Chapter Seven #2
The house was too quiet when I went back inside.
I turned on the radio to fill the space, then started dinner—chicken and rice, the kind of thing I could make without thinking about it.
The kind of meal I’d been making for myself for years, before Cruz sat at my table and asked if I had any hot sauce.
Now the table was set for one again, the second chair pushed neatly against the opposite side, the blue mug back in the cabinet where it belonged.
I ate standing at the counter, then washed the single plate and set it in the dish rack to dry. The evening stretched ahead of me—three hours of darkness before I could reasonably go to bed, a house suddenly too big for one person, a silence that felt like it had weight and texture.
I checked my phone three times in thirty minutes, though I knew there wouldn’t be anything there. Cruz had been clear about the comms blackout—no texts, no calls, no contact until they were established at whatever location Sterling had sent them to.
Two weeks, max, he’d said. I could make it two weeks. Had survived far longer stretches with far less certainty.
I went to bed at ten, set my alarm for five, and lay awake staring at the ceiling until the digital display read 11:47. Then I got up, made another piece of toast I didn’t want, and sat at the kitchen table with the lights off, watching the valley go from dark to black outside the window.
The starter trays were still under the grow lights in the greenhouse, tiny green shoots reaching for a sun that had set hours ago. I’d need to check them in the morning, to see if any new ones had broken the surface overnight.
I’d need to check a lot of things in the morning. To see if my stomach had settled. To see if the hollow feeling in my chest had eased. To see if the house still felt too big and too quiet and too empty for one person who’d spent thirty years telling himself that was exactly how he liked it.
* * * *
On the fourth day, when the nausea hadn’t improved and the exhaustion had somehow gotten worse, I called Jasper.
Not Decker, who’d have asked questions I couldn’t answer.
Not Rawley, who’d have immediately put the entire property on lockdown.
Not any of the people who’d want explanations or action plans or concrete details about what was happening to the man who was supposed to be keeping his shit together.
Just Jasper, who’d been a neonatal nurse before coming to the ranch, who knew how to listen without pushing, and who had never once looked at me like I was a problem that needed solving.
The phone rang three times before he picked up, his voice warm with the note it got when he recognized the caller. “Hey, Jackson. What’s up?”
I sat at the kitchen table, one hand flat on the wood surface, the other holding the phone to my ear. “I need to ask you something,” I said, keeping my voice level. “Medical question, but I’d rather not do it over the phone.”
There was a pause—Jasper registering the request, calculating the implications. “Are you hurt?” he asked, his voice shifting to the careful professional tone I’d heard him use with Danny when Brandon had a fever.
“No,” I said. “Not hurt. Just—“ I stopped, not sure how to finish the sentence. Just throwing up everything I eat? Just too tired to walk to the barn without stopping? Just standing at my kitchen sink with tears on my face and no idea why?
“I can be there in twenty,” Jasper said, not pushing for details. “Do you need me to bring anything?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Just yourself,” I said. “And maybe don’t mention this to anyone? For now?”
Another pause, longer this time. “Sure,” Jasper said, his voice careful. “Twenty minutes. See you then.”
He arrived in fifteen, a brown paper bag in one hand, a covered container in the other. I met him at the door, stepping back to let him inside without the awkward small talk that usually happened when people came to my house.
Jasper moved past me into the kitchen, setting the paper bag on the counter with a quiet rustle. “I brought bread,” he said, already unpacking the container. “Just came out of the oven. And some soup. Figured you might not have eaten.”
He had that right. The toast I’d forced down that morning was currently sitting in the trash where it had landed approximately seven minutes after swallowing, and I hadn’t had the energy to try again.
“Thanks,” I said, moving to the table. “You didn’t have to do that.”
Jasper smiled, the expression warming his whole face. “I know,” he said, setting the container on the table between us. “But Decker made enough for six people, and it seemed like a waste not to share.”
He sat down across from me, pushing the container toward my side of the table with careful attention. “So,” he said, his voice deliberately casual. “Medical question?”
I laid it out the way I’d lay out an operational problem—symptoms, timeline, response pattern. Kept my voice flat and my hands flat on the table, like I was giving a briefing rather than describing what my body had been doing for the past four days.
