After Bastien leaves, I close the door and turn to face my empty room. Blowing out a breath, I put my hands on my hips.
Time to feel like me again.
Starting with a bath. I use liberal amounts of Leah’s bath bubbles and soak for more than an hour, washing my hair with the scented shampoo she’s left and carefully combing out the few small knots still in my hair.
I lie back in the tub and run my hands over my belly. It just pokes out through the top of the water, and I watch as the water droplets roll off the top.
Clearing my throat, I stare at it, remembering my research. Apparently they canhearme now.
“Hello,” I start cautiously.
Blowing out a breath, I squeeze my eyes shut, feeling stupid.
“I guess…I wanted to say hello.”You already said that, Ava.
“This is weird,” I admit. Lying back, I stare at the ceiling instead. It feels a little easier this way, and I run my hands over my stomach as I talk.
“I don’t know how to feel about you, you know,” I say quietly. “None of this is your fault, but I guess we’re stuck with each other now. I’m going to be your mom.”
Bastien’s words on adoption spring to my mind, and I swallow hard. Even thinking about it feels…wrong. Like we’d be feeding into the twisted narrative of the Omega Creed and their archaic laws. Besides, what if Stone realized? Two babies, twins, up for adoption when they track every pregnancy. He’d get hold of them in a heartbeat.
I’m not going to let that happen.A surge of protectiveness takes me by surprise, and my eyes drop back to my bump.
“I’m going to do my best for you,” I whisper, a lump in my throat. “I can’t promise I’m going to be the best mom ever. But I promise to try. And I won’t give up.”
The pack filters into my mind. Bastien, Max, Luc, even Nikolai.
“There’s this pack,” I confess to my stomach.I think I’m getting the hang of this strange, strange conversation.
“I think that they want to help us.”
Us. It’s not just me anymore. My head spins slightly at the realization. I have to think of them first.
I bite my lip.
“I want to stay,” I whisper to them. “But I don’t want to stay because they feel obligated.”
My mind flashes to Bastien, his hands on me, and my face grows warm.
Staring back to the ceiling, I try to think of boring thoughts.
No seggsy thoughts in front of the babies, Ava.
My mind wanders to the pack even as I let the water out and get dressed in a pair of shorts and a large t-shirt that smells like sandalwood. I have the soft cotton pressed to my face, inhaling the lightly spiced scent like a creeper, when the door knocks.
I drop the shirt immediately. “Coming,” I call in a strangled voice.
Lucien turns to look at me when the door opens, and his eyes widen at my look of panic.Did he somehow work out that I was perving on his shirt?
“What’s the matter?” he demands, staring around and behind me. “Ava?”
My face explodes like a tomato. “Nothing!” I say, a shrill note to my voice that has Luc squinting at me in suspicion.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
“Yep. Absolutely. One hundred per cent fine.”
His eyes slide down to where my fingers are tangled in his shirt, and his nostrils flare.
