Wait, Am I A Zombie? [BOOK 3]

I hadn't been weak before, but I hadn't been powerful either. And right now, I was feeling myself hard.

As much as he craved the 'traditional family' he'd done everything in his power to make the opposite. I wasn't a stay at home wife or an arm piece like the Asian royals. I wasn't cowed by him and I sure as shit didn't submit.

Bane wanted an idea, but I was pretty sure his heart wanted me. Damn thing just needed to convince his mind already.

"What is it that you're so worried about, Georgia?"

Did I seem worried? Nah, I was peachy-keen. I was walking on the moon. I was dancing on air. I still had no freaking idea what I was!

"What am I so worried about?" I shot up in the bed, startling the two women working on me. "Everything. Nothing. Nothing and everything."

It was a weird place to be. I worried about everything I couldn't control and everything I could. I worried about the future and how the past might affect it. I worried about ifs and ands, about what was, what would be, and what would never be. Would my husband always love me? Would I always be as I am now? Would we never have children? Would I grow to resent everyone and hate everything?

Questioning was an exercise in futility. Especially with the ones I asked. It'd been so easy to assume I was a vampire, a bit harder to accept I wasn't. Not all that difficult to think I was a werewolf, obnoxious to find that I wasn't and I was being kept under lock and key by real werewolves. Frustrating to learn I wasn't a zombie even though I hadn't really considered myself one, and batshit crazy to be accepted as a royal, going through the trials and tribulations that came with it.

It seemed I knew myself a lot better, felt more comfortable in my body and closer to my soul. But it didn't negate that I really needed to figure out what I was. That knowing my strengths and weaknesses would help keep me and others alive.

"It doesn't just worry me," I went on. I was on a roll. "It freaks me out. I don't even know what I am or who I am anymore. I'm not Georgia Kent. I don't even know if I'm Peaches! I just feel like a rat in a really f'ed up cage, and everyone around me knows what they're doing, and knows how to get out, but me."

I was breathing heavy, and the four women in the room had stopped what they were doing completely. Samantha said something in Arabic, made a dismissive gesture, and the women left. Then she slid off the table and came to sit next to me.

She smiled softly and reached over to squeeze my hand. "To quote a saying from your generation: life's a bitch and then you die. The only difference with you, Georgia, is the bitch brought you back. But is that such a terrible thing?"

I blinked in surprise. I'd never heard Samantha curse. I hadn't even thought "bitch" was in her vocab, or that she listened to anything from my generation. But then she returned to her usual, motherly self.

"Yes, things are changing, but even if you had stayed dead, there was no guarantee that things wouldn't have changed for you then, too." Her brown eyes were soft and filled with more experience than I'd ever had, and maybe ever would have. I knew from diving a little too deep into her mind that Samantha had been through some stuff. She'd seen the darkside, and—like Anakin in Star Wars—had let it consume her. The only difference was that she'd fought her way back to the light, clawed her way up and found something worth living for. Damn! I should've been a writer.

Samantha's voice drew me back. "You worry about who you are and what you are, but from where I am sitting, you are already the person you want to be, and nothing you have gone through to date has changed you drastically. Whether you realize it or not, Georgia Peaches Kent, you are who and what you always have been. Did you ever think that maybe you did not die, but were awoken instead?"

Nope. The thought had never crossed my mind. This conversation, in fact, had never crossed my mind. Wasn't girls' day supposed to be about spending tons of cash, doing fabulous things, and laughing and giggling? When had it become so serious? Uh, wait, let me think. When I made it serious.

I sighed. What Samantha said made sense, but then, anything sounded true in the right tone of voice. Maybe I had changed a little, but not much. She was right, and I'd always been me. Maybe, I didn't die like I thought, but I'd been awoken. Maybe that crack on the head from the pavement had been my equivalent of Prince Charming's tongue down my throat.

Maybe I was thinking about this all wrong. It wouldn't be the first time. What if I didn't follow TV's rules at all? Maybe all the monsters I'd seen on cartoons and shows did exist, but they'd been manipulated and distorted so that a TV vamp wasn't a real life vamp, and the witches on Charmed had no relation to Samantha at all?

