He took it anyway, pressed it into my hands like it wasn’t optional. “Sip,” he said gently. “Just a little. Please.”
I sighed through my nose and took a small swallow to appease him. The cold citrus made my stomach roll, not enough to make me sick, just enough to remind me how tired I was.
I signed again, slower this time.I accidentally left my bunny in the car. I want my bunny.
“I know,” Reed said immediately. “I promised. I’ll get her the second you’re settled.”
I nodded and let myself slide into the chair at the kitchen island, elbows on the counter, forehead resting in my hands. My whole body felt heavy, like gravity had decided to double just for me.
The doctor’s voice replayed in my head whether I wanted it to or not.
The babies are healthy.
The heartbeats are strong.
Relief had barely had time to settle before she hit me with the big news.
You’re having twins.
Joy. Shock. Fear. All at once. Then she continued speaking, and the relief I felt just before vanished.
This makes the pregnancy high-risk.
Unmarked pregnancies are manageable when the alpha isn’t present. But consistent exposure to the father’s scent and pheromones without a mark can make an omega sick.
Over time, it can cause bond rot.
I swallowed hard, fingers curling the sleeves of my cardigan.
It wasn’t that being unmarked was dangerous on its own. Plenty of omegas carried healthy pregnancies without a mark—as long as the alpha wasn’t around.
But Vinny was around. Always. His scent soaked into the house, into the walls, into me. And I had no intention of letting him mark me, no matter how much I liked him, no matter how safe he tried to make me feel.
But bond rot could kill.
And I had no idea what I was supposed to do.
Reed set two warm muffins in front of me, they were peanut butter and oat, I'd recognize Benji's cooking anywhere. Obviously, they’d be delicious, but the idea of eating them made me sick.
“Sis,” he started carefully, “if you want to come home, we can—”
I shook my head before he could finish, because I didn’t know what I wanted. The first time I’d gotten pregnant, I’d barely been eighteen. I hadn’t liked Logan, but I’d thought I wanted the baby. I’d thought that was how it worked.
Omegas were nurturing. It was supposed to be in our DNA.
I’d spent years mourning pregnancies that never made it to a successful ultrasound, but now that it was real, now that I was carrying two, now that I was doing the impossible, I felt… hollow.
Like my body was here, but I wasn’t fully inside it anymore.
The kitchen door creaked softly.
I lifted my head just in time to see a man pause in the doorway, tall, broad-shouldered, hair dark with the slightest speckling of grey at the temple. His scent hit me a second later, he was herbal, but not in a good way. And, while he wasn’t as vile as Logan, some part of me recognized the scent.
Stellar.
My shoulders tensed.
“Oh—” he said quickly, hands lifting a fraction like he hadn’t meant to startle us. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to corner you.”