Chapter 15 Theo
The nausea wakes me at six the next morning.
It's been waking me earlier and earlier but today it hits before I've even opened my eyes, a rolling wave that starts in my stomach and climbs into my throat.
I press my face into the sofa cushion and breathe through it.
The leather smells like Dom. Everything smells like Dom.
The entire suite is saturated with him and it's been a month and I still can't filter it out.
He leaves the bedroom door open every night and I lie there in the dark and listen to him breathe.
The pull is almost physical, a gravity in my chest that gets worse instead of better.
Last night, I had to stand up and walk to the bathroom just to break the pattern of lying still and wanting.
I run the tap and splash cold water on my face and look at myself in the mirror and remind myself who I am and where I am and why.
The sofa is too short for me. My feet hang off the end if I stretch out and the cushions have a dip in the middle that my hip sinks into, and every morning I wake up with a knot in my lower back.
It's getting harder.
The man I thought I knew is not the man I'm living with. I thought had him mapped out: brutal, territorial, dangerous. The kind of alpha who runs on intimidation and violence.
But Cath Beresford looked at Dom across Viktor's desk with tears running down her face and he just hugged her. When she was done, he promised to protect her grandchild and I could smell that he meant it.
And the ditch. Viktor's ditch comment, the one that's lived in my head since the first night, the one I've replayed every time I needed to remind myself that this man is dangerous. Turns out the danger is real but the method is theatre. They don't kill people.
Of course, he has still stopped me from leaving. That’s coercion and kidnapping and maybe a hundred other things, but he’s not going to kill me. I no longer believe that. It doesn't change the locked door or the ankle monitor. I don't know what to do with that.
The nausea passes. I sit up slowly. The blanket has slid to the floor again.
I know what’s happening. I've known for weeks. The math is simple and the math doesn't lie.
Five days of heat with a prime match and no protection. The probability of pregnancy is so high that not being pregnant would be the statistical anomaly.
But knowing and confirming are different things. I hear his bedroom door open. His footsteps in the hallway, bare feet on hardwood, the particular rhythm of his stride. He walks the way he does everything, unhurried, certain. The footsteps come into the living room and stop.
He's in boxers, no shirt. His chest is broad, dark hair tapering down his sternum. His hair is damp from the shower and the scent rolling off him is fresh and warm.
He's holding a white paper bag. He crosses the room and sets it on the cushion beside me. Then he sits on the arm of the sofa, one foot on the floor, and watches me.
I don't pick it up. I look at it.
"It’s time," he says.
I open it. Inside is a small rectangular box. I recognize the brand before I read the label.
"Take it," he says.
"I know what it is."
"Then take it."
I look at him. He's backlit by the window and the gray morning light catches the edge of his jaw, the straight line of his nose.
"And if it's positive?"
"Then we deal with it."
"We." I turn the box over in my hands. "There is no we. There's you, deciding things. And there's me, living with the consequences."
He doesn't react. "Take the test, Theo."
I stand up. My back protests and the nausea rolls again, low and heavy. I walk to the bathroom with the box in my hand and I close the door and I lock it, which is pointless because he could break it down with one shoulder.
The test takes three minutes. I sit on the edge of the bath and wait until the timer on my phone goes off. I look.
Positive.
I knew. I already knew. But the word on the little screen is a different thing to the knowledge I've been carrying for weeks. The word makes it real.
I sit on the edge of the bath and put my head in my hands. The tile is cold under my feet. The bathroom still smells like his shower, steam and cedar, and my stomach turns.
I don't cry. I've never been a crier. I wash my face. I drink water from the tap. I brush my teeth. I look at myself in the mirror. Same face. Same dark eyes. Same sharp jaw that I got from my mother.
She was pregnant too. She stayed too. It was the biggest mistake of her life.
I open the door.
Dom is exactly where I left him, sitting on the arm of the sofa, one bare foot on the hardwood, his hands resting on his thighs. He looks up when I come out.
