If he ever had kids, he had intended for it to be an active choice. In his head, that choice would have only be with an alpha he had chosen and was confident would hang around at least until the children were grown like a responsible adult.
Except his alpha had run off and wasn’t replying to his messages to call him. Same as ninety percent of all other alphas who are happy to do the heats but not the responsibility that comes after.
That’s not fair, Jax chides himself. Gray doesn’t know.
The thought just annoys him further. Gray damn well should know. He’s a grown man. He knows how babies are made. He should know just as much as Jax that this was the likely result of their time in the hotel.
Oh god, maybe he doesn’t know.
Jax drops the stick into the trashcan. The thought of the wild wolves having any kind of formal sex education seems laughable.
Maybe Gray thought babies just turned up occasionally. It’s as good a reason as any if you don’t know any better.
Jax puts his hands on the edge of the sink and twists his head so he can see the nape of his neck.
The movement pulls at the bite. Alpha saliva contains a coagulant that interacts with the scent gland and promotes healing. It’s almost completely healed now, just a raised red and somewhat itchy scar.
Jax sighs and pulls his collar back into place. He’s not going to hide it, but at least he’s not showing it off.
He exits the bathroom and stands in the bedroom that still somehow smells like Gray no matter how many times he has changed the sheets, hoovered the floor and washed his clothes. The last step is scent blockers, but he’s not quite ready for that yet. Besides he’s half-convinced it’s only in his head. Or maybe in his belly.
He draws in a deep breath. He needs to tell his brothers. And it’s not a good time. When is it ever?
They’re in the common room. The first weeks after a mating run are meant to be for relaxing and taking a break after the mania has ended and all the happy couples have gone home.
When has life been that simple?
“My face hurts from smiling at that jerk.” Adam props the cane against the chair, as he sits, but it slips and falls with a clatter to the floor. He doesn’t pick it up.
“We can’t keep on like this. I thought he said he was going home?” Gregor says. He’s leaning at the bar with a glass of whiskey in one hand.
Jax is about to ask him to pour him one too when he realizes that he can’t. He’s going to be having nothing but soft drinks for months.
“He came back. He’s having a vacation. Who takes a vacation with their muscle in attendance? I swear Ronmin is just trying to drive me crazy.” Adam clenches his fists, and stares into the fire. “I don’t know what to do.”
Luke sits back in the chair. He’s got baby Marta on his lap. She’s fast asleep, her head on his shoulder, mouth squashed onto his cardigan. “He’s waiting to see what Ash does. If Ash decides to attack us, we’re weaker and Ronmin has his chance. We need to get the wildling to sign the pack agreements like Isaiah did.”
Jax takes a seat quietly and listens in. Ronmin came back. After everything, the jerk came back. The brothers have spent the last week finding out everything they can about the man, and privately Jax is very worried.
Aidan Ronmin has been quietly mopping up pack territory for miles around Fort Gosford over the last decade, taking over packs in their weaker moments.
The Winterstokes and their allies have always been a combination of too small and too much trouble for him to bother with, but it seems that has changed.
The only advantage they have is that they know what he’s doing, and he has a history of never making a move unless he is sure he can win.
The attack on Cole Bennett has given Ronmin the perfect excuse to get his claws into Aylewood. Damn Ash.
Jax unconsciously lets his hand drop to his stomach. “Where’s he now?” he asks.
“Hiking apparently. Just getting to know our lovely little town, or so he says,” Adam says irritably. “I’m guessing that means he’s out sniffing out our boundaries, maybe trying to get to Ash before we do. Maybe if we’re lucky, they’ll take each other out.”
Then Gray will come back, Jax thinks, even as he knows he’s lying to himself. If Gray left just because of Ash, he would have asked Jax to go with him. The very nice woman at the Remus Group promised she passed Jax’s messages on. Gray doesn’t want to come back. Still, it’s nice to hope.
“All we need to do is keep going as we are,” Adam says. “Right now, we’re still too much of a risk to take on. He can’t stay away from the city for too long. There are always upstarts wanting to take on the big wolf. He’ll not be able to stay forever. We just stay keep things steady. No fights. No challenges. No surprises.”
And because Jax has never been able to resist being a drama queen, that’s when he says, “I’m pregnant.”
GRAY
dreams and buses
In Gray’s dreams, Jax sleeps beside him, warm and close. They’re both naked, lying warm skin against warm skin, Gray’s nose buried in the corner of Jax’s neck where his claiming mark is and the scent is strongest.
In his dreams, he knows he’s dreaming and it’s why he doesn’t want to wake up. He stays on the sofa with the duvet over his head as long as he can with his eyes shut, trying to get back into the dream.
This never happened when he was with the pack either. Then, he was either awake or asleep, up and doing something, or not up. Oversleeping is a human habit.
“You’re going to be late for work,” George’s voice says.
Gray grouses from underneath the covers.
“Seriously, boy. Get up. Brush your teeth. Shower. Deodorant. Just like I showed you.”
“You don’t have to tell me. I know,” Gray grumbles.
