Page 68 of Evan and the Alpha

“Evan.” She climbs back to her feet. “Evan, please, this isn’t natural or normal, and I know you think that you need to protect it, but that’s likely just the hormones, what it’s making you think so you don’t—”

I grind my teeth and stare at her outstretched hand, still unable to comprehend what she’s saying to me. I meet her eyes. I struggle for a second, then spit, “I wish you’d aborted me.”

I turn and flee, but I can still hear her shocked gasp of “Evan!” It echoes in my ears, chases me down the hall. I can’t stop the tears now; they come hard and fast, sobs choking me.

How could she say that? How could she fucking say that, when just seconds before we’d been talking about mothering instinct, and how I understood the desire to protect a child?

She doesn’t want to protect me at all. All she wants to do is hurt me, control me—just like always. She doesn’t care about what I want, about what will make me happy—I’m worried and scared and weirded out, but I’m so happy about my baby. About Sobek’s baby. Our baby.

The baby she thinks is a monster, a parasite.

That hurts. A lot. So much. Fuck. It hurts so much I don’t even know what to do about it.

I sit down on the slab we call our bed. I wish I’d fled further, but my body’s still sore from last night.

Does—does everybody think like Mom does? That my baby’s a monster, that I need to get rid of it? I rub my hands frantically over my belly, desperate suddenly to reassure my baby, my child—I want you, you’re not a monster, I don’t think you’re a monster.

I give over to the tears, sobbing hard. My baby’s not a monster, not a parasite. I love our baby, I—

Is everyone else gonna think like that? Am I going to have to go around defending my baby from these kinds of attacks all the time? Are they gonna come home crying because—because someone called them a freak or something worse?

No, no, no, you’re perfect and I love you, I love you—

Fuck it, I don’t care. I’ll fight them. All of them. My baby isn’t a monster or a freak or parasite or—or anything like that. I love my baby, and I’m never gonna let anyone hurt them like that. Never gonna let them think they’re a freak.

I swallow the cry that rises up in my throat.

Not like my parents did to me. I came home crying because people bullied me, called me a freak, a sinner, and—and—

Mom wouldn’t ever fight for me. Dad wouldn’t tell me they were wrong. I am a freak to them, unnatural, sinful. A monster. Disgusting.

They didn’t protect me from that. Mom has never protected me, never kept me safe from the homophobia or the hate, just let me go around thinking that everyone else was right. My fourth-grade crush who pushed me into a puddle. I still remember his face, screwed up in disgust.

I felt like a bug. I wanted to disappear. I hated myself then; I hate myself now—that’s where the shame came from last night. I don’t need them to tell me I’m disgusting; they ground it right down into my fucking bones, and now it’s buried there, in my very marrow, ready to be summoned whenever.

I can’t do that. I can’t let my baby ever feel like that. I understand wanting to protect them, wanting to keep them safe. Mom’s the one who doesn’t understand it, I think, because she has never, ever in her life protected me.

And that hurts, that hurts almost as much as her thinking my baby’s a monster, rejecting her own grandchild before they’re even born. Wanting me to murder them.

Because thinking I’m brainwashed or crazy is easier to accept than the reality that I might want this. That I’m happy.

Why don’t they want you to be happy?