12. Roman
Chapter 12
Roman
H azel was pregnant ?
My stomach dropped at those words, but my disappointment was quickly replaced with anger. Who had gotten her pregnant? Why were they letting her go out alone when she was clearly unwell?
Her face was pale, and she shook ever so slightly as Phillip righted her.
“Who?” Cormac asked the question I had just been thinking. His face was just as angry as mine surely was. Phillip merely looked confused. They were probably thinking the same thing I was—who the fuck had gotten to our omega?
So, Hazel wasn’t technically our omega, but we had all been thinking about her since she had snuck out of our house the morning after her heat. I had been trawling through social media, attempting to find her, but hadn’t had any luck. Nothing I did could distract me from her. I went to bed thinking about her sweet cherry cola scent and the feel of her pussy fluttering around my knot.
She was perfect, and we had all missed her.
We clearly haven’t been looking hard enough, because in the meantime, some piece of shit had managed to get her pregnant.
“Uh…” Hazel tried to find the words.
“That’s irrelevant,” Cormac grumbled. “Are you still with the fucker?”
“Uh, no?” Hazel looked between us, a bewildered look on her face.
“Good.” I nodded. That was one problem out of the way. “We don’t care if you’re pregnant.” As I spoke, I looked at my packmates. Cormac nodded in confirmation. Phillip didn’t say anything against it.
“Wait, what?” Hazel stammered.
“I mean, it’s a little rude getting knocked up after we blew your mind, but we clearly have something we want to explore.” Cormac shrugged.
Hazel gaped at us. “The only people I have had sex with in the last year are you three idiots!” she cried, throwing her hands in the air.
Wait…
What?
“What are you saying, Duchess?”
Hazel sighed, resting her face in her hands as she grumbled to herself for a moment. “I tracked you guys down to let you know that, apparently, you need super strong birth control while you’re in heat. I didn’t know that, and you guys got me pregnant. I thought you deserved to know.”
I looked at the beautiful omega I hadn’t seen in weeks, unable to process what she had just said. She was pregnant, and we were the dads?
We had wanted to see her again and had every intention of pursuing a relationship with her, but we hadn’t expected that.
As I thought about her words, I realized I wasn’t even angry or stressed. I was excited .
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Sure of what?” she replied. “That I’m pregnant or that it’s yours?”
“Uhh… This may make me sound like an asshole, but both?”
Hazel snorted. “I am most definitely pregnant, I had the blood test to confirm it. As I have said, the only people I’ve slept with in the last year are you three, so I’m pretty sure that, unless I’m carrying the baby Jesus, one of you guys got me pregnant during my heat.”
I couldn’t help it. My face broke out into a grin. “Duchess, that’s amazing!” I cried, pulling her into my lap and hugging her close, burying my nose in her hair and inhaling that sweet smell I had been missing for weeks.
“A-amazing?” she stuttered, pulling away and looking up at me with surprise.
“Why wouldn’t it be amazing?” Cormac asked, his grin matching my own.
“Because we don’t know each other, because we’re in college, because we are all young, because you guys are a pack and will want to settle down with an omega one day and don’t need a baby complicating that?” She listed all the things she saw as potential issues, her eyes wide as the words tumbled from her mouth.
Only none of those things would be an issue for me.
“Duchess, calm down,” I instructed gently. The last thing she needed was to stress herself out when she was pregnant. “You are single, aren’t you?” I asked.
My pack mates’ faces broke out into frowns. They hadn’t considered the possibility that there would be another alpha sniffing around.
“Of course, I’m single!” she growled, but had all the fire of a newborn kitten snarling. “What kind of woman do you take me for? Why does everyone seem to think that I am a whore just because I accidentally got pregnant?”
“Whoa, who’s calling you a whore?” Cormac demanded, his face full of thunder.
“My best friend,” she admitted, sighing. “He didn’t mean it. He found my prenatal vitamins, and he was just shocked because I hadn’t told him I was pregnant.”
He?
Her best friend was a male?
That could potentially cause a problem.
“You shouldn’t let anyone talk to you that way,” Phillip said.
“He was just surprised,” she assured him. “Look, I just wanted you guys to know I don’t want anything from you. We can go back to our lives as normal, but I—I felt wrong not telling you.”
The last thing I wanted to do was overwhelm her, but I wasn’t going to go back to my normal life. There was no way in hell I was going to act like nothing’s changed when I was going to be a dad. Judging by the looks on my pack mates’ faces, they felt exactly the same way.
“Have you eaten?” Phillip asked, ever the pragmatic one.
Hazel shook her head. “I was feeling really nauseated, so I skipped breakfast.”
“Sweetness, it’s nearly seven in the evening.” Cormac frowned.
“I know. I just knew I was seeing you guys, and I didn’t feel up to it.”
“Are you allergic to anything?” Phillip asked.
“Just shellfish,” she replied, trying to leave my side, but I pulled her chair right next to mine, refusing to let her leave.
A deep, instinctual part of me demanded that I kept my omega close.
Sure, Hazel wasn’t my bonded omega, but she was pregnant with my child. That bonded us in a serious way.
“Stay,” I grumbled lightly. She looked up at me, those wide eyes full of worry.
Phillip nodded at her answer and stalked off toward the counter.
“Where is he going?” Hazel asked.
“My guess? To go get you some food.” Cormac smiled lazily at her.
“Oh, he didn’t need to do that.”
“Yes, he did,” I said, my hand reaching out and finding hers. I rubbed my thumb over the pulse point in her wrist; her heartbeat was erratic. So much worry and stress couldn’t be good for her.
It would be down to me and my pack to help make her life easier now.
“So, where exactly do you live?” Cormac asked.
“I live in a dorm on campus, Dallas House.”
