Chapter 32 Mavi
Mavi
I wake up in the early morning and Sai is still asleep beside me in the nest that our bed has become.
The tangle of blankets and pillows and his sandalwood-scented shirts wraps around us like it belongs there now.
The collar hangs on the hook by the door and the cage key rests on my chain, warm against my chest even while I sleep.
Sai sleeps deeply these days in a way he never did in the beginning.
He’s sprawled across the space with his mouth slightly open and one arm flung over the spot where I was lying.
He looks younger when he sleeps. Softer.
His jaw stays unclenched and his brow stays smooth.
I watch him for a full minute before I slide off the bed.
I’m out of coffee. We’re out of everything actually because the past week of mated bliss hasn’t been kind to our grocery situation.
I’ve been living on Sai’s cooking and takeout and the general nutrition plan of two people who keep forgetting to eat because they’re too busy being wrapped around each other.
“Diner food, it is,” I mutter to myself, grateful for the break from my apartment.
The morning air feels cool against my skin and my body feels strange.
It isn’t wrong exactly but it feels occupied like there’s a second heartbeat hiding underneath my own, though I know it’ll be weeks before that happens.
Even my scent has shifted again, the honey-citrus baseline sits deeper and richer with something underneath that I can’t name.
I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant.
It isn’t confirmed yet. It’s too early for a test to be reliable, at least another week or maybe more before the hormones would register.
But I know my body the way a painter knows their palette.
I know what’s normal and this isn’t normal.
The nausea. The scent shift. The tenderness in my chest. The way my body feels like it’s been gently hijacked.
Maybe the biggest tell is the fact that I order decaf instead of my regular and cinnamon rolls.
I’ve never wanted cinnamon rolls in my life.
I’ve never had a sweet tooth. And yet here I am, antsy and hungry and craving sugar and warmth and the specific sticky-glazed pastry in the display case like it’s the only thing standing between me and despair.
A smile tugs at my lips as I slip into an empty booth, thinking about a future that didn’t seem possible.
Kids. A baby. Me at twenty-five with a Hollis Alpha’s child growing inside me.
Me who was disowned for refusing to be what my family wanted.
Me who built everything from nothing. Me who runs my own business, pays my own rent, doubled rent now thanks to everything, controls my own body and my own life and has never needed anyone.
A baby would need me completely. Permanently. There would be no walking away from that.
I’m not sure I’m ready. I’m not sure I know how to be a parent when my own parents threw me away for saying no. I’m not sure I know how to build a family when the only one I had decided I wasn’t worth keeping.
But my hand rests on my stomach anyway and the feeling underneath the fear, underneath the doubt and the practical terror and the questions about money and space and the fact that my career is being systematically dismantled, is a warmth I don’t have a name for.
The thing I never let myself want. A family that I chose. That chose me back.
My focus shifts as an elegant woman slides into the booth across from me.
She’s in her late fifties, maybe early sixties, but the kind of aging money buys, preserved and polished with every detail curated.
Her hair sits perfect, her posture belonging to someone who has never been told no by anyone who mattered.
She looks like Sai. The jawline, the cheekbones, the dark heavy-lidded eyes. Except where Sai’s eyes stay warm and vulnerable and searching, this woman’s eyes look flat. Assessing. The eyes of someone who looks at people the way the Hollis family looks at assets.
I brace myself. I know who this is before she opens her mouth.
“You must be the Omega,” she says, voice dripping with disgust.
Sai’s mother. The woman who raised the golden boy, who taught him to perform, who built the cage of composure and meticulous control and called it love. I’m looking at the architect of everything that broke Sai and she’s wearing pearl earrings while she orders tea.
“You seem like a smart young man. Creative. Resourceful.” She pauses for the assessment. “I looked you up, of course. The cam work. The painting. The modeling. You’ve done quite well for someone with your... background.”
My spine straightens as I recognize the cadence. Every Alpha and every family member who has ever tried to make me feel small uses the same tone. Compliment as weapon. Acknowledgment as dismissal.
She pulls out a checkbook and places it on the table.
“I’d like to make this simple. Name a number.
Whatever it costs to relocate, to start over somewhere the Hollis name won’t follow you.
We’ll cover bond removal services. They’re expensive but effective.
You’ll be free, he’ll be free, and everyone moves on. ”
I look at the check and then at this woman. And something settles in my chest. Not rage. Not fear. Certainty. The same certainty that Sai described when he knelt for the first time. The noise going quiet.
I turn my head and show her my ear. The mating bite scars there, the Alpha claim that will never fade. “I’m already his.”
Her composure flickers but she recovers quickly. “Bond removal services are quite advanced now. The scarring can be treated. It doesn’t have to be—”
“It’s not going to be treated. It’s not going to be removed. He bit me and we are mated and that is not a negotiation.”
