A Generation of Vipers (Shifter Shield Book 2) Read Online Free

helped.
    We had never discussed what she might want to do about the baby if both their lives were at risk. She had been too far along in her pregnancy for a simple termination, and hadn't seemed to want one, anyway.
    If they had to choose between the baby and Marta, I had to believe that Kade would choose Marta.
    Wouldn't he?
    Surely a fully formed human life took priority over an … unfinished baby.
    Unfinished baby shifter.
    That was the rub. I honestly didn't know if Kade and the other Kindred doctors would value a shifter infant—developed to term or not—over a human mother.
    I groaned aloud and dropped my head into my hands. This waiting business was terrible. Standing up and walking around the hospital didn't help, either—I had tried it. I ran into too many other shifters, some of whom I knew.
    I couldn't bring myself to socialize.
    I could barely bring myself to stay human. There might not be any better public place to shift, if it came down to it, but for all that it was still public . There were plenty of humans around.
    Just not in this surgical waiting room, where one of the nurses had led me when I came reeling up to the check-in desk in the emergency room. "Dr. Nevala said you should wait here and he would come to you as soon as your cousin was out of surgery."
    Cousin. So that would be the fiction for the non-shifter staff. I could live with that.
    Here I was all alone.
    I poured another cup of the sludgy coffee and tried to cover the taste with creamer and sugar. I gave up when it began tasting more like syrup than anything drinkable.
    It seemed like hours before Kade swung around the doorframe, as usual seeming to take up much more room than he should have. I flicked my tongue against my lips nervously, trying to get a sense of his mood.
    Tired.
    That was all that brushed through me from him.
    Too afraid to say anything, I simply waited.
    He ran a hand across his eyes and I tried to brace myself for bad news. Any bad news. The worst news.
    "They're both okay."
    All the air seemed to whoosh out of me at once, and I deflated against the back of the chair I sat in.
    "For now, anyway," Kade continued. "The baby is on a ventilator to help her breathe, but that's not uncommon at this stage. We didn't have time to help her lungs develop any more quickly."
    "And Marta?"
    "Pretty badly beaten. We repaired the internal injuries." He closed his eyes briefly. "They both have a long recovery ahead of them."
    "Can I see either of them?"
    "Marta's still out. We're going to keep her under until tomorrow. The baby …" He waggled his hand in the air in a so-so motion. "It probably wouldn't hurt, but she's still being checked in. Later would be better."
    Glancing past him through the doorway to make sure no one was nearby, I lowered my voice. "Any sign that she's a lamia?"
    "None. Yet."
    "Would you be able to tell?" I realized that in all my discussions with him about shifter babies, I had missed some important questions. "If she inherited the weresnake gene, how soon is she likely to shift?"
    Oh, God. Could that be a problem?
    Seeing the panic on my face, Kade wrapped one arm around my shoulder and pulled me in close. "Usually not for a while—several weeks, at least—but even if she does, it'll be okay. We've got her in the shifter ward. It's set up as a contact isolation ward, so only approved visitors are allowed, and they're all screened."
    "But what can I do?" My voice pitched up at the end of the question, turning it into more of a wail.
    "Go home and rest. Go back to work. Whatever you want to do. Nothing is going to change overnight. It'll all be okay."
    Easy for him to say. He had been in the operating room for the last several hours, actually doing something helpful.
    Now that the immediate crisis had passed, though, I was feeling the effect of the anxiety. "You staying up here tonight?"
    He nodded. "You going back to my place or yours?"
    I paused. It hadn't occurred to me to wonder—I had simply assumed I