Chapter 40 Mattaniah
Mattaniah
The nausea wakes me before the alarm does.
It starts in my gut and climbs my throat before I've opened my eyes.
I make it to the bathroom in time to empty what's left of last night's dinner into the toilet while the tile bites cold against my knees.
The retching lasts two minutes and leaves me sitting on the bathroom floor with my forehead against the porcelain.
Dominic's footsteps approach the bathroom door. The handle moves, just once, a small downward pressure that stops before the latch gives. His knuckles tap against the wood instead.
"Firefly. You okay?"
"Probably a stomach bug." I flush the toilet and stand on shaking legs. "Probably the sushi from last night. I'm fine."
His footsteps don't retreat. I can smell him through the door, leather and smoke sharpening the way it does when his instincts are pushing and his brain is holding the leash. The handle doesn't move again.
"I'll make toast." His footsteps move toward the kitchen.
The past four days have been different. Dominic has been making breakfast every morning and leaving it on the counter where I can reach it without having to ask.
Amos has been sitting beside me on the couch while we both work, close enough that our elbows brush.
I let Dominic's thumb trace my lip two nights ago and the gesture landed without the flinch that followed it last week.
I fell asleep with my head on Amos' shoulder yesterday during a movie and woke up to find neither of them had moved.
The nausea passes by mid-morning but leaves behind a low-grade wrongness that settles into my bones and refuses to identify itself.
My stomach isn't cramping and my bond marks aren't spiking.
The heat is two weeks behind me. This is something else, a heaviness in my pelvis and a sensitivity in my chest that makes my shirt feel abrasive against my nipples.
I reach for my blocker bottle at eleven. The pill sits on my tongue for three seconds before the nausea surges back so violently that I spit the tablet into the sink. I grip the counter while my stomach heaves.
"What the fuck," I mutter, staring at the half-dissolved pill in the porcelain.
I rinse my mouth and try again at two in the afternoon, this time with food in my stomach and water to wash the tablet down. The pill hits my system and my body rejects it within thirty seconds. The nausea crests so hard I barely make it to the kitchen sink.
Amos is at the kitchen table with his laptop. His head lifts at the sound of me retching.
"That's twice today." He stands and crosses to the sink. "What triggered it?"
"The blocker." I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. "My body won't keep it down."
His hand lands on the back of my neck before I register him moving. Warm fingers pressing into the muscle below the bond marks, grounding and possessive in a way that isn't asking permission. My body wants to lean into it. I stiffen instead and shrug the hand off.
"Don't."
He removes his hand. He doesn't apologize. His eyebrows draw together and his gaze sharpens. He doesn't say anything but his eyes drop to my stomach for half a second.
"I need a refill anyway." I rinse the sink and avoid his gaze. "I'll do a telecall with the doctor."
The telecall takes twenty minutes. The doctor is a woman named Patel who handles my suppressant prescriptions through the telehealth platform.
"Any changes since your last refill?"
"I bonded. And I had a heat."
Her tone shifts. "Congratulations on the bonding. Standard protocol before I can refill suppressants: you'll need to take a pregnancy test. Blockers aren't safe during pregnancy."
"I'm not pregnant."
"It's just protocol, sir. Take a test, upload the result, and I'll process the refill."
The call ends and I stare at the blank screen of my phone for a long time.
Amos is watching me from the kitchen table. He opens his mouth and I cut him off before the question forms.
"Don't." I grab my jacket from the hook by the door. "I'm going to the pharmacy. I'll be back."
Something in my scent must be off because his nostrils flare as I pass him, his head tracking me the way it does when he's caught a thread he wants to pull. But he stays seated. He lets me go.
The pharmacy is six blocks from the apartment.
The walk gives me time to construct a list of reasons why the doctor's standard protocol is a formality and nothing more.
The heat was only two weeks ago and my body has been on suppressants for seven years.
The nausea is probably stress. The chest sensitivity is hormonal fluctuation from the bonding.
The list doesn't survive contact with the pregnancy test aisle.
I pick up two boxes because one test can be wrong but two tests agreeing constitutes data. Amos has infected my thinking with his obsession with sample sizes. The cashier doesn't look at me. The receipt crumples in my fist as I walk out.
The pharmacy has a public restroom. I lock the door and sit on the toilet with both boxes open on my knees. My hands are shaking so badly that I drop the first test on the tile and have to wipe it off.
The instructions say wait three minutes. I stare at the test on the edge of the sink and count my heartbeats. Three minutes is an eternity in a pharmacy bathroom.
"This is fine," I mutter to the fluorescent light. "This is completely fine. I'm taking a pregnancy test in a public bathroom like a teenager who made bad choices, except I'm twenty-six and the bad choices involved two stepbrothers and a heat suite."
The first test shows two lines.
I stare at it. The two lines stare back. My hand reaches for the second box and I repeat the process with numb fingers. The second test shows two lines.