Cormac whistled. “I’ve heard of that place. It’s fancy.”
Hazel grimaced. “It is nice. My parents pay for it, so I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be there for.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. Why would she be moving? Maybe she could move in with us. She certainly couldn’t be farther away from us. We needed to be close, in case she needed help. The twenty-minute drive between our current homes already felt like too much.
“My parents don’t know about my situation, and they are not going to be very understanding when they find out.”
“In that case, fuck them. We’ll take care of you.” Cormac shrugged.
Hazel wiggled out from under my arm with a huff. “It’s not that simple!”
“Yes, it is.”
Hazel looked at me imploringly. Philip returned from the counter, placing a grilled cheese sandwich with a side of veggies and dip in front of Hazel. She quietly thanked him.
“Like it or not, Duchess, we are family now. Family takes care of each other.”
“I didn’t think you’d want to be involved,” she admitted, pushing one of the veggie chips around. “I’ve been preparing to do this on my own.”
Cormac snorted. “Well, you can get that idea out of your head. You’re one of us now, like it or not.”
Hazel sighed. “There’s something else. One of the reasons I left the morning after my heat was because I realized you guys are members of the Avalon Knights.”
“Hell, yeah, we are.” I smirked.
“Don’t worry, we aren’t manwhores who are looking for puck bunnies,” Phillip assured her. “Eat,” he commanded gently.
Hazel took a bite of grilled cheese and slowly chewed as she thought over her words.
“Do you know number forty-one from the Hawks?” she asked.
I frowned. “That asshole, Sebastian Coombs? Yeah, we know. I’ve punched him on the ice once or twice. He’s an insufferable ass. The man is always surrounded by puck bunnies and the same omega that he doesn’t even bother to make it official with. What’s her name again?”
I had seen the omega from a distance once or twice. She was always near him, but he had never once officially dated her, at least that was the word online. Rumors about Sebastian stringing along a poor omega had been rife for years.
“Uhh… Roman?” Phillip gave me a pointed look.
“What?” I asked, distracted from my grumble. He nodded at Hazel with wide eyes, and I looked at her. She was biting her lip and looked unhappy.
Oh fuck .
“Are you the omega?” I asked, horrified.
“We’ve been best friends since childhood. I go to his games to support him. He isn’t stringing me along.” Her voice was testy.
Of all people to be her best friend, it had to be Sebastian Coombs? We had been enemies on the ice since our freshman year.
I had a distinct feeling that this was going to complicate matters. “Wait, is he the one who insinuated you were a whore?” I growled.
Fuck, no. He couldn’t be saying shit like that to my omega. I would pummel his face into the ice next time I saw him.
“As I have said multiple times, he was merely shocked at the news I was pregnant.” She shrugged, but I could tell that his words hurt her, all the same.
“You didn’t do a single thing wrong.”
“I decided to sleep with a random guy I met at a party and then ended up having a surprise heat and banging his entire pack.” She pouted.
“Yeah? And?” I asked. “You know omegas are meant to be with packs. It’s a freaking biological urge that can be damn hard to ignore. You were hit with a surprise heat that was stupidly strong, and even then, you were smart about what you did. You took photos of my ID and sent it to your friends—wait, you didn’t send a photo ID to him, did you ?”
Hazel shook her head. “I sent it to a group chat with my girlfriends. Sebastian tends to act funny if I go on a date.” She shrugged.
Rage simmered under my skin. I bet the fucker acted weird if she went on a date because he was most likely in love with her. Who wouldn’t have been in love with such a sweet, caring omega? She looked like sin and smelled freaking delicious.
“Good,” I said, pulling her closer. Picking up a carrot stick, I dipped it in the ranch and held it out for her to eat. For a moment, I worried that she was going to reject me, but my chest filled with pride as she opened her mouth and took the bite I offered.
There was something almost primal, innate, about getting the woman I had gotten pregnant to eat. Even though we had just found out she was pregnant, I was already excited at the prospect of going out in the early hours of the morning to hunt down various snacks to satisfy her cravings.
Hazel finished her food while we discussed more boring topics, like classes and the weather—we really discussed something as asinine as the weather. I wanted to talk about more serious things, like the baby, about her plans for birth, about our role in their life. But she was obviously becoming overwhelmed with the topic, so we backed off slowly and let her eat in peace.
“I need to get home,” Hazel finally said after finishing her food. “It’s getting late.”
“We can drive you back,” Phillip offered. He said it casually, but I could tell he just didn’t want the omega out of our sight.
She shook her head. “There’s no need. I booked a driver.”
A driver? Between that and the fact that she resided at Dallas House, clearly she came from significant wealth.
None of that mattered. I was also from significant wealth, and I didn’t give a flying fuck if my omega had money or not.
“Can we at least get your number?”
Hazel nodded. “Give me your phone.” I handed my phone over to her without question, all the while silently praying to myself that no messages would pop up from any old flings. I hadn’t actually had sex with anyone since Hazel, but knowing how shitty my luck could be, one of them would probably message something filthy right as Hazel was typing her number in.
“There, you’ve got my number,” she said, handing my phone back.
“Thank you.” I beamed at her, looking down at my phone. Clicking on the contact, I added her to the pack group chat.
Cormac noticed the notification pop up on his phone, and he wore a shit-eating grin.
Phillip quickly returned to the counter, grabbing two different baked goods for Hazel to take with her. She said he didn’t need to do that, but he insisted he wanted to, so she took them with a shy smile and a thank you.
Seeing the shy side of Hazel was an odd experience. The Hazel I’d met had been bold and had gone after what she wanted.
Then again, the rampant heat hormones had probably been propelling her, not that I was complaining.
I would simply have to make her confident enough to show that side of herself again.
The challenge was a welcome one.