Chapter Three #8
I cringe at the chest comment, my face scrunching up with a visceral discomfort. The idea of my chest changing, of my body softening and swelling in the ways that pregnant omegas’ bodies do, makes my stomach turn.
“Noted,” I say dully.
Hyunwoo isn’t done. “Oh, and let me know if you feel like you’re going into heat anytime soon.
All my research says that’s the best time for omegas to conceive.
The body is most receptive during heat, and the chances of pregnancy are dramatically higher, something like three to four times the normal rate. ”
I sigh, shifting my weight slightly on the pillow propping up my hips.
“I don’t go into heat very often,” I tell him, which he should already know after so many years of friendship, but I suppose the specifics have never been relevant before now.
“Sometimes I’ll go five or six months without one.
” I pause, then add, “But I’ll keep you posted if anything changes. ”
Hyunwoo nods, absorbing this information.
Then he stands up from the bed, stretching his arms above his head until his shoulders pop, and says, “I also picked up some prenatal vitamins that you should start taking, even if you aren’t pregnant yet.
The doctors recommend starting them before conception to build up folic acid and other nutrients.
” He pulls on a pair of sweatpants from his dresser, tugging the drawstring loose.
“I’ll leave them out on the kitchen counter next to your protein shakes so you remember. ”
He heads for the bedroom door, pausing in the frame to look back at me. “I’m going to order us some food. You should rest and try not to move too much for the next hour at least.” A small, almost sheepish smile crosses his face. “You deserve a good meal after all that.”
I give him a sarcastic salute from my prone position on the bed, my arm heavy and my fingers barely cooperating, the pillow still wedged under my elevated hips like some kind of fertility altar.
Hyunwoo snorts at the salute and disappears down the hallway, and I hear his footsteps recede toward the kitchen, followed by the soft murmur of his voice as he pulls up a delivery app on his phone.
Once I’m alone, the room settles into quiet around me. Just the hum of the air conditioning, the distant click of dog nails on hardwood as Kal or Machete shifts in their crate, and my own breathing, which has finally slowed to something approaching normal.
I wipe at my cheeks one more time with the back of my hand, catching the last traces of dried salt, and stare at the far wall of Hyunwoo’s bedroom.
My body aches from my shoulders to my knees, my hole throbs with a dull, medicated pulse beneath the ointment, and there’s a strange, heavy fullness in my lower belly that I’m choosing not to think about in any specific terms.
But lying here in the quiet, I find myself turning something over in my head.
For someone who supposedly didn’t want any of this, who’s only doing it for his inheritance and has zero interest in fatherhood, who told me himself that he plans to ship the baby off to his family’s estate the second it’s born and never change a single diaper—Hyunwoo seems awfully invested in the whole pregnancy process.
The research he did wasn’t casual browsing.
He read actual studies, multiple ones, with statistics and recommendations that he can cite from memory.
He stocked prenatal vitamins before we’d even had sex for the first time.
He redecorated an entire room for me in four days, filled a pantry with my favorite foods, set up a home gym so I’d be comfortable, and just spent ten minutes carefully applying ointment to my asshole with the attention of a field medic treating a wounded soldier.
It’s the same energy he brings to training Kal and Machete.
That singular, all-in commitment that surfaces when something actually matters to him, the side of Hyunwoo that most people never get to see because he hides it behind flashy clothes and a lazy smirk and the image of a man who doesn’t care about anything.
But I’ve known him long enough to recognize it when it shows up, and it’s showing up now, whether he realizes it or not.
I close my eyes and let my body sink deeper into the mattress, the aspirin starting to take the edge off the worst of the pain, the ointment doing its work on my swollen rim.
The whole experience was awful. Objectively agonizing, deeply humiliating, and uncomfortable in ways I couldn’t have imagined even in my worst-case mental preparation.
But it’s also kind of funny, in a dark, absurd way that I’ll probably only be able to appreciate fully once I can sit down without wincing.
I just lost my anal virginity to my best friend. My life is a comedy. A really painful, humiliating comedy with terrible pacing and no laugh track.
I press my face into the pillow and let out a long, slow breath through my nose.
I just really, really hope I don’t have to do that again.