I stand up and gather both tests. I open the door.
Akari already knows, of course, she does. Why else would I suddenly hide in the bathroom?
She doesn't say anything. She just pulls me into a hug, and I let her, because I don't know what else to do.
"What do you want to do?" she asks eventually, pulling back.
It's the right question. Notwhat are you going to doorhave you thought about optionsor any of the other ways peoplephrase it when they want to steer you toward a particular answer.Just what do you want.
"I don't know," I say honestly.
"That's okay. You don't have to decide anything right now."
"I know."
My mind keeps cycling through the same thoughts, over and over. I'm pregnant. The father is Carter Crane. I'm pregnant with Carter Crane's baby. Carter Crane, whose family I exposed. Carter Crane, who I've been having sex with in secret for months. Carter Crane, who I cut out of my life two weeks ago.
Carter fucking Crane.
I try to imagine telling him. Picking up a new phone, calling some number I'd have to dig up from somewhere, and saying... what?Hey, remember that week at your cabin? Turns out we made a baby. Surprise.
He'd probably think it was a scheme. He'd wonder if I'd somehow planned it, engineered it to trap him.
"I just need... I need to process," I say out loud.
"Okay." Akari hugs me again. "Whatever you need. I'm here."
"I'm going to lie down for a bit."
"Do you want company?"
"No. Thanks. I just need to be alone."
In my room, I lie on my bed and try to work out what the hell I’m going to do now. The afternoon light filters through the curtains, casting soft shadows on the walls. It's a perfectly ordinary day. Birds are singing outside. Someone is playing music in the apartment below, something with a heavy bass line that I can feel more than hear.
Somewhere out there, Carter Crane is living his life, being the golden boy of a crumbling dynasty. He has no idea that I'm lying here with my hand on my stomach, thinking about a future that includes a piece of both of us.
I put my hand on my stomach again.
Hello, I think, and then feel immediately stupid. It's a clump of cells. It doesn't have ears. It can’t mind read. It doesn't have anything yet.
But my hand stays there anyway.
I think about my mother and how she told me that she'd almost given up hope before I came along and how she'd known, from the first moment she found out she was pregnant, that she'd do anything to protect me.
"You were my miracle," she used to say. "My little miracle."
I never understood what she meant. Now, lying here with my hand pressed to a belly that doesn't look any different than it did yesterday, I think I'm starting to.
She raised me alone. No alpha, no partner, no support except what she could scrape together from two jobs and sheer force of will. And she did it.
I could do that too.
The thought surfaces unbidden, and I don't push it away.
I could do this. On my own, if I had to. I have savings. I have a great career. I have Akari. I'm not my mother, struggling to make ends meet in a system designed to punish single omegas. I have options she never had.
But do I want to?
