40. CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Ihummed under my breath, dim sum in hand and waved to Molly the desk attendant as I passed her by.
I felt lighter than I had in ages and I had a feeling that it had to do with the fact that, instead of listening to one of the stories about Finneas’s childhood or his time with Mam, we’d just sat and played cards with Orla.
It had tired him out more quickly than usual, but it was nice to just sort-of exist for an afternoon.
I still told him at the end that I didn’t forgive him, just like I did every day—though at this point that was more of a running gag than anything actually serious.
All of it was a bit like living in the Twilight Zone.
On one hand, I still hated him for what he did to me and Mam, but on the other? I couldn’t help but like the sober, older version of him. It made me see what my mam saw in him when they were younger and it was almost healing to be in the presence of him as he was now.
It also made sense why Orla went to bat so hard for him almost a month ago when she’d called.
The Finneas Callaghan of today was almost a completely different human being from the da of my memories and it was a complete mindfuck that I couldn’t even try to wrap my head around.
It also made me doubly grateful for Alexei and Maxim.
When I asked Finneas about it, he told me they’d insisted on the one-thousand euro payments even when he’d refused and soon after the accident he was forced into early retirement by the Garda and needed the money.
I was trying not to hold it against any of them, but I was still angry that they hadn’t told me about it.
We weren’t going to head back to the states until after Finneas passed. It was a decision I’d come to pretty quickly once I realized how actually finite my time with him was.
I’d told Wiz to go back and leave me on my own, but the other alpha had outright refused, telling me he’d already put in for a leave of absence from the team. Which of course filled me with even more guilt than I’d already been feeling.
It was supposed to be his triumphant first season and at this rate he was going to miss it all.
But every time I tried to get him to go, he would hold me close at night and whisper how much he loved me and how there was no other place he’d rather be than right next to me.
I wasn’t sure what I’d done to deserve such a man, but I was ridiculously glad to have him with me through all of this.
Even if it made me miss the rest of our pack even more. Their absence was like an ache I refused to acknowledge and yet it always seemed to hover at the back of my mind.
We were planning to contact them—Wiz kept pushing for it—but I kept putting it off.
What would I even say after three weeks of no contact?
Hi there, it’s me, Ciara. The woman who ran out on you after causing an accident that brained our omega. Oh, and by the way I’m three, almost four months pregnant with said omega’s baby who has been making me vomit more than I ever have in my entire life?
I snorted at my inner monologue as the elevator ascended to our floor.
None of that would work, so until I figured out what exactly to say, I was just going to give all of my attention to Finneas.
They weren’t sure how much longer he had and I wanted to know everything about him and my mam before he disappeared forever.
The elevator dinged and I stepped off, ready to eat one of the few foods that didn’t make me feel like I was going to spew exorcist style.
“You better let mama eat,” I whispered to the little bump that had formed over the past three weeks. “Or else we’ll both be mad.”
It was as if, as soon as we acknowledged it and went to the doctor for a scan, the baby decided it was time to show itself.
I was now noticeably pregnant, though I had taken to wearing Wiz’s clothing instead of my own to hide it as I hadn’t told Finneas or anyone else about it yet.
Putting my keycard in the door, I waited for it to blink green before I pushed the door handle down.
I started talking before the door was even fully open, shrugging my jacket off while trying to keep a hold of the bag of food. “They had to end visiting hours early because Finneas was falling asleep, so I thought I’d bring you some dim sum from that place you like. It’s all I can seem to keep down these days…”
I trailed off as I smelled the familiar scents of cranberries, apples, and oranges filling the air.
For a moment, I thought I was imagining their scents. It wouldn’t have been the first time since we left Seattle that I caught a phantom whiff of one of them. Though, whenever I usually looked around, they were never there.
But this wasn’t a hallucination and it certainly wasn’t my imagination.
“Mo ròs,” Leith’s familiar rumble reached my ears, sending a shiver of need down my spine. My inner alpha, who I’d shoved deep, deep down the day of the invitational, perked up with recognition.
I wanted to look up, to see their faces. But fear filled me so deeply that I let go of the bag of food and ran.
“Damn it, you’re not supposed to be running, Ciara!” I vaguely heard Wiz shout after me, but I ignored him.
My feet tangled halfway down the hallway, sending me careening to my knees with a loud thump!
A sob, half because of my skinned knees and half because of who was back in that hotel room, ripped out of me as his hand gently gripped my elbow and started to pick me up off of the ground.
The comforting scent of cloves filled my nose as Wiz hovered over me, his worry palpable even with our bonds still closed off.
“You can’t run like that, Ciara, you’re pregnant,” Wiz said as he helped me to my feet and began to use his sleeve to wipe away my tears.
“She’s what?” Three shocked voices echoed loudly down the thankfully empty hallway.
I shot them a watery look and I don’t know what came over me, but I did Orla’s famous jazz-hands move as Wiz ended up picking me up entirely and carrying me back toward the room.
“Surprise,” I told them hoarsely, not looking any of them in the eyes as we passed them.
