“No. That’s impossible.” I’m shaking my head. “I was literally with him a day ago.”
“When was the first time?”
“The first time what?”
“The first time you mated with him.”
The directness of the question is so purely Greta that it cuts through every defense I have.
“Ten days ago. Maybe eleven.” The clearing. The fight, the fall, the knot. My wolf baring our throat. “But the heat only started a week ago. And you gave me the herbs—”
“The herbs suppress the cycle’s symptoms. They don’t prevent conception.” She folds her hands. “A wolf can be fertile before the obvious signs of heat appear. The body prepares before the body announces. If the first mating happened before the heat was fully active—”
“That’s impossible. It was one time. I wasn’t—”
“You bonded—”
“We’re not bonded!”
She waves a hand, dismissing my objection. “A mate bond accelerates fertility. The body recognizes the matched male and responds by making itself ready.” She pauses. Lets me catch up to where she already is. “Did you take his seed into your womb?”
“What?” I choke, my cheeks flaming.
“Do you need me to explain it, honey?”
“No!” My ears are burning now, too. “I mean, yes. I… I probably did.” I fix my focus on my hands. “He had…” I swallow. “He had a knot.”
“Ah.” Greta taps her lip with her fingertip. “Not common, that.” She gives me a look that is very specifically Greta. “You’ve likely been carrying since that first mating.”
I’m not laughing. She almost is.
“I can’t believe this is happening.”
“What’s there to believe? Your wolf knew. She submitted to a dominant alpha, accepted his knot, bared her throat for the bite. That’s not a mating display, honey. That’s an ancient sequence. The submission, the knot, the bite — your wolf was inviting conception.”
I’m staring at her. The kitchen is very quiet. The pot on the stove is making small bubbling sounds.
“It’s been ten days,” I say. “You can’t feel a pregnancy at ten days.”
“You can’t. Your wolf can.” She looks at my hands, which are pressed flat against my stomach. I didn’t put them there.They found their way on their own. “The implantation has been happening. That’s the heaviness you’re feeling. Your wolf is responding to it — the protective turn, the inward focus. She’s guarding what’s been planted.”
The room spins. Not physically. Something in my understanding of the world shifting to accommodate information that doesn’t fit anywhere I’ve built for it.
I’m pregnant. By Garrett Forrester. From the first time — the clearing, the fight, the knot. The mating my wolf engineered while my human mind was yelling. My wolf didn’t just choose a mate that night. She chose a father.
“No,” I say.
Greta waits.
“No. I can’t… This isn’t—” I stand up. Sit down. Stand up again. My hands are still on my stomach, and my wolf is curled around whatever is inside me with a warmth and ferocity I’ve never felt from her.
Joy. The animal is radiating joy.
“A potion,” I say. “There must be something. Something that—”
“There are herbs that end a pregnancy. I won’t give them to you.”
“Why not?”