“I need to…” She swallowed hard, her heart suddenly racing. “I need to run a test.”
“A test for what?”
She looked up at him—at this alien male who had become her partner, her protector, the father of her heart if not her blood—and felt something crack open in her chest.
“I think I might be pregnant.”
The medical kitshe kept at home was basic but well-stocked.
She’d assembled it herself in the first weeks after their arrival, drawing on her professional expertise to prepare for any minor emergencies that might arise. Cuts and scrapes from Robbie’s inevitable tumbles. Minor illnesses. The ordinary accidents of domestic life.
She’d never imagined using it for this.
Her hands trembled as she prepared the test—a simple hormonal assay, the same technology she used at the medical center, adapted for home use. Becsul stood in the doorway of the bathroom, his powerful frame filling the space, his expression caught somewhere between hope and terror.
“How long until we know?”
“A few minutes.” She set the test on the counter and forced herself to step back, to breathe. “The scanner needs time to analyze the sample.”
The silence stretched between them, thick with unspoken possibility. Melissa found herself cataloguing her symptoms again, running through the differential diagnosis like she would for any patient. Fatigue, nausea, missed menstrual cycle, heightened emotional sensitivity…
It fits. It all fits.
But that was impossible, wasn’t it? Cross-species reproduction required careful medical intervention—that was the whole point of Naran’s twisted experiment, the whole reason she’d been taken in the first place. Random, unassisted conception between a human and a Cire…
Except it wasn’t random. And Naran’s own research had suggested that artificial intervention might not be necessary when a genuine mate bond existed.
Oh god.
The scanner beeped.
Melissa couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t bring herself to look at the result that would either confirm her wild suspicion or reveal her to be a medical professional who couldn’t recognize stress-induced symptoms in herself.
Becsul’s hand closed over hers.
“Together,” he said quietly.
She nodded, throat too tight for words, and let him lead her to the counter.
The scanner’s display was clear, unambiguous, impossible to misread. A simple symbol she’d seen hundreds of times in hercareer, always on someone else’s test, always for someone else’s future.
Positive.
Melissa stared at it for a long moment, her brain struggling to process what her eyes were telling her. Then something bubbled up from deep in her chest—a sound that was half laugh, half sob, wholly overwhelmed by the magnitude of what she was seeing.
She was pregnant.
She was pregnant.
With Becsul’s child. With their child. A baby conceived not through medical intervention or experimental procedures but through the simple, ancient act of two people loving each other.
“Melissa?” Becsul’s voice was rough with emotion. “Is it—are you?—”
She turned to face him, tears streaming down her cheeks, laughter spilling from her lips in great gasping bursts.
“Yes.” The word came out cracked and joyful and terrified all at once. “Yes, I’m pregnant. We’re going to have a baby.”
For a moment, he didn’t move. His deep-set black eyes searched her face as if looking for confirmation that this was real, that she wasn’t somehow mistaken.
