Chapter 28 #3
Ell padded toward me and looked right at me. With me sitting, he was still big enough to easily reach my face. Much like the other two, he sniffed me all over.
I didn’t really mind it so much now. I’d missed Ell, I realized, and without putting too much thought into it, I put my arms around him.
If they were going to tell me to leave or that something was wrong with me and they didn’t want me anymore, this might be the last time I got to feel them in fur. All of them were really soft.
I felt Ell breathe under my hands, and then he changed, becoming a man keeling right in front of me and staring up into my eyes.
He took my hand in his. “Marcus, this is going to be a lot to take in. I didn’t think it was possible that you were… We’ll explain. Marcus, you’re pregnant.”
We stared at each other. I turned to look at Dom, who was smiling, and Linc, who’d stopped right in the middle of pacing.
I tried to laugh, but they were pretty good actors, keeping their faces this straight.
“Guys, that’s funny! Is this like hazing? Or is it code for something? Oh, is it like a werewolf compliment for, um, you know, bottoming? Ell, you didn’t have to rush back from the hospital just for a prank though. You could’ve texted. Would’ve still been funny.”
He squeezed my hands. “This is no prank, and you are most definitely pregnant. We didn’t even dream it might be relevant, but within the human population, you used to have what we tend to call omegas. We didn’t tell you because there haven’t been any for a good century now.”
“Am I supposed to pretend this is serious? We should go back to playing Twister. The rules were a lot easier. But okay, I’m following along. We have alphas, betas, and omegas, and the rest of the Greek alphabet just feels left out by werewolf nomenclature, I assume.”
Ell rubbed my fingers. I barely even noticed that he was still naked.
“This is real. It’s also serious. Omegas were all male, all human, and all unable to shift.
The last one anyone heard of was an omega in Spain with an alpha wife.
Our generation and even our parents’ generation never even met anyone who met one, that’s how rare it was to find an omega.
But maybe we were wrong to assume there were none left out there at all. ”
Linc started pacing again. “You wouldn’t know unless one ran into a werewolf. Or decided to go on a hike and took a tumble in our woods. This is…this is unexpected.”
Dom nodded, and his warm hand moved in circles between my shoulder blades. “It’s going to be great though. I’ll ask around to get some real babysitting experience. There have to be toddlers in the pack, right? Oh, I’ll build a crib too. Which room do we put the baby in? Upstairs, right?”
I looked at him, and my jaw dropped. I felt my lips part and an oh escape. “You’re serious.”
“We are,” Ell said.
Dom picked up his phone, then put it back down on the table.
“This is why I messed up your tea, Little Red. I wasn’t sure about the caffeine.
I mean, I know it’s not my place to tell you what to do, but I thought since you didn’t know yet, maybe it was better to be careful, you know?
Is it nine months for omegas? Fuck, I know nothing.
Ell, do you have books I can read about this kind of stuff? ”
Linc put a hand on his shoulder. “Slow down, Dom.”
“Huh?” Dom put his other hand on top of Linc’s. “Right. Sorry.”
Ell bit his bottom lip. “Marcus, you’ve been cooped up in here and it’s time for your stitches to come out. I was going to do it on the couch later, but how about I take you to the hospital and we do it there?”
I closed my mouth. “I do not have the right parts and—which opening were you all even thinking for the—for it to come out? You know what, this is funny. Really funny. Haha. Can we stop now?”
Ell kissed my hands. “You’ve been so sleepy. I thought it was psychological, from the breakup. And you’ve been going for high-carb foods. I should’ve really figured it out. Let’s head to the hospital, and we can talk through all the logistics there, okay?”
I wanted this to be a joke. The problem was, I had a pretty strong hunch that it wasn’t.
It was like waking up in the guest bedroom all over again, with Dom shifted and pretending to be what he wasn’t.
It was like learning werewolves existed all over again, except this time—nope.
I didn’t really want to consider the logistics.
“I’m just getting old. Old people need naps,” I said, sounding dazed.
Ell, meanwhile, was putting his clothes back on. “We’ll talk it through. Linc, you and Dom are good here?”
Dom gaped. “I’ll come.”
“No. Just the two of them.” Linc sounded really firm. I had no idea what that was about.
“But…”
I couldn’t finish. There were too many impossibilities to cram into one sentence. No sentence should ever have to deal with that much fiction.
I followed Ell into the hallway and put on my shoes, and then I followed him to his car.
Before I knew it, we were leaving the house I had secretly started to think of as home behind, and I had no freaking idea what lay ahead.