Page 146 of Knot Their Soldier: Part Three

I trust them. No matter what, Knox will steer us through it, Shade will guide the way, Viper will be right beside me, holding my hand, and Blaise will make sure I smile.

My Pack.

"Okay," I breathe, and straighten in Viper's arms. "I'm ready, let's find out if we're having a little Scorch baby."

Then I open the door and step inside.

Everlyn is already waiting with gloves on and a tray set out beside the exam chair.

"Sit," she says, pointing at it before any of us can speak. "Before one of your Alphas starts pacing and wears a groove into my floor."

That gets me across the room because she’s right. The faster this happens, the less chance there is of an anxious mate losing his cool.

Viper's hand stays at the back of my neck until Everlyn gives him a pointed look and tells him to move unless he wants to be stuck with a needle too. Shade takes my shaking hand, Knox stands at my shoulder, and Blaise plants himself against the cabinet with his arms crossed and his jaw clenched like he’s preparing to fight the needle.

After all of that anticipation, the blood draw takes less than five minutes.

Everlyn explains the process while she works. A blood test lets her check for the pregnancy hormone directly, which makes it more reliable this early on than a urine test. Once she has the sample, there’s nothing to do except wait for it to separate, then she’ll test the serum by hand. Rushing it could ruin the result.

So, here we are with another countdown.

One hour.

"Have you ever thought about having kids?" I ask while I help her take stock of the medicine cabinet. The question slips out almost without my permission.

When Everlyn offered me something practical to do, I jumped at the chance to keep my hands busy. Counting supplies, checking labels, and putting things in order are all familiar tasks that feel better than standing around with my own thoughts.

My Packmates are dealing with their nervous tension in different ways.

Shade pulled out his datapad, dragged Knox into a corner, and started running through contingency plans one after the other so fast that I stopped following along.

Viper has the arduous task of keeping Blaise from destroying Everlyn's infirmary with his jittery energy. They're currently playing a game which involves a knife, a hand splayed open on a table, and stabbing. I had to look away and do my best to ignore them, because I cringed with every dull thud. I'm mated to psychopaths.

"Not really," she says, humming as she studies a row of glass vials that all look identical to me. "It never felt like the right time, you know?"

I chew the inside of my cheek.

I don't know.

I never let myself think too long about what could have been because it felt like digging my fingernails into a poorly healed wound. Painful and unnecessary. I knew from a young age that I would present as an Omega, and motherhood was simply inevitable. It wasn't a choice, but an irrefutable fact that my body would belong to my Alpha, and he would plant his seed inside me.

But if I had really been given a choice, a true one, what would I have wanted?

Kids?

A family?

Would I have chosen it for myself if it had ever actually been mine to choose?

"Dazz, Ember, Flicker, and I never used to talk about babies," I say quietly. "It was always a sore subject. I physically couldn’t have them, and they were stuck in The Omega Division with no hope of finding mates."

In another life, my dearest friends would’ve been here for this. Right in the middle of it, asking questions, making crude jokes, crowding into the infirmary while Everlyn threatened to throw them all out, but would never actually do it.

Frack, between them and my Pack, this room would've been full to the brim with the people I love.

My chest tightens.

I think I’ve made peace with the fact that I will never see them again. Most days, I can even think about them without letting it crush me. Then something like this happens, and the missing space inside me opens up all over again, and the hope rekindles. Maybe, in the finite possibility of us surviving this final attack by the Humans, I'll be reunited with my lost Omega family.