Epilogue #2
She blinked at me from the floor. "I... I don't track it that closely when I'm on blockers. Why?"
"Alfie," I said. "Go to the pharmacy bag in the hallway closet. The one Cal stocked."
"Why?" Alfie asked, panic rising. "Does she need Pepto?"
"Get the white box," I said. "With the blue stripe."
Zia went very still.
Kit's hand stopped rubbing her back.
"Euan," Zia whispered. "You calculated... safety."
"I calculated airflow," I corrected gently. "I calculated security. I did not calculate for the biological potency of three prime Alphas knotting an Omega during a synchronized estrus cycle because the statistical probability of conception usually requires..."
I trailed off.
"Requires what?" Alfie demanded, looking between us.
"Requires a miracle," Kit finished for me. His voice was a rumble of awe.
Zia stared at me. Her hand moved, unconsciously, to her stomach. It was flat. Unchanged. But inside...
"Go get the box, Alfie," Zia said. Her voice was stark.
Alfie ran.
He was back in thirty seconds. He handed the box to Zia like it was a bomb.
Proclaimed in all caps on the box was, DIGITAL PREDICTOR. 99% ACCURACY.
"I can't," Zia said, staring at it. "I can't do this alone."
"You're not alone," Kit said, tightening his grip. "We're right here. Furniture. Wall. Pack."
"We will wait outside the door," I offered, sensing the need for a moment of privacy. "Or we will stay. Your call. Parameters are yours."
She looked at us. The fear was there, yes. But underneath it, the colors were shifting. The slate grey of shock was warming into something gold.
"Stay," she said. "Turn around. But stay."
We turned around. We faced the wall of the bathroom.
We listened to the rustle of clothes. The silence. The waiting.
Three minutes. 180 seconds.
I counted them.
One.
Two.
My focus was on the grout lines between the tiles. They were uneven. Imperfect.
Alfie was holding my hand. His grip was bone-crushing. Kit was breathing in a steady rhythm, trying to regulate the room.
"Time," Zia whispered.
We turned.
She was sitting on the closed lid of the toilet. The stick was on the counter.
She wasn't looking at it. She was looking at us.
"It says yes," she said.
The world stopped spinning. The axis shifted. The center of gravity moved from the three of us to the woman sitting on the porcelain throne in an oversized t-shirt.
Alfie made a sound that wasn't a word. It was a joy-noise. He dropped to his knees in front of her, burying his face in her lap, wrapping his arms around her waist as if to physically hold her together.
"A pup?" he sobbed. "A fox-cub?"
"Maybe a litter," Kit murmured, moving to stand behind her, his hands resting heavily on her shoulders. He looked dazed. He looked like he had just won a war he didn't know he was fighting. "Triple match. High potency."
I walked to the counter. I looked at the stick.
PREGNANT was there in neat digital lettering.
The test was digital. Binary. Yes or no. One or zero.
It was a one.
I looked at Zia. She was stroking Alfie's hair, looking up at Kit, but her eyes found mine.
"The Rider," she said, her voice wobbling. "Does the Rider cover this?"
"The Rider covers safety," I said. My vision was blurring. I realized, remotely, that I was crying. "Clause 8. Family Leave. Caretaker Support. It's all there, Zia. I wrote it into the code."
"We're going to need a bigger bus," she said, a laugh bubbling up.
"I will design it," I promised. "I will build you a nursery on wheels with HEPA filters and soundproofing and suspension that feels like floating."
She reached out her hand.
I took it. I kissed the palm, then the wrist, right over the fox tail tattoo.
"We are going to be a disaster," she said, tears spilling over. "Three dads. Touring. A baby."
"Controlled chaos," I corrected. "We have the data. We have the team."
"We have the pack," Kit said, leaning down to kiss the top of her head.
Alfie lifted his head, his face wet with tears, grinning that blinding, sunrise grin. "We have a drummer for the rhythm, a singer for the noise, and a tech for the logic. And we have a Producer to tell us what to do."
He pressed a kiss to her stomach, right through the t-shirt.
"Hey in there," Alfie whispered to the cluster of cells that had just rewritten our entire future. "Copy that? You're safe. We've got the perimeter."
Zia looked at me. The panic was gone. The sickness was mere background noise.
"Euan," she said. "Sanctuary Sound. The studio."
"Yes?"
"Add a crèche to the blueprints," she said. "Zone C. High security. Soft floors."
I smiled. It felt like the structure of my ribs was expanding to accommodate a heart that had suddenly grown multiple sizes.
"Already done," I lied. "I'll update the file tonight."
I looked at my pack. The messy, chaotic, mathematically improbable knot of people who had somehow found the perfect frequency to resonate together.
The probability had been zero.
But looking at Zia, radiant and terrified and ours, I realized that zero was just a starting point.
We had everything we needed to build.
"Meeting adjourned," Zia whispered.
And for the first time in my life, I didn't need to run the numbers to know that the outcome would be perfect.