27. Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Halley
The bond surges with frantic, confused energy.
It hits before I can prepare for it, but the numbness spreading through me keeps the worst of it at a distance.
Viper takes a step away from me, and his eyes rake over me like he can see straight through skin and muscle to whatever has changed inside me. His throat works as his hands flex at his sides, then curl into fists.
"That’s good, right? She’s healthy. That’s," he swallows hard, voice catching, "a good thing."
Everlyn brushes her hair behind her ears and exhales. "It’s certainly a thing. It’s a big thing."
Shade’s voice is the only steady one. "Say the rest."
He looks serious, his mouth pulled into a straight line. Everlyn holds his gaze, and they share a brief, silent discussion until she relents, eyes darting back to the ultrasound screen.
The room smells of cold gel and antiseptic.
Under it, threaded through the air, is my Pack.
Alpha musk and Beta steadiness mixed with my own Omega sweetness.
It occurs to me that we have a Pack scent now that we’re fully mated, a combination of all five of us that tells the world we belong to each other.
My mates angle themselves toward me, every line of their bodies locked on mine.
Their attention should steady me, but my stomach drops, and the exam room seems to tilt beneath me.
"Omegas are especially fertile during heat," Everlyn eventually says. She gestures vaguely at me, at my body which is phantom-sore from the week I spent in a nest mating with four super-soldiers. "And I'm going to guess that you didn’t use contraception."
Blaze’s head whips down to my belly, eyes wide, and mouth gaping.
The ringing in my ears gets louder, and a cold sweat breaks out at my hairline.
Everlyn’s voice drops into pure doctor as she finally says what we're all struggling to comprehend.
"Halley might be pregnant."
Oh frack.
Oh frackity, frack, frack.
The word might does not help. It makes it worse. It opens a door and lets all the possibilities rush in at once. A future with a thousand branching paths, and none of them familiar.
I force my mouth to move because I need facts. Shade always says that facts are safer than feelings.
"What happens now?" I ask.
Everlyn’s gaze softens. "It’s too early to confirm. We need bloodwork and time. Approximately fourteen days, and then we’ll see if your hormones shift."
Fourteen days.
Two weeks of waiting to find out if my body will do something it has never been able to do, of living in the gap between might and is.
I nod because that is practical. That is what post-resurrection Halley does. She listens, she absorbs information, and she does not fall apart on an exam bed while her mates stare at her with terror in their eyes.
Knox does not blink. He’s still looking right at me, gauging and measuring my response, reading the smallest changes with that soldier’s focus that makes me feel both protected and exposed.
"Halley," he calls.
The sound of my name makes me startle from my thoughts.
I try to look him in the eye. I try, but my focus won’t lock.
Shade’s hand squeezes mine again, harder until it grounds me. He brushes a loose strand of hair off my sticky brow and tucks it behind my ear with practiced ease. He’s done it a hundred times, and I hope he will do it a hundred times more.
"Halley?" Shade's voice is warm and firm. "Baby girl, breathe."
I realize I am not, or at least not deeply. Short, shallow gasps, little panicked sips of air that never fill my lungs. My chest will not expand all the way, as if hands are cinched tight around my ribs and squeezing.
Voices turn muffled, distant, as though I’m underwater, sinking down and the surface is getting further away by the second.
I try to speak. Nothing happens. My tongue feels thick. My hands go numb, and my fingertips tingle.
My gaze drops to my stomach.
There’s a smear of gel glistening on my skin. It looks exactly the same as it always has, pale and soft and unremarkable. It's the stomach of an Omega, and despite doing every sit-up my Prime Alpha ever ordered, it's still gently rounded.
On the outside, there is nothing different.
Inside, everything has changed.
I don’t understand.
I cannot make it real in my head.
I’m not an Omega who can get pregnant. That has never been me, and it’s not my story. That door was locked so long ago I stopped reaching for the handle.
Infertility wasn’t just a diagnosis. It was a brand burned into my identity, a label that rearranged the way the world saw me. It defined me as a person and set the direction of my entire life, whether I wanted it to or not.
An Omega who could not be mated because she could not be bred. Defective and broken. How many times did I hear those words uttered? How many times did I say them to myself?
I can still see the front porch of my father’s house with the sun on the steps, dust in the air, and Officer Gould’s high heels and pencil skirt. She didn’t offer condolences, and she certainly didn’t make any effort to soften the blow.
Infertile and unfit for traditional placement. She said I was better suited in The Companionship Program.
To the Capital, I was worthless as a mate for an Alpha and only suitable to be a whore.
That was the moment that rewrote me. It set me on my course that led to Barkrood, to The Omega Division, to Scorch Squad, and to this exam bed with my mates surrounding me while my entire life tilts under my feet.
Shade cups my cheek, turning my face away from my stomach. His palm is a warm, steady tether while I feel completely cut loose.
"Stay with me," he says. "You’re here, and you’re safe with your Pack."
The word safe should help.
It does not.
I blink slowly, trying to drag myself back to Shade and to the fact that I’m surrounded by people who would rip the world apart for me.
