Mavi
I wake up in the early morning and Sai is still asleep beside me in the nest that our bed has become. The tangle of blankets and pillows and his sandalwood-scented shirts wraps around us like it belongs there now. The collar hangs on the hook by the door and the cage key rests on my chain, warm against my chest even while I sleep.
Sai sleeps deeply these days in a way he never did in the beginning. He’s sprawled across the space with his mouth slightly open and one arm flung over the spot where I was lying. He looks younger when he sleeps. Softer. His jaw stays unclenched and his brow stays smooth. I watch him for a full minute before I slide off the bed.
I’m out of coffee. We’re out of everything actually because the past week of mated bliss hasn’t been kind to our grocery situation. I’ve been living on Sai’s cooking and takeout and the general nutrition plan of two people who keep forgetting to eat because they’re too busy being wrapped around each other.
“Diner food, it is,” I mutter to myself, grateful for the break from my apartment. The morning air feels cool against my skin and my body feels strange. It isn’t wrong exactly but it feels occupied like there’s a second heartbeat hiding underneath my own, though I know it’ll be weeks before that happens. Even my scent has shifted again, the honey-citrus baseline sits deeper and richer with something underneath that I can’t name.
I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant.
It isn’t confirmed yet. It’s too early for a test to be reliable, at least another week or maybe more before the hormones would register. But I know my body the way a painter knows their palette. I know what’s normal and this isn’t normal. The nausea. The scent shift. The tenderness in my chest. The way my body feels like it’s been gently hijacked.
Maybe the biggest tell is the fact that I order decaf instead of my regular and cinnamon rolls. I’ve never wanted cinnamon rolls in my life. I’ve never had a sweet tooth. And yet here I am, antsy and hungry and craving sugar and warmth and the specific sticky-glazed pastry in the display case like it’s the only thing standing between me and despair.
A smile tugs at my lips as I slip into an empty booth, thinking about a future that didn’t seem possible. Kids. A baby.Me at twenty-five with a Hollis Alpha’s child growing inside me. Me who was disowned for refusing to be what my family wanted. Me who built everything from nothing. Me who runs my own business, pays my own rent, doubled rent now thanks to everything, controls my own body and my own life and has never needed anyone.
A baby would need me completely. Permanently. There would be no walking away from that.
I’m not sure I’m ready. I’m not sure I know how to be a parent when my own parents threw me away for saying no. I’m not sure I know how to build a family when the only one I had decided I wasn’t worth keeping.
But my hand rests on my stomach anyway and the feeling underneath the fear, underneath the doubt and the practical terror and the questions about money and space and the fact that my career is being systematically dismantled, is a warmth I don’t have a name for. The thing I never let myself want. A family that I chose. That chose me back.
My focus shifts as an elegant woman slides into the booth across from me. She’s in her late fifties, maybe early sixties, but the kind of aging money buys, preserved and polished with every detail curated. Her hair sits perfect, her posture belonging to someone who has never been told no by anyone who mattered.
She looks like Sai. The jawline, the cheekbones, the dark heavy-lidded eyes. Except where Sai’s eyes stay warm and vulnerable and searching, this woman’s eyes look flat. Assessing. The eyes of someone who looks at people the way the Hollis family looks at assets.
I brace myself. I know who this is before she opens her mouth.
“You must be the Omega,” she says, voice dripping with disgust.
Sai’s mother. The woman who raised the golden boy, who taught him to perform, who built the cage of composure andmeticulous control and called it love. I’m looking at the architect of everything that broke Sai and she’s wearing pearl earrings while she orders tea.
“You seem like a smart young man. Creative. Resourceful.” She pauses for the assessment. “I looked you up, of course. The cam work. The painting. The modeling. You’ve done quite well for someone with your... background.”
My spine straightens as I recognize the cadence. Every Alpha and every family member who has ever tried to make me feel small uses the same tone. Compliment as weapon. Acknowledgment as dismissal.
She pulls out a checkbook and places it on the table. “I’d like to make this simple. Name a number. Whatever it costs to relocate, to start over somewhere the Hollis name won’t follow you. We’ll cover bond removal services. They’re expensive but effective. You’ll be free, he’ll be free, and everyone moves on.”
I look at the check and then at this woman. And something settles in my chest. Not rage. Not fear. Certainty. The same certainty that Sai described when he knelt for the first time. The noise going quiet.
I turn my head and show her my ear. The mating bite scars there, the Alpha claim that will never fade. “I’m already his.”
Her composure flickers but she recovers quickly. “Bond removal services are quite advanced now. The scarring can be treated. It doesn’t have to be—”
“It’s not going to be treated. It’s not going to be removed. He bit me and we are mated and that is not a negotiation.”
Her jaw tightens as the pleasant mask thins. “You don’t understand what you’re involving yourself in. This family—”
“Sent back my paintings from two galleries. Doubled my rent. Flagged my cam platform. Canceled my modeling gig.” I count them off on my fingers, casually, like I’m listing groceries. It was a hunch at first but there was no one else I could think of thatwould destroy my life so thoroughly or at least pick at it until it fell apart. And now this impromptu meeting? “I noticed. I’m still here.”
My name gets called from the counter. I head toward the cinnamon rolls, already dreaming about the sweet dough on my tongue. She follows me, still talking. “You’re not right for my son. Those videos? You showing your body to whoever wants to look? It’s disgusting.”
I hold back a laugh because a few minutes earlier, she told me I had done well for myself. Apparently, since flattery didn’t get her anywhere, demeaning me will. I pick up my coffee and the bag of cinnamon rolls and turn to face her. “Ma’am.Disrespectfully. I don’t give a fuck about you. I don’t give a fuck about your money or your family or your arrangements. I only love your son. He is my only focus and he is mine. Take your checkbook elsewhere. You’ve already fucked up my life and I still chose Sai. That should tell you something about how little your opinion matters to me.”
Her mouth opens, closes, and then opens again. She must not be accustomed to being spoken to like this by anyone, let alone an Omega she considers beneath her son. “How are you not scared of what I could do to you?”
I lean in and drop my voice. “You can take my paintings off my walls. You can cancel my modeling contracts and even have me kicked off my cam platform. But do you know the one thing I do have that you don’t?Sai.” I press my palm flat against my stomach. “And I’m carrying his child. So I’m not going fucking anywhere.”