“Nausea, starting the morning Cruz left. Can’t keep anything down for more than twenty minutes.
Extreme fatigue—going to bed at ten, waking up at five, still feel like I haven’t slept.
Two separate incidents of—“ I hesitated, then forced myself to continue.
“Of unexplained tear production. No pain, no fever, no other physical symptoms.”
I delivered it all in the same even tone I’d used for a hundred mission briefings, watching Jasper’s face for the moment his expression would shift from professional interest to concern or, worse, pity.
It didn’t. He listened without interrupting, his eyes on mine, his expression steady and warm. When I finished, he was quiet for a moment, his head tilted slightly, like he was turning the information over in his mind.
“You said this started the morning Cruz left?” he asked, his voice gentle.
I nodded.
Jasper was quiet again, his eyes on my face, his hands folded on the table between us. “And you’ve been intimate with Cruz?” he asked, the question clinical but careful.
My jaw tightened. “Yes,” I said. “Last time was the night before he left.”
Jasper nodded, his expression giving away nothing. “And you’re using protection?”
The question landed between us like a stone. I stared at him, trying to work out where he was going with this line of questioning, then felt my stomach drop as the implication hit me.
“No,” I said, the word coming out sharper than I’d intended. “We’re not—I’m an alpha. Alphas can’t get pregnant.”
The words hung in the air between us, too definitive to take back, too certain to qualify.
I’d been an alpha my entire life—had the physical build, the dominant nature, the designation confirmed by three separate tests before I was ten.
Had built my understanding of myself around that certainty for thirty years.
Had never once questioned it until this moment, watching Jasper’s face as he absorbed my response without visible reaction.
He was quiet for another long moment, his eyes on mine, his expression thoughtful rather than dismissive. Then, gently: “It sounds like you might be pregnant, Jackson.”
The word hit me like a physical thing—pregnant, with all its implications and complications and the absolute certainty that it couldn’t apply to me.
I opened my mouth to say exactly that, to lay out the evidence point by point—the test results, the physical characteristics, the thirty years of living as an alpha without a single indication to the contrary—and found myself going completely still instead.
My hands stayed flat on the table a half-second too long before I said, “I’m an alpha,” like it was a fact I was filing in evidence rather than a truth I lived by.
Jasper nodded, not arguing, not pushing, just listening with the same attention that made him good at his job.
“I know that’s what you’ve always believed,” he said, his voice careful.
“But the symptoms you’re describing are pretty classic for early pregnancy.
The nausea, the fatigue, the chaotic emotions—they’re all consistent with the first trimester. ”
I stared at him, trying to find the flaw in his logic, the piece that didn’t fit. “I’m an alpha,” I said again, the words coming out rougher this time. “Alphas don’t get pregnant. It’s not physically possible.”
“I understand that’s what you’ve been told,” Jasper said, his voice steady. “But designation isn’t always as clear-cut as the tests make it seem. There are cases where someone presents as one designation, but has the biological characteristics of another. It’s rare, but it happens.”
He was being careful—choosing his words with the precision of someone who knew exactly how much was at stake. Not pushing, not insisting, just laying out the facts as he understood them and leaving space for me to reach my own conclusions.
It made the hollow feeling in my chest worse, not better.
“I think,” Jasper said after a moment, “that the next logical step would be a home test. They’re not perfect, but they’re a good starting point. If it’s positive, we can get you to the clinic for confirmation. If it’s negative, we keep looking for other explanations.”
He made it sound so simple—just another problem to solve, just another step in a process. Not the complete unraveling of everything I thought I knew about myself.
“Okay,” I said, because it was the logical next step, because sitting at the kitchen table arguing about something we could test for was wasting everyone’s time. “A home test. Then the clinic if needed.”
Jasper nodded, relief flashing across his face before he schooled his expression back to careful neutrality. “I can pick one up on my way home,” he said. “Or if you’d rather—“
“I’ll get it,” I interrupted, not wanting him involved any more than he already was. “There’s a pharmacy in town. I’ll go this afternoon.”