“You didn’t always. Get on with it.”
Gray forces himself up and into the bathroom. His hair is longer and he’s letting a beard grow in. Shaving is a nuisance, and there’s already enough for him to do in the morning. He can’t help wondering if Jax would like it.
No. He’s not going to think about that. Shirley has said that Jax wants him to call. He’s not going to do that.
Jax and Adam’s decision was clear. He doesn’t need to hear it from Jax personally. It was better to have a clean break.
The cast came off yesterday, and he’s still getting used to having both arms free. The skin on his left arm is whiter than the one on his right and he wonders how long it’s going to take before both of his arms match. Human bodies are very strange.
He follows the morning routine he’s been set, gets dressed and finds the bus.
He takes a seat, watching the other passengers. None of them know what he is. He looks like any other ordinary person to them. They ignore him the same way that they ignore each other.
There are another two wild wolves on his work crew, one of whom is Shirley who got him the job.
He likes the job. It’s easy and it’s outside. He also doesn’t need to be able to read for it; the pictures of the plants are on the seed packets and on the pots: little images of plants in flower, along with symbols of sunshine or shade that tell where to plant them on the verges, circles and planters along the road. The weeds are mostly the same too, so once Shirley told him which ones were wrong, it was easy to pull them up whenever he sees them.
The only thing he dislikes is the traffic and the cars that whizz by on the sides of the roads, spewing out their stink and occasional soda can. He’s been doing the job for three weeks now, and he’s still looking out for a car that is the same shape and color as Jax’s.
He finishes digging up the last of the weeds in the bed, and sorts through the seed packets for the one with the yellow flowers.
“How are you doing?” a voice says beside him.
Gray smiles. “Hi Shirley. I’m fine. Thank you for asking.” He doesn’t look up. He doesn’t want to have this conversation, but he hasn’t yet learned enough
about how humans interact to be able to get out of it.
“You didn’t go to the session I arranged for you,” she says softly.
“I had other things to do.”
“George said you went to bed. He said you’ve been spending a lot of time sleeping. You can’t do that. You need to go to the therapist.”
“I don’t understand how talking is medicine. I’d rather think of Jax,” Gray says, locating the packet he wants. He turns his back and bends down to the soil, digging into it with his fingers. He could use the trowel but he likes the way the soil feels. It also doesn’t make him want to feel things like listening to Shirley does.
“It’s not healthy. Trust me. What happened with you and the omega isn’t unusual. It happens to a lot of alphas after they leave a wild pack. They’ve lost all the family they knew and they latch onto the first omega they see. It’s natural to try make a new pack. You need to move on from it.”
Gray ignores her. Maybe she’s right, but he doesn’t want to move on. He doesn’t want to forget Jax. The advantage of human thoughts is that he doesn’t have to. He can daydream as much as he likes.
“Gray, please. Just see the therapist. I promise he’ll help.”
“Okay,” Gray replies, more to get her to stop talking than anything else.
He thinks about it on the way home on the bus with his earphones in. He’s discovered that music is another human thing he likes, and he doesn’t need to know how to read to make it work. All he has to do is press the right image on the phone.
He’s been spending a lot of time in his human thoughts, thinking about the past and the future, and all the things that wolves don’t do.
Like casting out family. Wolves don’t do that. Not the pure animal, non-shifter kind of wolves. Sending people into exile is a human thing. It’s true. Gray saw a documentary about animal wolves on the television. Animal wolves might get demoted after a fight but they don’t have to leave.
That’s his other daydream, after all the ones about Jax. He daydreams about going back into the mountains and telling Ash that he behaved like a human not a wolf.
The thought makes him feel warm in a satisfactory kind of way. There is a word for the emotion, but he hasn’t found it yet.
He gets off of the bus two blocks before the apartment so he can take his books back to the library and replace them with new ones. This is some of Shirley’s advice that he is following.
He walks quickly, still nervous about being around so many strange people. Most are betas and they don’t give him a second glance, but he doesn’t like them anyway. They all smell peculiar.
The library is quiet today. Gray takes his books up to the counter to return them. The automated machines are still too confusing.
There are two people ahead of him in the queue. He gets his books out of his bag, ready to hand over.
The books are peculiar things too. They are for human children, and are about talking ducks and elephants, and have parents who exist only as a pair of talking legs.
He expects understanding the content will come later. It’s the words he’s working on, tracing the letters with his fingers and reading them over and over until he can say them out loud without having to spell them out in his head first.
The beta behind him in the queue makes a cooing noise.
“My daughter loves that one.”
Gray feels his stomach flip over. He hates it when strangers talk to him. What is he meant to reply? Is he meant to reply? It wasn’t a question.
Fortunately, the person in front is finished so he’s saved from replying by dint of busily handing the books back.
He takes his time picking out new ones, making sure that they aren’t ones he’s read before and that there are new words that he hasn’t learned inside.
When he gets back to the apartment, he finds George cooking eggs. The scent of oil and yolk permeates the walls.
“You want?”
“Yes, please.”
