Page 112 of Knot Their Soldier: Part Three

My mates angle themselves toward me, every line of their bodies locked on mine.

Their attention should steady me, but my stomach drops, and the exam room seems to tilt beneath me.

"Omegas are especially fertile during heat," Everlyn eventually says. She gestures vaguely at me, at my body which is phantom-sore from the week I spent in a nest mating with four super-soldiers. "And I'm going to guess that you didn’t use contraception."

Blaze’s head whips down to my belly, eyes wide, and mouth gaping.

The ringing in my ears gets louder, and a cold sweat breaks out at my hairline.

Everlyn’s voice drops into pure doctor as she finally says what we're all struggling to comprehend.

"Halley might be pregnant."

Oh frack.

Oh frackity, frack, frack.

The word might does not help. It makes it worse. It opens a door and lets all the possibilities rush in at once. A future with a thousand branching paths, and none of them familiar.

I force my mouth to move because I need facts. Shade always says that facts are safer than feelings.

"What happens now?" I ask.

Everlyn’s gaze softens. "It’s too early to confirm. We need bloodwork and time. Approximately fourteen days, and then we’ll see if your hormones shift."

Fourteen days.

Two weeks of waiting to find out if my body will do something it has never been able to do, of living in the gap between might and is.

I nod because that is practical. That is what post-resurrection Halley does. She listens, she absorbs information, and she does not fall apart on an exam bed while her mates stare at her with terror in their eyes.

Knox does not blink. He’s still looking right at me, gauging and measuring my response, reading the smallest changes with that soldier’s focus that makes me feel both protected and exposed.

"Halley," he calls.

The sound of my name makes me startle from my thoughts.

I try to look him in the eye. I try, but my focus won’t lock.

Shade’s hand squeezes mine again, harder until it grounds me. He brushes a loose strand of hair off my sticky brow and tucks it behind my ear with practiced ease. He’s done it a hundred times, and I hope he will do it a hundred times more.

"Halley?" Shade's voice is warm and firm. "Baby girl, breathe."

I realize I am not, or at least not deeply. Short, shallow gasps, little panicked sips of air that never fill my lungs. My chest will not expand all the way, as if hands are cinched tight around my ribs and squeezing.

Voices turn muffled, distant, as though I’m underwater, sinking down and the surface is getting further away by the second.

I try to speak. Nothing happens. My tongue feels thick. My hands go numb, and my fingertips tingle.

My gaze drops to my stomach.

There’s a smear of gel glistening on my skin. It looks exactly the same as it always has, pale and soft and unremarkable. It's the stomach of an Omega, and despite doing every sit-up my Prime Alpha ever ordered, it's still gently rounded.

On the outside, there is nothing different.

Inside, everything has changed.

I don’t understand.