Chapter 55
brYLEE
The conference room smells like stale coffee and wildflowers, and I’m trying to focus on the ambassador from Nóthos as she details border-patrol schedules, but the room keeps tilting.
Not dramatically—not like the vertigo I used to get after the attack five years ago, when my ears began to ring—but subtly, like the floor has become a boat and I’m only now noticing the waves.
I grip the edge of the mahogany table, my knuckles white against the dark wood.
“—increased surveillance along the northern ridge,” Ambassador Vex is saying, her voice a low drone that seems to come from underwater. “Your Majesty, our intelligence suggests…”
Teddie nods from the head of the table, but his eyes flick to me.
They’re different from the way they were before, my brother’s eyes.
Sharpened by five years of wearing a crown that never stops trying to crush him.
He sees something in my face—I don’t know what—but his pen stops moving. His brows furrow with concern.
“Bry?” he asks.
“Brylee?” Kylian’s hand is on my shoulder, warm and heavy. “You’re gray.”
“I’m fine,” I whisper, but the words taste like copper.
As Teddie’s Chief Security Advisor, alongside my mates, I need to hear this. Help plan. But…
Ridge leans in from my right, his chair creaking. He’s been my shadow all morning, which should have been my first clue. Ridge doesn’t hover unless something is wrong.
“Breathe,” he says quietly. “Slow. You’ve been pale all day, baby.”
I try. I really do. But the ambassador’s perfume—something floral and cloying—suddenly fills my lungs like smoke, and my stomach lurches with such violence that I’m standing before my brain catches up to my body.
“Excuse me,” I manage, but it sounds like a croak.
The door. I need the door. The carpet sways beneath my heels, and I can feel four sets of eyes burning into my back, can see Teddie rising from his chair, can hear the sudden halt of conversation as the king’s sister bolts from a high-level security meeting like the room is on fire.
The hallway tilts. I catch myself against the wall, my palm slapping cool plaster, and then I’m running—stumbling—toward the restroom at the end of the corridor. My heels echo like gunshots. My throat burns.
I crash through the door just in time.
In the stall at the end of the restroom, my body empties itself into the porcelain bowl with a violence that leaves me shaking, my hair falling loose from its knot to curtain my face. I heave again, and again, until there’s nothing left but bile and panic and the metallic taste of fear.
“Brylee!”
The door bangs open. Multiple footsteps. Too heavy for the women’s restroom, but I don’t have the energy to care about protocol.
“Fucking hell.” Colter’s voice, rough and terrified. “Brylee, look at me.”
I flush, trembling, and lean back on my heels. The stall door opens—Kylian, always the one to ignore boundaries when I’m involved—and four men hover at the entrance to the small space, filling it with their fear, their bodies, their love that feels like a physical weight pressing against my skin.
“Call the castle physician,” Ridge barks into his phone.
“No—”Another wave of nausea rolls through me, and I grip the toilet seat until my fingers cramp.
“Was it the salmon? It was the salmon, right? My sweet obsession…I told you it smelled funky.” Kylian chews on his nail anxiously. “Maybe we should ban fish from the kingdom forever. Can we do that? We can do that, right?”
Luka kneels beside me, his nearly acquired medical training kicking in, his fingers finding my pulse with practiced precision.
His face goes pale. “It’s racing. Brylee, when did you last eat?”
“Three hours ago.” I gasp. “I’m fine. I just—”
“It’s the goddamn salmon,” Kylian growls.
"You’re not fine," Colter grunts, ignoring Kylian completely. He stands behind the others, his big frame blocking the light, his hands clenched into fists at his sides like he’s physically restraining himself from picking me up and carrying me somewhere safe.
“You’re white as a sheet. You ran out of there like—”
“Like someone poisoned her,” Luka finishes quietly.
The word hangs in the air, poisonous itself.
Poisoned.
“Check her food,” Ridge snaps into his phone, voice clipped, professional, terrified. “I want the kitchen sealed. I want—”
“Stop,” I whisper, but they don’t hear me.
“—full toxicology screen,” Luka is saying, already pulling out a medical bag from gods-know-where.
He always carries one now. I think it’s a way for him to feel a little more in control, a little more sane. He even went back to school, though he technically doesn’t have a degree yet. Not that it stops him from acting like a bossy, sexy doctor. I suppose we all deal with trauma in different ways.
“Brylee, I need to examine you. Can you—”
“Stop!” I push myself up, my legs wobbling, my hand pressed to my stomach.