Gray washes his hands first the way he’s been taught. He scrubs the dirt away, rubbing soap deep into the crevices between his fingers and using the brush to get into his fingernails. The soil is ingrained into his skin.
He doesn’t remember Jax’s fingers being like this, but then he doesn’t remember ever seeing Jax put his fingers into the ground or do any digging.
He wonders if Jax ever does, and what Jax will think of Gray planting out flowers on the verges and green spaces of the city.
In his daydreams, he goes back. He gets on the bus and stays on it until he gets to Aylewood. In his daydreams, Jax is desperate for him to come back.
“Your food’s getting cold, boy.” George’s voice drifts through the bathroom door and Gray shakes his head as if he can shake reality away with it.
JAX
toothpaste and a proposal
There’s something about being pregnant that concentrates the mind, Jax thinks.
Until now, he’s been mostly happy with his little clinic in his hometown. Every now and then, he’d wished he were doing something more useful: something that used his training to help omegas, but it was always on the horizon and never closer by.
Now, he sits at his desk at the clinic and reads through the requirements for the research grant, writing notes in the margins.
He’s got seven months before the baby gets here, but the grant committee doesn’t need to know that bit.
These things take time, but he can hire a nanny for some of the childcare he needs and rely on family for the rest.
Or at least, he hopes he can. He hasn’t run this by any of his brothers yet.
Of course, if Ronmin takes over the pack, then it’ll all be for nothing anyway. He has no idea how the man will change things. It won’t be for the better. Not for any omegas without mates to protect them.
Ronmin has reputation for being a reputable matchmaker. What that means is that he sells omegas to the people who will owe him the most and bring him the most power.
The only question is whether Jax’s medical training makes him more valuable or less. Not all alphas want a well-educated omega. They certainly don’t want one with a claiming bite and a baby.
He thinks of Cole Bennett. Maybe that’ll be him in a few years, getting pats on the head from Aidan Ronmin and just accepting it.
Jax grits his teeth. There is nothing he can do about that. Nothing. He is going to plan for his future as if there is going to be one.
His thoughts have been turned solidly inward in the last weeks, to his own body, his own thoughts and his own reaction.
He went to pieces when Gray left, a reaction no doubt exacerbated by the new bite and the imminent changes in his body, but it’s still going on. The bite is healed and the pregnancy is progressing. Yet he still misses Gray with physicality that bites into every bone of his body.
He never forgets, not for a moment. Not even when he is sleeping. Every part of him is always at least partly aware that his alpha is missing.
He’s been online for days trying to find real scientific reasoning behind it, and something that tells him when the damned thing is going to turn off.
There’s nothing. Or at least nothing reliable. It’s all pseudo-science and religion, and daft stuff about omegas needing to be looked after like they’re little children who don’t know their own minds.
The few peer-reviewed studies on mating separations were carried out, written and reviewed by alphas. Jax has so many questions, and none of them were answered.
It’s going to be difficult, he thinks. It’s not the kind of study where you can easily have a control group. It would be too cruel. He’d have to find people who’d been through it and ensure that he asks the right questions.
He frowns. He’s run out of margin space on the form. He reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out a yellow legal pad and keeps writing.
He only stops ten minutes later because he needs to throw up. Again. He’s been keeping a bucket by his desk for the purpose, which he has to a
dmit is somewhat gross, but far better than vomiting all over his office carpet or in the corridor on the way to the bathroom.
It’s supposed to wear off around the third month. Only four endless weeks to go.
He doesn’t remember Cal being this sick, and he knows that’s a stupid thought because of all people, he should know that it’s different for every omega.
He pulls a tissue from the pack on his desk and wipes his mouth, then waits hands on knees, breathing to make sure that there’s no more coming before he gets up to empty the bucket.
He grabs his toothbrush and toothpaste from the shelf by the door and tucks them into his pocket as he goes, along with his phone.
His phone hasn’t buzzed or beeped, and it’s been sitting next to him this whole time so he can see the display, but he can’t help but check the display anyway.
Still no messages. None since he checked thirty seconds ago.
He hasn’t heard from Gray. No one has.
He stands in the clinic bathroom brushing his teeth and ignoring the rising nausea in his stomach, then heads back to his office with the now clean bucket and doesn’t remember the last time he felt this pathetic.
He pushes the door open to his office, feeling particularly pathetic.
Adam is sitting opposite his desk. He looks up as Jax comes in and pretends that he wasn’t trying to read the paperwork on Jax’s desk upside-down.
Gray. Bright white relief floods through him, and it must show on his face because Adam says, “No, I’m sorry. No word yet.”
“Oh, okay.” Jax gets back behind his desk and sets down the bucket beside him. “What can I do for you then?”
“Nothing. I was just coming past and thought I’d check in on you.”
Jax feels a flash of annoyance. “I’m pregnant. I’m not ill.”
Adam pointedly looks at the bucket.
“That’s part of the pregnancy, dumbass.”
“Come on,” Adam says. “You don’t need to do this alone. You need to let me tell the wild wolves that you’re pregnant.”
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