Chapter Twenty-Seven
The door at the end of the hallway burst open and slammed against the cement wall with a crash that echoed through the dark space.
Light spilled out from the open doorway, around the shadowy frame of one of my jailers.
His shoulders were tense, and his footsteps were heavy with agitation as he stomped in my direction.
I had no idea what I had done to piss him off, especially so late at night, but I sat up on my cot and waited for him to start talking. Unconsciously, I splayed a hand over my belly, which was churning with unease.
Or morning sickness, the voice in my head chimed in unhelpfully.
I knew Sergio wouldn’t have lied to me about such a thing, but it was still hard to believe.
Me, pregnant. Pregnant. I’d never even been knotted.
Sergio hadn’t been an alpha when he had come inside me.
I hadn’t even been in heat. But, all that aside, he sounded certain that I was in the family way and I.
..well, I didn’t know how to feel about it.
On one hand, I was ecstatic. I’d fantasized about alphas and babies for hundreds of years.
But, on the other hand, it suddenly felt way too soon.
We’d talked about waiting until after we bonded.
Sure, Serge said he was happy, but what about Dex?
Was this too soon for him? And was he really okay with me being the one to carry our first baby?
After all, he was the first omega Serge had popped a knot with.
The only omega, seeing as we had been waiting for me to go on birth control.
He had to be feeling some kind of way about that, didn’t he?
I probably would have if the tables were turned.
Plus, on top of all of that, there was the tiny matter of my incarceration behind shift-inhibiting bars.
How would that impact the baby’s growth?
Not to mention if I was still stuck there for the birth itself.
As omegas, our bodies literally shifted during birth, developing a whole new passage and orifice to deliver the baby.
If I was still in this cell, I didn’t think I would be able to do that.
What would happen then? I shuddered to think about it.
“Get up,” my captor demanded in his usual gruff voice, sounding more agitated than usual.
I got up and kept my mouth shut.
Keys jangled and he slid one into the lock of my cage, turning it until a sharp, metallic click rang out between us.
“You try any funny business and I’ll be forced to shoot,” the guard warned me, swinging the cell door open.
Immediately, I felt a rush of relief through my veins, like the first sip of cool water after being dehydrated and overheated. Tension I hadn’t realized I was carrying melted from my shoulders and neck.
My dragon stretched inside me and roared.
I could have wept.
Nevertheless, I didn’t make a rush for the open cell door, no matter how desperately freedom called to me.
For all I knew, they were transferring me to a proper prison, or to another cell in this one.
If I was being held for the long haul, I imagined I might be given a tiny bit more space, or at least a slightly better bed.
Not that I believed the humans would be that kind, but I could hope, couldn’t I?
“You’re being released,” the guard snapped when I still hadn’t moved. He sounded even more pissed now. “So hurry your ass up.”
“Released?” I echoed, wondering if I had heard correctly, or if I had started to hallucinate.
Maybe the pregnancy conversation was a hallucination, too.
It would probably break my heart if that was the case. So, I supposed that answered the question on how I truly felt about it if it was real. I wanted to be pregnant. I wanted my mates’ baby, no matter how soon into our relationship it was.
“That’s what I said,” the guy barked, “so move. Now.”
I did not need to be told a third time. I hustled towards the open space and through it, and the remaining feeling that I was being suffocated started to ease away into nothingness as I walked down the hallway towards the literal light at the end of the dark tunnel.
I carefully followed the cop’s directions through the building, up flights of stairs and around corners until I came to a heavily locked door with a keypad and card scanner.
“No funny business,” the officer reminded me as he finally stepped around me, holstering his gun to swipe a card over the reader and tap in a code on the keypad. The red light over the door turned green and the officer pressed down on the handle and pushed the door open.
On the other side of the door, we entered what seemed to be a waiting room, painted stark white and lined with uncomfortable white plastic chairs. The people in those chairs shot to their feet and I felt my knees wobble.
“I’ve got you, beautiful,” Sergio had his arms around me, supporting my weight as my resolve finally began to crumble. Dex was at my other side in a heartbeat, adding his own strength to keeping me upright, not that our alpha really needed the help.
