36. Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Six
Halley
Day Fourteen
Today is the day.
We walk to the infirmary in silence.
The fortress is quiet this early in the morning, with only the occasional thumping of boots as a patrol marches past.
One of the Beta soldiers has a fresh bandage wrapped around his upper arm, and another walks with a limp he’s trying to hide.
I heard the report before we left the cabin.
A patrol returned before dusk yesterday after contact with a Human scouting unit too far north of where they should have been.
Not the main army. Shade was very clear that the bulk of their forces is still days away.
Still, the knowledge that the war is almost at our doorstep follows me down the corridor.
They’re close.
Knox has me tucked under his arm and pressed to his side, letting his radiant heat keep the chill of the morning mountain air at bay.
It's moments like this when I can see how far he's come.
He's still not instinctively gentle like Viper or sensitive to my needs like Shade, but he offers me his own brand of comfort when he can.
Shade is on my other side, quiet and drawn with heavy shadows under his eyes. Blaise and Viper trail close enough that I can feel their presence without turning around.
My skin prickles with awareness, every nerve pulled too tight. I feel stretched to the edge of overload, as if my whole nervous system is struggling not to give out under the pressure.
Ever since I came back from the dead, I have been watched, measured, and quietly interpreted with a level of intensity I have never felt before.
Every soldier in this fortress is waiting for the moment I become the thing that saves them from the enemy, and that kind of expectation sits on my chest, growing heavier with every passing day.
My Pack is not helping, even though I know they mean well.
I love their presence inside me, and the way the bond keeps them close even when we're not together. Most of the time, that closeness comforts me. Lately, though, their constant checking in and relentless protectiveness have worn me thin.
They hover because they’re scared, and they worry because they love me. I know that.
The problem is, they’ve survived as soldiers for so long by shoving fear, grief, and pain aside. They couldn’t function if they stopped to examine every reaction their bodies gave them, so they learned to ignore those feelings so they could keep moving.
To say they're bad at recognizing what they feel before it hits the bond is an understatement. By the time they notice they’re afraid or stressed, I’m already feeling it with them, and I don’t have a soldier’s practice at locking everything away so I can keep functioning.
To give them credit, they shut down their end when they catch it, but they don’t always stop the bleed-through before it reaches me.
Right now, with this pregnancy result hanging over my head, I can barely manage my own fear. I can’t carry theirs too.
I stop just outside the infirmary entrance, slip out from under Knox's arm, and face them.
"I love you all, but I need you to be chill about this," I say.
The four of them shift uneasily, glancing at each other.
Blaise’s mouth opens, the beginning of a protest already forming, but Shade throws an elbow into his ribs, and the protest comes out as a grunt.
I know they're having a silent bond conversation without me. I don't like it when they do that, but I don't say anything because if it helps them process my demand, then it's worth feeling excluded.
Viper crosses his arms, his lips pursed. The bond tightens, his concern pressing into me in a heavy, steady pulse.
"I need you to be calm," I add, keeping my voice level. "You’re making me nervous."
Knox holds my gaze, his red eyes boring into mine. He inhales slowly, and on his exhale he nods once, stiff and controlled. "We’ll do our best to lock down the bond."
I smile and say, "Thank you."
I turn to open the door.
"Wait."
Viper catches me before I can open the door, one arm locking around my middle as he pulls me back against his chest. His nose presses into my hair, and he breathes me in with a low sound that vibrates through both of us.
"I think you should hear this before we go in," he murmurs.
I cover his forearm with my hand. "Hear what?"
"No matter what Everlyn says, you have us." His mouth brushes the side of my head, and his scent wraps around me, gunpowder and roses, warm from his skin. "Pup or no pup, nothing changes that."
Shade steps closer on my other side and slides his fingers through mine. "We face it together, baby girl. You don’t have to be brave for us in there."
"I know," I whisper, but my voice catches anyway. "I know that."
Knox moves in front of me, blocking the infirmary door with his broad body and all that Prime Alpha focus aimed straight at me. He cups my jaw, bends down, and kisses my cheek with slow care.
"Whatever she tells you today, it doesn’t change what you are to us," he says, his thumb moving once along my skin. "You are our Omega. Our mate. The center of this Pack."
The bond pulls warm and close around me, full of them, full of us, and my eyes burn before I can stop them.
Blaise shifts behind him, nodding vehemently with such a serious, determined expression that it makes the tears form faster.
Knox continues. "In this, I relinquish command of this Pack to you. You're in charge. If you want us beside you, we're there. You say retreat, we retreat."
I blink hard and point at him. "You cannot all be romantic right now because if I start crying, Blaise panics and says filthy, ridiculous things about semen to distract me."
Blaise scoffs. "Filthy and ridiculous? I'll have you know I was dead serious the other day. Viper needs medical intervention about the amount of spunk he produces. It's unnatural!"
Shade huffs a quiet laugh while Knox’s mouth twitches. Viper exhales in exasperation, his warm breath in my hair.
I roll my eyes, but I'm smiling, and the tight grip of anxiety has loosened in my chest, so I know they've done their best to keep their side of the bond closed down.
I trust them. No matter what, Knox will steer us through it, Shade will guide the way, Viper will be right beside me, holding my hand, and Blaise will make sure I smile.
My Pack.