Then the bond presses in.
Knox’s fear is controlled and brutal, as his Prime Alpha instinct searches for a strategy to deal with this unexpected development.
Viper’s shock follows, tangled with anxiety he’s struggling to handle.
Shade’s worry is quieter, but it’s there, precise and heavy beneath his false calm.
Blaze’s panic is loudest. His Alpha is agitated because his Omega smells like she is in distress, and there is no enemy to maim to make it stop.
They love me. But right now, their love is too much.
Their feelings crowd mine until I can’t tell where my panic ends and theirs begins.
My throat clicks when I try to swallow, my mouth dry.
"I can’t…" I hear myself whisper. "I can’t be…"
Pregnant.
I can’t be someone whose body does that.
"You don’t have to decide what you feel about it right now," Everlyn's voice breaks through the blood rushing in my ears. Her voice is careful and coaxing. "You don’t have to do anything but breathe. You’re in shock, Halley."
I try and fail.
The panic is not polite, and it certainly doesn’t wait for my logic to catch up. It doesn’t care that I’ve faced bullets and blood and death with less fear than is currently flooding my brain.
Viper leans in, his broad shoulders blocking out the overhead lighting.
"In," he murmurs, instructing my breathing the way he did during training when my eye was pressed to the scope of his sniper rifle. "And out. Slow."
My lungs refuse to cooperate. I want to be good. To listen to my lieutenant and prove that I'm a good Omega, but each breath drags in thin and useless. My heart kicks harder as I realize I can't make myself calm down. A tremor starts in my hands and climbs up my arms.
Everlyn swears under her breath, not at me, but at the situation. She reaches for my wrist with clinical efficiency.
"Pulse is racing," she mutters. "Halley, you’re having a panic attack. That’s what this is. It feels awful, but I promise it will not kill you."
It feels like it will.
It feels like my body is trying to eject my soul, and I should know. I'm the expert on dying here.
I thought post-resurrection Halley was supposed to be cool, calm, and collected. She doesn't panic. Old Halley does.
Except, this panic isn't coming from the present. It's coming from my past. This is years of trauma coming to a head all at once.
Abruptly, a surge of foreign, whipping, frenzied energy rises behind my breastbone. It bites through the bond, hot with Alpha instinct, and it is not mine.
"Don’t touch her," Blaze snaps, ripping Everlyn's fingers off my pulse.
The growl that follows is a sound that is pure Alpha, fierce and feral.
It's aimed at Everlyn, but not really. It’s the instinctive response to threat, even when the threat is invisible and inside me. He wants to protect his Omega from hurt, but he can't, and my stormy emotions leaking down the bond is sending him over the edge.
My panic spikes again.
Mine.
His.
Theirs.
I can't separate any of it.
Shade does not look at Blaze. His attention stays locked on my face.
"Blaze. Baby boy," he says, voice subdued but edged with steel. "You need to stay steady. She can feel you through the bond and needs you to be strong for her right now."
Blaze’s fear flares, then folds inward under a rush of shame. He tries to shove that away too and lock it down so it won’t affect me, but it sits brazenly in my chest. The others have a better handle on their emotions, but nothing about our Blaze is restrained, and this is no different.
I understand why they're panicking.
They could soon be fathers.
The thought almost sends me spiraling again.
If I’m pregnant, everything changes. We’ve only just gotten to a place where our relationships are good and solid. We've finally mated after going through so much to get there.
Shade’s thumb strokes over my cheek, studying my features. He must see something that displeases him because the little frown lines between his brows deepen.
"She can still feel us," he says, and this time the order is for the whole Pack. "If you can’t lock it down, give her calm. Right now."
The bond surges again, and this time it’s different. Instead of clawing fear or panic, it's a wave of positivity. Even though they don't move, I feel them rallying through the bond.
It reminds me of when Knox calls out a formation, and they leap into their designated roles.
My soldiers are preparing for battle, and they're not going to fight with guns or knives. Their weapon of choice is love.
They push a wave of settling emotions through the bond. They flood my chest with their love for me, and it envelops the sparking panic, choking it until it dims.
Knox starts a deep growl, a rumble deep in his chest that sounds like the Alpha version of my purr. Viper joins in too and the sound makes my head feel warm and fuzzy.
The free-falling sensation slows, and I feel less like I'm plummeting through a yawning maw of darkness and instead into a soft, downy bed.
A softness uncoils inside me.
My inner Omega lifts her head.
A hazy buzz shimmers at the edge of my vision, and I sigh at the familiarity of it.
O-space.
Relief has me inhaling a deep gasp of air, my lungs burning as they fill entirely for the first time in what feels like an age.
I thought I left this state behind when I resurrected into a confident, self-assured version of myself. I thought I didn't need it anymore. I was wrong. O-space is still here, protecting me from the overwhelming experience of being an Omega in this fracked-up world.
That does not make me weak.
It means my body knows when to hand me over to my Pack.
I give myself over to the lulling, washing waves of tranquility, knowing that I'm safe. My Pack will care for me while I'm in O-space as they always have before.
I close my eyes and drift.