“Maybe?” Her eyes slid down and she took in my slobby appearance. My hair was a rat’s nest and I was still in my PJs, but hey, I’d only just woken up. “Are your tits getting bigger?”
“Um, what? At what point did we get to the compare cup size part of the relationship? Because it feels like I should’ve got a memo or something,” I said.
“When did you get your period last?”
Reproductive status, the thing that struck fear into almost all young women.
“I haven’t for a while. Not since we moved in. It always goes haywire whenever there’s a big change and… What?”
“Have you been careful?” she asked, her expression growing solemn.
Sophie’s mum was an OBGYN, so we’d had many, many lectures about sexual health. Sophie always brushed it off, but, at heart, she was her mother’s daughter. She’d had a scare in Year 12. A guy said the condom ‘slipped off.’ She was fairly sure he’d pulled it off midway and then finished inside her. She and her mother went to our school and demanded action or they would go to the police for sexual assault. The boy had been expelled not long afterwards. But the two of us had sat in the bathroom and waited for the results of her pregnancy test, yelping with glee when it came back negative.
“Of course,” I replied on automatic, then paused. “Well, there was Ben, but that didn’t count. He’s an alpha.”
“Is that what he told you?” She frowned then, looking just like her mum in that moment. “It’s not very likely, but there is a possibility. We need to get a test.”
“Sophie, just chill. It’ll be the kebab.”
“We need to get a test and then I’ll see if Mum can fit you in.”
“Soph…”
I didn’t like her tone, didn’t want to hear what she had to say, but when she turned and left the room, going to Taylor and telling him that we needed some space, I couldn’t argue. She’d piled me up under some blankets, emailed my lecturers and then ducked down to the twenty-four hour pharmacy down the road for a pregnancy test. I’d just stared at her as she put the box beside me.
This wasn’t for me, I felt that strongly, so I went to protest.
“Do it for me,” she said, pulling out the big guns. “If it's just a kebab, then you’ve pissed on a stick for nothing, but…”
No, no. No but. No nothing. I stared at the woman on the box, an older woman, ready to have a child. She beamed down at her stomach with a kind of maternal glow I had no business imitating. But Sophie was not to be deterred.
“Please, Lils?”
She shouldn’t have to beg me. I needed to do this, that was obvious. Missed periods, vomiting… If the tables were turned, I’d have prompted Sophie to do the same, so I got to my feet and snatched up the box, marching into the bathroom and shutting the door behind me. I opened it with shaking hands, feeling like the instructions jumped around on the page as I read them. Because shame flushed hot and hard inside me, as well as embarrassment.
“It’s not very likely, but…,”Sophie had said. That played over and over in my head, competing with a much deeper, lower voice.
“I’m gonna breed this pussy,”was what I remembered him saying, right before I shut that memory down firmly.
I’d tried not to think about Ben afterwards, but it’d been damn hard. I’d thought we were on track for just having a night of fun, but something else had happened. Sometimes it was like I could feel his breath on the back of my neck and other times my lips felt swollen, as if he’d been kissing them in my sleep, leaving the scrape of his stubble behind. And then there were the other guys. I’d met nice and not-so-nice ones, slept with some, but no one… I frowned then shook my head, followed the instructions of the test, then cleaned up before setting the stick on the bathroom sink and opening the door.
“I can’t look,” I said, hearing real hysteria in my voice, and Sophie rushed in. She wrapped her arms around me, giving me a squeeze before replying.
“You’re probably right. It’s just a kebab. Mum said it would be difficult for you to fall pregnant when you’re ready. It's not likely to happen by accident. So, Ben, huh?”
I snorted at that, but clung to her tighter.
“It was pretty wild. All that stuff they say about alphas…”
She pulled back slowly then and looked down at me.
“Was he a good guy? If you are pregnant, would you…?”
“No, no,” I shook my head firmly. “I mean, yeah, he was a good guy, but Soph, he’s an alpha. He’s got some omega somewhere waiting for him and his brothers. He can’t leave his pack to help me… Anyway.” My tone hardened and I looked over my shoulder. “It's going to be a negative result, I know it is.”
Well, knowing something and seeing the cold hard facts were two different things. We both turned to look at the test and there were the two blue lines we didn’t want to see.
“I’ll call Mum,” she said, patting me on my shoulder, but I barely felt it. I’d never felt as divorced from my body as I did right at that moment. I couldn’t feel my face or my hands, just the rapid racket of my heart while a rushing sensation filled my ears. My hands gripped the counter tight as a wave of nausea and dizziness hit me hard before it took my knees right out from under me.