"Okay," I breathe, and straighten in Viper's arms. "I'm ready, let's find out if we're having a little Scorch baby."
Then I open the door and step inside.
Everlyn is already waiting with gloves on and a tray set out beside the exam chair.
"Sit," she says, pointing at it before any of us can speak. "Before one of your Alphas starts pacing and wears a groove into my floor."
That gets me across the room because she’s right. The faster this happens, the less chance there is of an anxious mate losing his cool.
Viper's hand stays at the back of my neck until Everlyn gives him a pointed look and tells him to move unless he wants to be stuck with a needle too. Shade takes my shaking hand, Knox stands at my shoulder, and Blaise plants himself against the cabinet with his arms crossed and his jaw clenched like he’s preparing to fight the needle.
After all of that anticipation, the blood draw takes less than five minutes.
Everlyn explains the process while she works.
A blood test lets her check for the pregnancy hormone directly, which makes it more reliable this early on than a urine test. Once she has the sample, there’s nothing to do except wait for it to separate, then she’ll test the serum by hand. Rushing it could ruin the result.
So, here we are with another countdown.
One hour.
"Have you ever thought about having kids?" I ask while I help her take stock of the medicine cabinet. The question slips out almost without my permission.
When Everlyn offered me something practical to do, I jumped at the chance to keep my hands busy. Counting supplies, checking labels, and putting things in order are all familiar tasks that feel better than standing around with my own thoughts.
My Packmates are dealing with their nervous tension in different ways.
Shade pulled out his datapad, dragged Knox into a corner, and started running through contingency plans one after the other so fast that I stopped following along.
Viper has the arduous task of keeping Blaise from destroying Everlyn's infirmary with his jittery energy.
They're currently playing a game which involves a knife, a hand splayed open on a table, and stabbing.
I had to look away and do my best to ignore them, because I cringed with every dull thud. I'm mated to psychopaths.
"Not really," she says, humming as she studies a row of glass vials that all look identical to me. "It never felt like the right time, you know?"
I chew the inside of my cheek.
I don't know.
I never let myself think too long about what could have been because it felt like digging my fingernails into a poorly healed wound.
Painful and unnecessary. I knew from a young age that I would present as an Omega, and motherhood was simply inevitable.
It wasn't a choice, but an irrefutable fact that my body would belong to my Alpha, and he would plant his seed inside me.
But if I had really been given a choice, a true one, what would I have wanted?
Kids?
A family?
Would I have chosen it for myself if it had ever actually been mine to choose?
"Dazz, Ember, Flicker, and I never used to talk about babies," I say quietly. "It was always a sore subject. I physically couldn’t have them, and they were stuck in The Omega Division with no hope of finding mates."
In another life, my dearest friends would’ve been here for this. Right in the middle of it, asking questions, making crude jokes, crowding into the infirmary while Everlyn threatened to throw them all out, but would never actually do it.
Frack, between them and my Pack, this room would've been full to the brim with the people I love.
My chest tightens.
I think I’ve made peace with the fact that I will never see them again.
Most days, I can even think about them without letting it crush me.
Then something like this happens, and the missing space inside me opens up all over again, and the hope rekindles.
Maybe, in the finite possibility of us surviving this final attack by the Humans, I'll be reunited with my lost Omega family.
It's moments like this that I miss them the most.
"Okay." Everlyn slaps her knee and pushes to her feet. "Time to run this test. You’re all making me nervous, and I want you out of my hair."
She disappears into the back room.
I don't follow.
I stay where I am, listening to the sudden quiet she leaves behind, only broken by the dull thunk thunk thunk of a knife stabbing between fingers.
My heart beats harder with every second that passes, and all I can think about is how far I’ve come since the day they told me I was infertile.
I remember how empty my future felt after that, as if it had been wiped clean and I was walking steadily into a void. I was just a useless, defective Omega with no purpose.
For years, I looked at myself through that single word.
Defective.
It was written into my medical file, pressed into every conversation about my future, and carved into the way I learned to move through the world.
I stopped imagining anything beyond existing because every version of tomorrow seemed to end in the same place, with me alone, unwanted, and useless as an Omega because my body could not do the one thing everyone said it was made to do.
Then I found the Pack.
Or maybe they found me.
Either way, loving them changed the way I saw the woman staring back at me in the mirror. They didn't make me valuable by choosing me, but they did make it impossible for me to keep pretending I had no value at all.
Against all odds, they gave me their trust. Knox with his squad, Shade with his care, Viper with his softest parts, and Blaise with his darkness. That trust meant I wasn't useless anymore.
With them at my side supporting me, I stopped trying to shrink myself, and I stepped up to fight to become something more.
Today, I am more than the label stamped on my file.
My body is strong enough to endure grief, war, death, and bullets.
I hold the love of four war-torn soldiers in my heart, and built bonds so magnificent they woke an ancient power capable of stopping an army.
I am an Omega who died, fought her way back to the living, and came back new.
Whatever Everlyn’s test says, I refuse to let it reduce me to who I was.
If I’m pregnant, we will face that future together. If I’m not, I will still walk out of this infirmary as Halley Sparks, mate of Pack Scorch, soldier of Blackgate, and an Omega whose worth was never dictated by her womb.
I draw in a breath and let it steady my pulse.
My body is mine.
And I am worthy.