Wiz deposited me on the bed and climbed in behind me, almost protectively as the rest of our pack stood in front of us, their jaws still hanging open with shock.
Then it all seemed to wear off at the same time and they were rapid-fire asking me questions.
“How far along are you?”
“Whose baby do you think it is?”
“When did you find out?”
Wiz held up a hand to stop them and I leaned back against him, glad that I had him for what was about to come.
I answered their questions one-by-one. “I’m sixteen weeks pregnant give or take a couple of days. We found out a day or so after we got here and I’m pretty sure it’s Artie’s.”
The omega stood up a little bit straighter, his lips flashing into a quick smile before it melted back into a neutral expression. “How do you know?”
“You came in me quite a bit during your heat, and apparently, omegas are hyper-fertile during a heat, meaning that my usual birth control didn’t stand a chance.”
“Holy shit, that’s a thing?” Enzo blurted, drawing my attention to him.
I thought I looked like shit after throwing up for nearly three weeks straight, but Enzo looked downright awful. Deep purple smudges were under each eye and his cheeks looked hollowed out like he hadn’t been eating.
My heart gave a little squeeze and I had to remind myself that he’d spewed awful words at me the last time we’d seen each other.
Even if my heart, my vagina, and my inner alpha were happy to see the man, my brain was telling me that he had hurt me—and badly.
“It is,” Wiz confirmed and gently lifted my oversized sweatshirt to reveal the gentle swell of my belly.
Enzo and Leith’s eyes looked as if they were about to bug out of their heads, but it was clear Artie couldn’t see.
“It’s all a blur to me, what does it look like?” he asked, leaning in a bit closer and squinting as if it would help.
With a sigh, I gently reached out and grabbed the omega’s hand. Ignoring the way it made my heart flutter in my chest, I pressed his palm flat to the curve of what was now very clearly a pregnant person’s belly.
Artie’s eyes widened in the same way that the rest of the packs had as he splayed his fingers wide.
“That’s why you threw up that day in the hospital,” Leith said as he seemed to be connecting the dots.
I shot him a wry look. “And pretty much every day since.”
“My mum was sick for almost every day of her pregnancy with me,” Artie remarked dazedly, his hand still on my stomach.
The moment was so nice, that of course Enzo had to ruin it. “You’ve got to come back to the states with us ASAP so we can get you set up with an OBGYN there.”
In the nearly six months since I’d met Enzo Santoro, I’d gotten very good at translating his blunt, sometimes thoughtless language.
I knew he meant to say that he was worried about me and he wanted me to be safe and healthy, but right now I was still angry with him.
“Why? Do you think if I stay here with the baby I’ll rub my bad luck off onto it?”
Everyone in the room winced at my harsh words.
“Ciara, listen…” Enzo began, looking miserable.
“No,” I said, stopping him before he could say anything else. “You hurt me that day. Badly. I was already feeling bad enough about fucking up our routine and letting Artie get hurt and you brought up something that I said to you—in confidence—and used it against me.”
Enzo’s expression crumpled and he stared down at his feet. I knew if I opened our bond again I would feel guilt and regret, but I didn’t want to budge. Not yet.
“I’m so sorry, Ciara, I love you. Please believe that I do,” Enzo said, his tone almost begging as he quite literally dropped to his knees next to the bed so that we were eye level.
I didn’t like seeing him so miserable. So much of Enzo reflected me that it was like seeing myself suffer.
But if we were going to get through this, and I sure as hell hoped that we did, he needed to know that he couldn’t lash out at me or any of the rest of our pack when things got hard or he was scared.
Reaching out, I cupped Enzo’s face in my hands.
“I love you, Enzo, and I love you two as well,” I said, looking at both Artie and Leith in turn. “So, so much. But if I’ve learned anything these past couple of weeks, it’s that hurt can’t just be fixed with an ‘I’m sorry.’ ”
Finneas apologized to me every day for different things and some of them were harder to hear than others. But even if he said sorry every single day, it didn’t change the fact that he had in fact been the one to hurt my mam and me.
And while he didn’t have the time to truly make things right with me, my pack did.
“I’m going to stay here until Finneas passes away. I thought I could do this with just Wiz here, but I’m having a hard time dealing with all of the shit that coming here has brought up.”
My honesty seemed to surprise them and it took another beat before Leith crouched down as well. “What do you need from us?”
My shoulders sank with relief and I tried in vain to keep from crying again but my eyes were already burning with tears. Damn pregnancy hormones making me go absolutely looney.
“Be here with me until the end? Show me that you love me even though my head’s a little fucked up and I didn’t tell you what was going on with me that day?”
Sometimes, late at night after Wiz had gone to sleep, I wondered if things would have been different if I had gone home after finding out about everything and told them what happened.
What would they have done? Would they have insisted on canceling our performance and flying out to Ireland?
We would never really know.
But they were here with me now and judging by the looks on their faces, I knew I could count on them to stay with me until Finneas took his last breath and that chapter of my life could finally be closed forever.