Her jaw tightens as the pleasant mask thins. “You don’t understand what you’re involving yourself in. This family—”
“Sent back my paintings from two galleries. Doubled my rent. Flagged my cam platform. Canceled my modeling gig.” I count them off on my fingers, casually, like I’m listing groceries.
It was a hunch at first but there was no one else I could think of that would destroy my life so thoroughly or at least pick at it until it fell apart.
And now this impromptu meeting? “I noticed. I’m still here. ”
My name gets called from the counter. I head toward the cinnamon rolls, already dreaming about the sweet dough on my tongue. She follows me, still talking. “You’re not right for my son. Those videos? You showing your body to whoever wants to look? It’s disgusting.”
I hold back a laugh because a few minutes earlier, she told me I had done well for myself.
Apparently, since flattery didn’t get her anywhere, demeaning me will.
I pick up my coffee and the bag of cinnamon rolls and turn to face her.
“Ma’am. Disrespectfully. I don’t give a fuck about you.
I don’t give a fuck about your money or your family or your arrangements.
I only love your son. He is my only focus and he is mine.
Take your checkbook elsewhere. You’ve already fucked up my life and I still chose Sai.
That should tell you something about how little your opinion matters to me. ”
Her mouth opens, closes, and then opens again. She must not be accustomed to being spoken to like this by anyone, let alone an Omega she considers beneath her son. “How are you not scared of what I could do to you?”
I lean in and drop my voice. “You can take my paintings off my walls. You can cancel my modeling contracts and even have me kicked off my cam platform. But do you know the one thing I do have that you don’t?
Sai.” I press my palm flat against my stomach.
“And I’m carrying his child. So I’m not going fucking anywhere. ”
Her face goes through several stages of processing. Shock. Fury. Calculation. Something that might be fear. I don’t stay to watch the full sequence. I take my coffee and my cinnamon rolls and walk out of the diner.
I built this life once from nothing. I can do it again if I have to. But this time I’m not alone. This time I have Sai and whatever small life is growing under my palm and the certainty that no blank check in the world is going to change that.
Once back in my apartment, I sit on the edge of the nest beside Sai, my Alpha sitting up with his hair sleep-mussed.
He looks up when I come in and the smile that crosses his face is the one that still surprises us both, the smile of a man who spent thirty years not smiling and is making up for lost time.
“I was about to come find you. You disappeared.”
I hold up the coffee and the bag. “Provisions.” I kick off my shoes and crawl into the nest fully dressed with my jacket still on and the coffees held carefully above the blankets. I burrow into the warmth and the scent and the safety of the space we’ve built.
Sai laughs. “I can do breakfast in bed, you know. But you didn’t have to go on a mission.”
“I wanted cinnamon rolls.”
“You hate sweets.”
“I know.” I shove a cinnamon roll into my mouth and the sugar hits my bloodstream and the baby, the maybe-baby, the probably-baby, the bean, seems to settle. The nausea eases.
Sai watches me with those photographer eyes that miss nothing. “Why do you smell stressed?”
I chew and swallow before taking a sip of the coffee. “I don’t smell stressed.”
His gaze narrows as he swipes the coffee from me, reads the side, and then hands it back.
Good to know I won’t be able to get anything by him when it comes to things I shouldn’t be having during a pregnancy.
“You smell like adrenaline and sugar and something happened.” Sai’s voice shifts into the protective tone. “Who hurt my Doll?”
I put down the cinnamon roll and lick the glaze off my thumb before looking up at my Alpha. “Your mother found me at the diner.”
Sai goes very still.
“She handed me a blank check. Told me to name a price and disappear. Offered bond removal services.” My voice stays matter-of-fact like I’m giving a debrief instead of describing the most invasive moment of my life.
“She’s the one, by the way. The paintings.
The rent. The platform. Her. I confronted her and she just..
. she told me I’m not good enough for you. ”
Controlled rage flows through the bond, Sai’s gaze darting to the bedroom door and then back at me. His fists curl at his sides but he stays put, something I’m grateful for. “What did you say?”
“I told her I don’t give a fuck about her. That you’re mine and I’m not leaving. That she’s already tried to destroy my career and I’m still here and that should tell her something.”
Sai stares at me. The awe on his face is the same expression he wore when he looked at the painting I made of him, the recognition of being seen by someone extraordinary.
“And then I told her I’m pregnant.”
A beat passes. Sai’s eyes go wide. “You told my mother before you told me?”
“To be fair, I told you first last night. I just also told her. As a weapon.”
Sai’s mouth twitches. The rage and the awe and the absurdity of the situation collide and what comes out is a laugh, startled and helpless and the kind that hurts.
“They really don’t like me,” I say quietly. Underneath the bravado and underneath the sugar, the truth sits there. The Hollis family has tried to erase me the way my own family erased me.
Sai reaches for me and pulls me into his chest into the nest into the warmth. “This time they don’t get to choose,” he says against my hair. “They don’t get to choose for me anymore. And they sure as hell don’t get to choose for you.”