They freeze—my four warriors, my four hearts, staring at me with eyes wide and wet and full of a fear I recognize because I’ve seen it in the mirror.
“I don’t think it’s poison,” I say, and my voice sounds strange to my own ears.
Wonderstruck. Terrified. Hopeful.
“What?” Ridge’s brows draw together. “Brylee, you’re sick. You’re—”
“I know.” I reach for my phone, my hands shaking so badly I nearly drop it. “Just…just give me a minute. Please. I need you to trust me.”
I text Harper with trembling fingers: Emergency. Pharmacy. Palace east bathroom. Now.
Her reply is immediate: On my way.
I look up at my mates—my beautiful, terrified, overprotective mates—and tears prick my eyes. Not from fear. From possibility.
“Give me five minutes,” I beg. “Please. Don’t call the doctor yet. Don’t…just don’t.”
“Brylee—” Luka starts, his eyes dark with worry.
“Please.” I grip his hand, then Kylian’s, then reach back for Ridge and Colter. “Trust me. Five minutes.”
They exchange glances—the silent communication of men who have learned to share everything, including their fear.
Finally, Kylian nods, his jaw tight. “Five minutes. Then I’m breaking down this door.”
They file out, reluctant, hovering just beyond the threshold like sentinels. They argue in harsh whispers—Ridge wanting to call Teddie, Colter grunting something I can’t interpret, Kylian suggesting it might be stress, Luka insisting it’s medical.
The door bursts open again, and Harper stands there like a hurricane in human form—brown hair wild, jacket unzipped, holding a tiny white pharmacy bag that rustles as she walks.
“Tell me everything,” she demands, then takes one look at my face and softens. “Oh, honey.”
“I’m late,” I whisper, and the words feel like jumping off a cliff.
“Two weeks. I thought it was stress, the summit, the security protocols, but Harper…I threw up three times this week. I thought it was food poisoning or something. But my breasts hurt. And I’m crying at commercials.
Not even sad ones, but people frolicking in a field.
And I just ran out of a meeting with the Nóthos ambassador because the smell of her perfume made me want to die. ”
Harper’s smile starts small, then spreads like sunrise. “How many times have we done this dance?”
“Three,” I say, my voice breaking. “Three times, and every time it was negative, and every time I told myself it was okay, that we have time, but Harper…we’re not getting younger, and the doctors said that it’s normal, but I’m an omega, and I just can’t… They said I might not have children.”
“Might,” she interrupts gently, pressing the bag into my hands. It’s warm from her grip. “Not would. Might.”
I look down at the bag. At the small pink box inside. My hands shake so badly the plastic crinkles like thunder.
“Do you want me to stay?” Harper asks.
I shake my head, tears already falling. “I need…I need to know first. Before them. I need to—”
“Go,” she says and kisses my forehead. "I’ll hold back the psychopaths.”
I lock myself in the handicapped stall—the only one with a counter—and I stare at the box for what feels like years.
My reflection in the mirror shows a woman I barely recognize: disheveled blonde hair, shadows under her eyes from too many sleepless nights, wearing a pantsuit that suddenly feels too tight across the chest.
Please, I think, not to God, but to the universe, to the fates, to whatever force gave me my mates and brought my brother back from the edge five years ago. Please.
I pee on the stick. I set the timer. I wait.
The seconds crawl like spiders. I hear Harper murmuring outside the door, keeping my mates at bay. I hear Kylian’s voice rise in panic, then Ridge’s low rumble calming him. I hear Luka’s medical terminology and Colter’s soothing grunts.
The timer chimes.
I look down.
Two lines. Pink and unmistakable and perfect.
My knees buckle. I catch myself on the counter, a sob ripping from my throat—joy and terror and five years of hoping, of pretending I was okay when I wasn’t, of watching my mates stare at me with careful eyes after each negative test, each disappointment.
I’m pregnant.
I’m pregnant.
I stumble out of the stall, the test clutched in my hand like a talisman.
Harper sees my face, and her eyes fill with tears, but she just opens the door and steps aside, and suddenly they’re there—my four mates, my four reasons for breathing, the loves of my fucking life, crowding the doorway with their fear and their love and their wild, desperate hope.
“What is it?” Ridge demands, his voice wrecked. “Brylee, please—”
I hold out my hand. The test sits in my palm like an offering, like a promise.
The world stops.
