Sleep is improved.
The bond feeling distant.
I think about how well I've been sleeping since Rhystan started bringing me tea. How the nightmares have faded, how the intensity of the bond has softened into something manageable instead of overwhelming.
How I thought that was a good thing.
I turn the page with trembling fingers, and the next passage stops my heart mid-beat.
These preparations were historically used to help omegas escape abusive alpha matches, or to prevent bonds from forming during forced claimings. Side effects may include nausea, particularly if the omega is pregnant, as the herbs interfere with the hormonal changes that strengthen the mate connection during gestation.
Nausea as a side effect.
Particularly if the omega is pregnant.
The book falls from my hands, pages splaying against the floor like broken wings.
Pregnant.
The nausea that comes every morning. The exhaustion that drags me under without warning. The emotional storms that leave me crying at nothing, raging at nothing, feeling everything too much and not enough all at once. The dreams about children I've never wanted, the strange fullness in my belly that isn't bloating, the way my body has been changing in ways I couldn't name.
I'm pregnant.
And he's been giving me bond-weakening herbs.
While I was pregnant with his child.
While I didn't even know.
-
The mystic's chambers smell like dried herbs and old magic, the kind of scent that seeps into stone over centuries and never quite fades. She looks up from her work when I enter, and something in my expression makes her go very still—hands freezing over the mortar and pestle, ancient eyes sharpening with recognition.
She knows why I'm here.
"How long?" My voice comes out steadier than I expected, cold and flat as a blade laid against skin. "How long have you known I was pregnant?"
She doesn't pretend to misunderstand. Doesn't try to deflect or delay. Just sets down her tools with the careful movements of someone who knows they're about to deliver a killing blow.
"Since he brought you to me for examination. Weeks ago."
Weeks. He's known for weeks that I was carrying his child, and he said nothing. Let me wonder why I was sick, why I was exhausted, why my body felt like it belonged to someone else. Let me drink that tea every night while his baby grew inside me.
"And you didn't tell me."
"He asked me not to." Her voice carries no defense, no justification—only the weary truth of someone who's been waiting for this moment, dreading it, knowing it had to come. "He was convinced the pregnancy would kill you. That the bond was putting too much strain on your transforming body. He thought if he could weaken it enough, give your system room to handle the changes?—"
"He could save me." The words taste like poison. "By lying to me. By drugging me. By hiding my own pregnancy from me while he fed me herbs that might hurt our child."
"The doses are small," she says quietly. "Meant to affect the bond, not the pregnancy itself. I don't believe they'll harm the baby."
"You don't believe. But you don't know."
Silence. The mystic's gaze drops to her folded hands.
"No," she admits. "I don't know. There's so little research on warrior omega pregnancies. So few texts that survived the purges. I told him the risks. Told him he should trust you with the truth." A pause, heavy as stone. "He was too afraid to listen."
I'm shaking now. Can feel it in my hands, my shoulders, the tremor running through my whole body like an earthquake building toward release.
