The first burst of fresh night air almost burned as I heaved it in deeply. My eyes watered once more, and I decided that I would never again take my freedom for granted.
“Let’s get you home,” Serge’s voice was soft and sweet as he continued to usher me away from the building and to the car parked at the curb.
“You didn’t fly?” It was late enough that the dragons could have safely landed on the street, but Eric shook his head.
“We didn’t know if you would feel up to flying home. As it is, I’d like to check you over when we get back to the clinic.”
I opened my mouth to protest, to tell him that all I needed was a shower, some real food, and a sleep, but Dex squeezed my hand. “We’re all a little anxious about the effects of the cell. On you and…”
“On the baby,” I finished for him, understanding dawning. I had been worried about being able to shift enough to give birth, but I hadn’t even considered what kind of internal shifting I was relying on to grow my baby.
“It’s just to ease our minds,” Eric said gently, as if sensing my mounting anxiety. “I don’t think the magic would have affected your biology. As omegas, our wombs are a permanent feature of our anatomy. The birth canal is temporary —that is where the cell’s magic might have caused issues if you were stuck here during labor— but everything else is a part of your body already. At least, that’s what everything we’ve seen so far leads us to believe. We just want to be absolutely sure that we’re not running a low-level internal shift alongside a hormonal cycle, because we’ve had no way to properly put those theories to the test.”
“Until now,” I added, feeling somber. After all, he had taken my blood for the tests before I had wound up in that cell. There was no telling how the spell imbued into those bars might have affected the magical creature side of me. I pressed my hand to my belly and felt sick all over again.
“No matter what happens, Sage, we’re going to manage it together,” Sergio told me, pressing a kiss to my temple. I screwed up my nose and pulled away.
“I stink,” I protested, “and my hair is all greasy and gross. You shouldn’t be kissing me until I’ve washed this place off me.” How they could stand to be in such close proximity with me at all was mystery enough.
The flash of hurt in my alpha’s eyes was replaced with understanding and regret. “Sweetheart, I will never not want to kiss you.”
Dex nodded, then smirked, “And I will gladly help you wash up when we get to the clinic.”
Eric groaned dramatically and slid into the driver’s seat of the car while I found myself sandwiched between my mates in the back. “No.No. You’re not going to have sex in my shower, or anywhere else in my personal space. Understood?”
Brandt snorted as he buckled himself into the passenger seat and met my gaze in the rear-view mirror. “He did not mention the labs or the clinic rooms.”
“Ugh,” Eric complained, pulling away from the curb. “I hate you all.” The curl of his lips gave his amusement away, though, and I laughed.
“Just wait until you’ve got a mate or two of your own,” I played into the game, feeling lighter as we put more and more distance between ourselves and the cell I’d been held in. The conversation was also keeping my anxiety about the baby at bay. “You’ll be christening every room in the clinic yourself.”
Eric’s cheeks turned a little pink, but he huffed, “What makes you think I haven’t already been defiling the clinic after everyone else has gone home?”
Bran and I exchanged amused glances. “Uh, because we know you, baby brother,” I teased. “The day you choose getting lucky over your science-y stuff is the day pigs learn to fly.”
He snorted, then muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “Oink oink.”
Narrowing my gaze, I opened my mouth to ask him about it, but a wave of nausea hit me out of nowhere. “Pull over,” I urged tightly.
Eric jerked in surprise, eyes flitting to the mirror to meet my gaze. “What?”
“Gonna hurl. Pull over.”
Thankfully, it was late enough that his swerve from one lane to the side of the road was pulled off quickly and safely, with no other cars in sight. I launched myself over Serge’s lap, barely making it to the dirt before what little slop I had managed to force down for my night-time meal made its way back up and out.
Hands rubbed at my back and held my greasy hair back, while I heaved and spat, and someone else handed me a bottle of water once the worst of the episode seemed to have passed. I sipped at it, swishing the room-temperature liquid around my mouth to clear out the acrid taste before spitting it out and drinking the next few sips.
“Well,” Eric mused as I re-settled in the middle of the back seats, “the morning sickness is a good sign that everything is progressing as we’d like it to.”
“Great,” my reply was doused with liberal amounts of sarcasm, “love that for me.”
But as Dex chuckled and Serge kissed my temple again, I had to admit that, despite the discomfort, I was relieved. If the throwing up was a good sign, I wasn’t going to bitch about it.
Well, not too much, anyway.
“And there we are,” Eric smiled as he pressed the ultrasound wandhardinto my lower abdomen. Serge and Dex leaned over me in what seemed to be coordinated movement, the pair of them squinting at the monitor screen.
I didn’t need to see it to feel a tidal wave of relief and joy wash over me. Eric’s relaxed demeanor and his smile were enough to tell me everything I needed to know. He shooed my mates backwards and rolled his eyes, gesturing at the screen suspended from the ceiling, specifically placed there for expectant parents to see what he could see.