Then what if I was just me? Peaches. Plain and simple, and I could stop trying to figure out what I was and just let the answer come to me in its own time.

"You aren't hungry anymore, are you, Georgia?" Samantha asked softly.

I looked over at her and shook my head. "I think it was like the fur thing. One time only."

Samantha shook her head gently. "Everything happens for a reason."

I turned to her and smiled. "Not in my life." I leaned back on the massage bed and propped myself up on my elbows. "I think it's all just random."

Random, chaotic, unpredictable. Yup, that was me and my life.

I looked around the room. The moment seemed heavy, another turning point. What was about to happen? Nothing in my life was ever simple. I tried to look around, tried to see the next step in the tiles on the floor and in the lines of the wallpaper.

"You won't find the answers here, Georgia."

I let my gaze settle on Samantha. God, I was tired. Tired of guessing, of not knowing, of waiting. But that wasn't about to change. I needed to stick to my guns, accept that whatever I was would be explained with time. Now it was all a waiting game, and maybe a little elimination game too.

I leaned forward and hopped up. "Don't we have mani-pedis scheduled?"

A smile broke across the witch's face. "We do."

I went behind the changing room curtain in the room and slipped into the clothes I'd placed on the chair when we'd come in. I hummed while I got dressed. "Ready?" I asked around a yawn.

"Yes."

Samantha was dressed in a long navy skirt with a white peasant top thrown over it. I wondered if I'd ever seen her in pants. "No." She came up to me and linked arms. "I don't like pants. They are clothes for men."

"Can you read minds now?"

"Your look gave you away."

I laughed softly and shook my head. I couldn't do that; skirts and dresses chafed too much. It was the consequence of being a step below chunky, but one step up from more-to-love. Bane didn't seem to mind my weight, and even though I'd always sort of hated the extra pounds I carried, there was nothing I could do about it now. Well, go on a diet, but I didn't do diets, except in the form of soda—and that was only when there was nothing else available.

We left the massage room and I rolled my eyes when I saw Luther and Bane on the other side of the door. "We're fine, guys."

Bane walked up to me and kissed me on the forehead. "That's debatable, habibiti."

I stepped away from Samantha and wrapped my arms around my husband. "No, it's not. We're fine."

A frown tugged at Bane's lips. "You look tired."

I blushed and coughed. "And whose fault is that?"

A possessive smile curved his lips. "I take full responsibility. But maybe you should lay down."

It was a command. Hell would freeze over before Bane commanded me to do anything. But it would have to freeze over twice before I followed any of his commands. I tossed my hair and turned on my heel. "I still have a mani-pedi and a haircut booked. I'll catch a cat nap in the afternoon."

"You can't, Maliki," Luther cut in. "You have to be alert. Others who didn't get to see you yesterday will want to greet you later tonight."

Ugh, that was right. Tonight was the opening of court. With everything that happened with Banks and Rajamar it'd slipped my mind completely.

Bane was in front of me before I could blink. "What happened with Banks?"

Aww, Damn! Stupid broadcasting my thoughts. It was now number one on my to-do list to find a way to block vamps from my mind.

Bane took a menacing step towards me. "What happened?"

I opened my mouth, but then I yawned, a jaw-cracking, eye-watering, body-swaying yawn. Suddenly the world tilted and the ground rushed up to meet my head. I knew what was happening. Well, not exactly, but I could guess. It was another stupid change.

No! I was not going to faint and wake up as some new monster, not this time. I accepted that I wasn't a vampire, a werewolf, or a zombie, but there was no way in hell I was going through it again. This was it, the end of the road. Peaches. Nothing before or after. Just Peaches.

Ya know the funny thing about fainting? No matter how much you tell your body to stop, it doesn't listen.

So here we go again. I'm falling to the floor and I'm pretty sure I'm going to crack my head on the tile. I'm so tired that it's hard to think, and when I wake up? Awh, man, when I wake up... Well, I just hope I'm still me.