I hold up the test. He can see the result from where he's sitting. His eyes soften and the hard line of his mouth eases.
"Good," he says.
I put the test on the kitchen counter. I lean against the counter and cross my arms over my chest.
"Not good," I say.
"Of course, it is. A baby is always a blessing and you're safe here. I'll make sure you have everything you need."
"I have everything I need. Apart from the ability to leave."
He straightens. "Theo."
"I was already a prisoner. Now I'm a pregnant prisoner. That's what's changed."
"Nothing has changed. You stay, I protect you, the baby is safe.” He stands up from the sofa.
He's taller than me by several inches and the penthouse isn't big enough.
He takes a step toward me and I hold my ground but my heart rate spikes and I can feel my scent shift.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he says. "And I'm not going to hurt the baby. "
"That's what they all say."
He stops. Something crosses his face that I haven't seen before. Not anger. Something quieter.
"I'm not your father, Theo. I would never harm you. Never harm our child and I would kill anyone who tried."
The air goes out of me. He's never mentioned the scars but I know he saw them because I felt him avoiding them, his hands careful on my back, steering around the raised tissue.
"You don't know anything about my mother's alpha." I am never calling that bastard my father. He doesn’t deserve it. He gave me nothing and I want nothing from him.
"I know I'm not him."
"You're an alpha who locked me in a building and put a tracker on my ankle and told me I belong to you.
You can say pretty things. You can tell me you don't kill people and you're running a legitimate business.
But I am standing in your kitchen wearing your monitor and I couldn't walk out that door if I tried.
That's not words, Novikov. That's facts. "
He's quiet. The muscle at the hinge of his jaw works.
"If I take the monitor off, you run."
"Maybe."
“And then the Castellanos take you.”
“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe I’ll take my chances.”
"Not maybe. Definitely. You run and you disappear and I never find you. That's what you've been planning since the day you got here."
"And now I'm pregnant. So the plan doesn't work. I can't run with a baby. I can't run pregnant. I can't run broke with no ID and the Castellanos knowing my name." I spread my hands. "You win. I'm stuck. Congratulations."
He exhales, slow, controlled. He turns away from me and walks to the window. The gray light catches the muscles of his back, the broad slope of his shoulders. He braces one hand on the glass and stands there looking at the city for a long moment.
"What do you want?" he says without turning around. “What will persuade you to stay? I know you know it’s safer with me. At least for now.”
"I want my own suite."
He turns. "What?"
"A suite. My own space. With a door that closes and locks and you’re not allowed in. I'm pregnant, Novikov. I'm not sleeping on your sofa for the next eight months."
"You're welcome in the bed. You've always been welcome in the bed."
"I want to stay where I can lock my door at night and sleep in my own bed."
He looks at me for a long time. His eyes are dark and his face is unreadable. His scent is rolling off him, thick and strong. I can taste it on my tongue.
“Not a separate suite,” he says finally. “I need you close, but I’ll have the office in here cleared out. I'll get another bed brought up."
"And a lock."
"Theo."
"A lock. On the door. That works from the inside."
He breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth. "Fine."
He picks up his phone from the sofa and walks to the hallway and I hear him making a call, his voice low, giving instructions.
The words are clipped and precise and I can tell he’s frustrated. Perhaps he thought the pregnancy would make me give in and turn into the soft little obedient omega that he wants me to be.
I don't feel sorry for him.
I pick up the pregnancy test from the counter and look at it one more time. Then I drop it in the trashcan under the sink and go to the bathroom and turn on the shower. Through the wall I can hear his voice on the phone, still running his world from the hallway.
I put my hand on my stomach. It’s still flat with nothing to feel, but that won’t be long.
My mother was pregnant and she stayed and the alpha who gave her those years broke her into pieces so small she never got them all back. She should have left when she was carrying me. Or before. Or after.
But she didn’t. Maybe she couldn't. Same as me.