In front of me, I made out Brandt and Eric’s blurry shapes through the tears I couldn’t blink away.
I honestly hadn’t believed that I would see my pack —my family— any time soon. But here they were, waiting for me, holding me up while I broke down.
“It’s okay, baby,” Dex was saying, “we got the bastard responsible for all this. We’re going to make sure he pays. Especially seeing as Beckett wouldn’t let us eat him.”
I let out a watery chuckle at the same time as the guard behind me made a strangled sound at the back of his throat.
“You’ve never eaten a person in your life,” I chided, unable to keep the fondness out of my tone.
I looked up at my big brother, “And don’t pretend you have, either.
” (Well, except for that time the Moonmusic people turned up with rocket launchers and tried to kidnap some of the pack's kids. We'd ignore that as an anomaly.)
“If I were to start with anyone, it would have been that rat,” Brandt muttered darkly. “Or these humans for the way they have treated you.”
“On that note,” Eric guided Brandt to turn away, “I think we’ve outstayed our welcome.”
“Welcome,” Brandt scoffed. “Pffft. I should burn this place for its depraved conditions.”
Eric rolled his eyes. “Glad to see your post-partum hormones have settled.”
“They’re using magic-restricting cages!” Bran snapped back. “It is inhumane.”
“It is,” Sergio agreed, his arm still possessively around my waist as we walked towards the next door standing between us and the outside world, “however, look at our little rodent friend. Without those cells, how else could the humans contain someone like him?”
“A concrete cell with no windows and no space beneath the door?” Dex suggested, then darkly added, “And a rat trap held in preparation for escape attempts at meal times.”
“He would probably shift and flush himself down the toilet,” Sergio mused just as we left the waiting room and entered a large, harshly lit foyer.
It was empty, save for another armed guard eyeing us warily from the other side of the space, without any signage.
Then, to our left, there was a wall of thick windows and a door.
Freedom.
“That’s what I would do, at any rate,” Sergio was explaining. “If I could shift small enough.”
I tuned him out, the darkness beyond the glass doors beckoning me in a way that made my stomach twist.
The first burst of fresh night air almost burned as I heaved it in deeply. My eyes watered once more, and I decided that I would never again take my freedom for granted.
“Let’s get you home,” Serge’s voice was soft and sweet as he continued to usher me away from the building and to the car parked at the curb.
“You didn’t fly?” It was late enough that the dragons could have safely landed on the street, but Eric shook his head.
“We didn’t know if you would feel up to flying home. As it is, I’d like to check you over when we get back to the clinic.”
I opened my mouth to protest, to tell him that all I needed was a shower, some real food, and a sleep, but Dex squeezed my hand. “We’re all a little anxious about the effects of the cell. On you and…”
“On the baby,” I finished for him, understanding dawning. I had been worried about being able to shift enough to give birth, but I hadn’t even considered what kind of internal shifting I was relying on to grow my baby.
“It’s just to ease our minds,” Eric said gently, as if sensing my mounting anxiety.
“I don’t think the magic would have affected your biology.
As omegas, our wombs are a permanent feature of our anatomy.
The birth canal is temporary —that is where the cell’s magic might have caused issues if you were stuck here during labor— but everything else is a part of your body already.
At least, that’s what everything we’ve seen so far leads us to believe.
We just want to be absolutely sure that we’re not running a low-level internal shift alongside a hormonal cycle, because we’ve had no way to properly put those theories to the test.”
“Until now,” I added, feeling somber. After all, he had taken my blood for the tests before I had wound up in that cell. There was no telling how the spell imbued into those bars might have affected the magical creature side of me. I pressed my hand to my belly and felt sick all over again.
“No matter what happens, Sage, we’re going to manage it together,” Sergio told me, pressing a kiss to my temple. I screwed up my nose and pulled away.
“I stink,” I protested, “and my hair is all greasy and gross. You shouldn’t be kissing me until I’ve washed this place off me.” How they could stand to be in such close proximity with me at all was mystery enough.
The flash of hurt in my alpha’s eyes was replaced with understanding and regret. “Sweetheart, I will never not want to kiss you.”
Dex nodded, then smirked, “And I will gladly help you wash up when we get to the clinic.”