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“Oh. My. God!” Her head shot up. “Julie!” She held up the book. “The damn professor?!”

Bayla raised both eyebrows, which only tripled my nervousness.

“Larissa, please...”

I wanted to take the notebook away from her, but it was already too late.

“What about which professor?” Emely asked.

That was the moment I knew I had no choice but to tell them the truth. The whole truth.

Office Talk

Christopher Tyng

With trembling hands under the blanket, I hugged my knees and tried to avoid the others' gazes.

“You met your anonymous pen pal at the Halloween party and you two had sex... wearing masks.” Emely hesitated, as if she needed extra time to process this detail. “Then it turns out he's the very professor that every third girl on campus has a crush on?” She looked at Larissa, who nodded slowly without taking her eyes off me. “And now you're pregnant with his children, and he doesn't know?”

Emely had just summed up how chaotic my life felt.

It had felt strangely good to tell them everything, even though all three of them looked at me as if I had committed a crime. None of them knew that I had actually done worse things.

“Damn, Julie,” Larissa exclaimed, patting me on the shoulder. “You're more badass than I am.”

Warmth crept into my cheeks.

“I didn't know until the winter ball,” I clarified, still avoiding their gazes. “You have to believe me.”

“But now that you know, why are you still keeping it a secret from him?”

I looked at Bayla.

“Because he's human,” Emely explained.

Slowly, I shook my head. “He's not.”

Silence.

Had it been a mistake to tell them everything?

“Wait...” Larissa began, raising her index finger.

“He's a male Water Quatura. His family somehow managed to hide him from the Quatura society,” I explained quickly. “And he wants it to stay that way.”

Emely leaned back against the pillow behind her. “Who the hell is this man?”

“I don't know,” I admitted, but decided to lay all my cards on the table because, on the one hand, I trusted the three of them in a strange way, and on the other hand, they needed all the information to understand the extent of my predicament. “He's planning something against the Councils, and he's experimenting on the species.” I looked at Bayla because she deserved the truth. “Together with your mother.”

Unable to interpret the reaction on Bayla's face, I let my head fall back against the couch behind me, exhausted, and closed my eyes.

“You knew this and kept it from us the whole time?” Larissa blurted out.

She was right. I had been too cowardly. But that was only half the truth.

“That's Erik,” I began, looking at her, hoping she would understand. “I've known him longer than I've known you.” Apologetically, I looked at Bayla, who nodded slowly. “I couldn't just betray him.”

“You obviously don't know him at all.” Surprised, I looked at Emely, who was staring at me seriously. “What if he has something sick in mind for you and hurts your babies? What did you say? He persuaded you into a pact that allows him to experiment on you?”