Two tests, both positive. The math is simple. The heat was two weeks ago, I'm bonded to two Alphas, and I'm pregnant.
"I'm having their baby." The words come out barely above a whisper, directed at the bathroom mirror.
I sit on the toilet lid with both positive tests in my hands and my phone buzzing in my pocket. My brain runs through scenarios fast enough to make the nausea return. Except this time the nausea isn't from the blocker.
I haven't fully forgiven them. The forgiveness isn't complete and the trust isn't rebuilt. Now there's going to be a baby in the middle of it.
I wrap both tests in toilet paper and put them in my jacket pocket. Outside the pharmacy the late afternoon sun hits my face and I press my hand against my stomach through the jacket fabric.
I don't go home.
The park is four blocks past the apartment and I walk to it without thinking, my feet carrying me past the building entrance without stopping.
Through the bond, Dominic's worry sharpens as the distance between us increases.
Amos' attention has sharpened into something closer to panic.
Both of them expected me back thirty minutes ago.
Instead I'm walking in the opposite direction with two positive pregnancy tests in my pocket.
The bench at the edge of the park faces a playground that's empty in the late afternoon. I sit down with my hands on my knees and stare at the swings moving in the wind. My phone buzzes three more times in quick succession, Dominic then Amos then Dominic again.
I turn the phone over in my hand. The marks on my neck ache with their fear.
They're going to want this baby. The certainty of it sits in my gut alongside the nausea.
Dominic will go into full Alpha protective mode, his possessiveness channeled into prenatal vitamins and making sure I eat every three hours.
Amos will research everything and track my symptoms in a spreadsheet.
They're going to want this baby because it's theirs and mine.
The question is whether they want the baby more than they want me.
And there's the heir clause. The one I found buried in the Hale Industries documents, the provision that transfers controlling interest to the next generation upon the birth of a legitimate heir.
This baby doesn't just tie me to Dominic and Amos.
This baby makes them untouchable. I can't tell whether that makes me feel safer or more like a line item in a corporate strategy.
My hand moves from my knee to my stomach. Through the jacket fabric I press my palm flat against the skin below my navel, where something too small to feel is apparently growing. My mother would hate the gesture.
"You have terrible timing," I tell my stomach. "Your fathers are in the middle of earning back my trust and you've just given them a reason to think they don't have to."
A woman walking a dog gives me a wide berth on the path. Talking to my own stomach in a public park is apparently not inspiring confidence.
The sun drops toward the treeline and the playground shadows lengthen across the empty swings. My phone has stopped buzzing, which means they’re most likely tracking me through the bond. They can feel that I'm not in danger.
The pregnancy changes the equation in ways I can't calculate sitting on a park bench. The wind picks up and I pull my jacket tighter around me. The pregnancy tests crinkle in my pocket.
"Your dad Dominic is going to lose his mind," I mutter. "Your dad Amos is going to make a spreadsheet. And your... whatever I am to you, I'm going to sit on this bench until I figure out how to tell them without crying."
The bench grows colder as the sun disappears. My bond marks ache with the distance. Through the connection their worry has settled into something quieter.
I think about Richard Hale putting his hand on the back of Dominic's neck and squeezing until the boy learned to stand still.
I think about Amos in the hospital with broken ribs because his stepfather decided a lesson needed teaching.
I think about my mother's hand connecting with my face every time my scent sweetened for the wrong Alpha, training the submission out of me like it was a defect she could beat into remission.
Between the three of us we have exactly zero models for how to raise a child without breaking it.
Dominic learned authority from a man who used his sons as chess pieces. Amos learned protection from a man who fractured his ribs. I learned motherhood from a woman who looked at her own child and saw a revenue stream.
The thought I've been circling all afternoon finally lands.
What if I'm her. What if I look at this baby and the first thing I calculate is what it's worth to the Hale estate instead of what it needs from me.
What if the honey trap instinct is genetic and I'm already doing the math on how this pregnancy secures my position in the triad before I've even thought about whether I want to be someone's parent.
My scent has gone sour. I can smell it on myself, the burnt wood bitterness of fear cutting through something else underneath, something warmer and sweeter that wasn't there this morning. Vanilla, maybe. Or honey. My body is already changing and I didn't even notice.
The tears come without warning, streaking down my face. My chest heaves and the sound that comes out of me is the ugly kind of crying that I haven't done since I was a kid locked in my closet listening to my mother entertain her latest mark in the next room.
I'm crying on a park bench at sunset with two pregnancy tests in my pocket and the terrifying possibility that I am already my mother sitting in my chest like a stone.
My phone buzzes. I swipe at the screen to decline, but my fingers are wet and clumsy and they slide wrong. The call connects.
Dominic's voice fills my ear, raw in a way I've never heard from him.
"Firefly? Mattaniah, please. Where are you?"