable lab in preparation to depart, “I will let you both know what I else I discover. Congratulations to both of you.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” I tilt my head respectfully.

Sookie jolts then and stammers a quick word of thanks before staring once again at her positive pregnancy test.

When we are alone, I take one of Sookie’s hands in my own, “Are you all right, Dear One?”

My Bonded sighs and looks at me with mild bemusement. “I’m just… Stunned that we had no warning or precursors. I mean, I’m grateful in a way,” she confesses. “It feels more exciting this way, more real. I’ve been scared that there would be some huge sign that I’d be fertile, and Ludwig would tell us what day we’d get pregnant on before we even had sex… It’s just such a relief, you know?”

I smile at her words, “I was a bit disappointed to lose my excuse to fill your body over and over again.”

Sookie rolls her eyes at me, “Eric, that’s a bunch of bull. You fill me up every darn day, and you know it.”

“I do,” I laugh in agreement. “So, you are happy?” I ask

“Very,” she assures me and leans her head upon my shoulder. “When do we tell the family?” she asks.

“Any time you like,” I say. “I am certain with our emotions shifting so drastically throughout the day, Godric probably suspects something.”

Sookie considers my words a moment before giving me one of her little smiles, “I guess that’s true.”

“How are you feeling?” I ask with mild concern. Her body is still filled with confusion, and I need her to discern if there is anything below the surface of that confusion.

“Confused,” she says with a laugh, “but excited and a little overwhelmed, too.”

“This took me by surprise too,” I tell her comfortingly. Perhaps some of the anxiety will ebb if she knows she is not alone in this shock. This beautiful, wonderful shock.

Sookie’s smile transforms into a goofy grin as she giggles, “Eric, your baby is in me!”

Dragging her into my lap, I hold Sookie tightly and whisper, “Yes, he is.”

Sookie’s POV:

My hand flutters across my abdomen in startled disbelief. I think I’ve been stroking my belly over half an hour now, and it still feels like I’m in a dream. That point of half awake, half asleep. That uncertainty of what has really transpired. It reminds me of when Jason and I were poor and starving. I would have dreams of finding a winning scratch off ticket for twenty-thousand dollars or winning the lottery. Then I would start to wake, and my stomach would growl hungrily. I would cry because we were both so hungry, and no matter how hard we both worked, we would stay hungry forever.

Now I sit here stroking my and Eric’s child through the thick flesh of my stomach, and just praying that my eyes might stay closed, that this dream won’t end, and that this miracle I’ve longed for won’t be taken away.

“He’s here, Sookie,” Eric tells me as he kneels between my legs and cups his large hands over mine. “He is right here, and he will not disappear.” The firm pressure his hands bring over our baby makes an unashamed sob tumble from my lips.

“I was so scared I wouldn’t get this surprise,” I finally confess.

“So was I,” Eric tells me, squeezing my hands and leaning over to kiss just above where our hands are joined. “Of course it would happen in the middle of this conspiracy. Why do all of our happy moments as husband and wife need to coincide with some supernatural event as well?”

“I know!” I sob and laugh simultaneously. I can feel a strange impatience in my husband now that he has eased my worries that this was a dream. “What’s wrong?” I ask him softly.

Eric shakes his head and grins, “Nothing is wrong, Dear One. I am merely preening a bit.”

Suddenly I understand what he means. He wants to tell everyone that we’re pregnant. He wants to gloat! I realize amusedly. Then again, I suppose that as a vampire, impregnating someone is quite the achievement. Although, Ludwig was very clear all those years ago that conception would be all my body’s job.

Regardless of this, I know that the truth is Eric did do something. He fell in love with me, and stayed by my side through stubbornness, school, work, meltdowns, conspiracies, espionage, my still lingering crisis of faith, and now he’ll be with me through this.

On to Chapter Fifty-Three!