Chapter 6
“There she is.”
Sophie’s mum, Carmen, looked down at me, a bright light shining behind her head. She smiled, gentle as an angel, and that’s what she looked like right now. I jerked up into a sitting position, blinking as I looked around myself. Sophie was hunched up on the couch, her eyes wide as she stared at me.
“You’ve had a bit of a shock?” Carmen’s bedside manner was amazing and I always felt like she was someone who was safe to talk to. Apparently, Sophie had felt it was necessary to share my news.
“Sophie told you?” I asked, and she nodded.
“We’ll take you to my office where we can order some tests, but this situation may sort itself out,” she said. “Sophie said the only unprotected sex you had was with an alpha?” I nodded. “And he told you that he couldn’t get you pregnant because you weren’t an omega?”
Another nod. Her lips pursed at that, but she gave my hand a squeeze.
“It was bloody irresponsible of him, but perhaps he didn’t know. The incidents of betas bearing children to alphas are few and far between, only a tiny handful making it to full term. That’s usually due to the fact that all members of the pack would mate with the beta and the woman would attempt to bear quads or quintuplets.”
Carmen shook her head slowly.
“Beta bodies, as a rule, aren’t made to carry that many children and often reject alpha foetuses. It’s why alphas are so drawn to their omega mates. There’s a primal recognition that they were the most likely to be able to bear their children. I just want to prepare you…”
For the fact that whatever grew inside me, it might not be there for long. PCOS made miscarriage a likely thing. Carmen had broken the news of my future reproductive issues to me one quiet Sunday while we were still in high school, Sophie sitting beside me, holding my hand. At the time, I’d been relieved. Finding out why the hell my periods were so long and painful, why I put on weight just by looking at food, that was far more important. Not being able to have babies? That had just been a relief to a fourteen year old, but to an eighteen year old? I blinked and blinked, nothing seeming clear or in focus, no matter what I did.
Because, somehow, I’d found myself on a rollercoaster. I wasn’t pregnant, then I was. I might not be pregnant for long or I might go full term. My child, if I chose to go through with the pregnancy, may turn out to be some… freak. The result of a weird beta/alpha mating and god knows what that would mean. I sucked a breath in but when I did, it caught there, swelling and swelling, feeling like it was taking me over until all that came out was a little squeak.
“Hey…” Sophie swooped in, wrapping her arms around me and that’s when I felt like I could breathe.
It rushed out of me, the air in my lungs, but hot on its heels came the panic and the distress, then anger. How could he have done this to me? How could he have pumped me full of him and then left me to deal with the consequences? He’d asked me to mark him, leave scars behind to remind him of me, but I’d asked nothing of the sort. I just wanted to roll out of bed, do the walk-of-shame strut to my bathroom, then get on with my awesome freaking life. How the hell was I supposed to look after a child? I was still a kid myself.
Or at least, that’s what I felt like at this point in time. I felt small, weak, vulnerable and dumb. My mother had lectured me over and over… I sucked in a breath. Mum… I could just see my parents’ response in my mind, the anger there and the disgust. The way they’d talked about my cousin when she got married at twenty-one, the two of them muttering about how she had her whole life to settle down, that she needed to establish herself first. They’d be so bloody angry. They hadn’t wanted me to move into student accommodation in the first place, not when I had a perfectly good room at home.
“Breathe…” Carmen said, appearing over her daughter’s shoulder. “We can work out what to do. Whatever you want, I’ll help you with, you know that.”
“Thanks, Mum,” Sophie croaked, blinking back tears herself.
“You’re eighteen now, so I don’t have to tell your parents, not unless you want me to,” Carmen said. “Let's go and do these tests and then I can let you know what your options are.”
I’d travelledin the back of Carmen’s car, not saying a word. She’d put the radio on playing at a low volume to fill the gap in conversation. Her clinic wasn’t open to the public on Fridays, so we walked into the waiting room, then through to her office, the place feeling oh-so-empty. All the better for this. There was no witness to what I had to go through, no one but Carmen and Sophie.
My friend looked so pale as her mother felt around my abdomen. I watched Carmen like a hawk, looking for signs, something to tell me what was about to happen. She just smiled when she finally pulled away.
“I’d put you about nine weeks pregnant. Does that sound about right?”
I dragged out my phone and went to my calendar, tracking back from the first week of university to now and then nodded.
“I’d like to do a quick ultrasound if that’s OK,” she said. “Lets me get a clearer idea of what’s happening. There’re very little reports of mating with just one alpha in the literature so I’m having to play things by ear a little. Gideon Crowe has started doing some research into alpha and omega physiology, so perhaps I can tap someone there…” Carmen caught herself then flushed. “But let's see what we’re working with first.”
What came next was one of the many indignities of being a woman. Boys didn’t have to spread their legs for a stranger and have them probe around, taking samples of cells to make sure they didn’t have cervical cancer, and they didn’t have to drink several litres of water until they felt like they would burst. And then right as I was sure I was going to piss myself, Carmen pushed a gel slicked wand over my stomach, the small screen producing a ghostly representation of everything inside me.
That’s when I saw her. In a movie, this would’ve been some poignant moment when I caught my first glimpse of my child, but right then I was numb, terrified and struggling to decode what I saw. There seemed to be this cavernous space on the screen, which was my uterus, Carmen explained, and within, there was the interloper. Just a fuzzy little shape, not anything to inspire my non-existent maternal instincts. Sophie’s mum’s voice faded away as I stared.
Because I’d been floating around in some muzzy soup of fear and alienation, feeling like this was happening to someone else. Some other girl was having to go through this shitty experience. Some other girl was dumb enough to believe the sweet words of an alpha, especially when he was waving that anaconda of a dick in front of her face. I was too smart, had my shit together too much to fall for this kind of crap. I would discuss this other girl’s fate in calm, sympathetic tones, empathise and offer what support I could. There was no damn way this was my problem, my fuck-up, but when I saw that small little blob, that cocoon of self-protective bullshit cracked open, leaving me raw and exposed.
Carmen snatched the wand back when the first sob came, then hastily went to wipe the gel away as Sophie swept in, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. But that just led to more wails, more tears, a dam I hadn’t realised I was holding back breaking all over everyone in the room.
When I finally got a grip,sitting on the side of the examination table in one of those weird cloth gowns, Carmen came to stand in front of me.
“The good thing, Lily, is we have some time. You don’t have to decide what you want to do now. These are some pamphlets that break down each of your options.”
Chapter 7