Luka’s medical bag hits the floor with a thud. Ridge’s phone slips from his fingers. Kylian’s hand flies to his mouth. Colter—Colter drops to his knees right there on the tile, his big frame folding like a house of cards, his face crumpling as he stares at the two pink lines.
“You’re—” Kylian starts, and his voice breaks. He tries again. “You’re—”
“Pregnant,” I whisper, and then I’m laughing and crying at the same time, the sound borderline hysterical. “I’m pregnant. I thought…I thought it was a virus, or the salmon, or stress, but I’m—”
I don’t get to finish.
Luka reaches me first, his hands framing my face, his thumbs wiping tears I didn’t know I was still crying. “You’re sure? You’re… Brylee, are you—”
“Two weeks late,” I sob, leaning into his touch. “Two lines. Harper brought the test. I’m sure. I’m—”
Ridge makes a sound like he’s been punched in the chest, and then I’m surrounded, engulfed, pulled into the center of them like the eye of a storm.
Colter’s arms wrap around my waist from where he kneels, his face pressed to my stomach, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
Kylian’s hands are on my back, his forehead dropped to my shoulder, his breath hot and wet through my blouse.
Ridge cups my face. His thumbs trace my cheekbones, his own tears falling freely.
Luka holds my hand against his heart, which beats wild and fast and alive.
“Five years,” Colter chokes out, his voice muffled against my abdomen, his mask pushing at the fabric of my shirt. “Five years of trying, of hoping, of—”
“I know,” I whisper, my fingers finding his hair, holding him close. “I know.”
“We’re going to be fathers,” Ridge says, wonderstruck, his tears dripping onto my wrists. "All of us. We’re going to—”
"Be terrible at it." Kylian laughs wetly, pressing kisses to my shoulder. "We’re going to be overprotective and paranoid, and I’ll get yelled at for teaching our baby how to stab someone and—”
“Amazing," Luka finishes, lifting his head, his eyes red-rimmed and radiant. “We’re going to be amazing. You’re going to be—” He stops, swallows hard. “You’re already amazing. You’re perfection, and I thank the universe every damn day for bringing you to us.”
I look at them—my men, my family, my everything—and I think of the girl I was years ago, pretending to be my brother and sneaking into Eros Academy.
Everything’s changed since then. I’ve changed.
I didn’t know then that hearts could grow, that they could stretch to hold more love than seemed possible.
“I love you,” I say, because it’s the only phrase big enough, the only anchor in this ocean of joy. “I love you, I love you, I—”
Colter stands, his hands cradling my face, and he kisses me—soft and reverent and full of promise. Then Ridge, his tears salty on my lips. Then Kylian, laughing against my mouth. Then Luka, drowning me in his love.
Harper clears her throat from the doorway, her own face a mess of mascara and joy. “Should you tell Teddie he’s going to be an uncle? Or should I let you all compose yourselves first?”
I look at my mates—at their wrecked, beautiful faces, at the way they’re already touching my stomach like it’s sacred ground—and I laugh, the sound bright and free and full of the future.
“Let’s tell him,” I say, and Colter’s hand finds mine, our fingers intertwining. "He’s going to need a bigger castle. Our future son or daughter deserves at least a wing. Maybe two. But definitely, at minimum, ten bedrooms.”
“Eleven,” Kylian pipes in, a radiant grin on his face. “One will be the baby’s torture room.”
Luka pinches the bridge of his nose. “Our baby will not have a torture room.”
Kylian stares at him, affronted. “Of course not.” He pauses and then adds, “It’ll be for when he’s a toddler. At least three years old. If we start him too young, he’ll turn into a psychopath.”
“For the love of…” Luka massages his temples.
Kylian winks at me, and I bite down on my giddy smile.
Ridge wipes his eyes, trying for dignity and failing spectacularly. “I’m calling the physician. God, there’s…fuck…prenatal care. Vitamins. We need—”
“We need to breathe,” Luka interrupts, but he’s already pulling out his phone, probably googling omega pregnancy protocols or something equally ridiculous.
Colter hasn’t stopped crying, the tears tracking silent paths down his face as he holds my hand against my own stomach, covering us both with his warmth.
“Hello, little one,” he whispers, and I break all over again, shattering and reforming into something new, something more.
Fuck, how could this be my life?
First I was an omega and princess.
Then I was a soldier and alpha.
And now…
Now, I’m security advisor to the king, mate to four impossible men, sister to a miracle.
And finally, wonderfully, terrifyingly—
I’m going to be a mother.