Second Chance: M/M Mpreg Alpha Male Romance

by Aiden Bates

  Bement sighed and stopped writing. "Mr. Maxwell, I'm very sorry to have to tell you this. There was a fire this evening, over at Gray House."

  Ben doubled over. The words themselves formed a punch to his gut. "No."

  "I'm afraid so."

  "How did it…"

  "Arson investigators are still on the scene. I expect them to be on the scene for a little while. But there's no way that it isn't arson, that's the good news." Bement twisted his thin lips into a grim parody of a smile. "The exits were all blocked. One resident, a young man by the name of Stuart, was able to get out the front door when the fire was first noticed. Apparently, according to Stuart anyway, it was Mr. Ostry who first noticed the fire. Building records show that the smoke alarms should have gone off, along with the sprinklers, but didn't.

  "Mr. Ostry gave Stuart his laptop and a stack of files and got him out the front door. He went back in to evacuate other residents, asking Stuart to call for help, which Stuart did. When Stuart turned back to look at the building, he saw that the door had been chained shut while his back was turned."

  Ben rose to his feet. "That's… that's murder. That's not arson, that's murder."

  "It's arson," Bement told him. "The other charges remain to be seen. Mr. Ostry seems to have rescued a large number of people from that building. He found the residents trapped in the teen dorms, and he found the residents in the women's shelter. He led them all to a balcony, and he guided them to escape. He remains unaccounted for."

  Ben grabbed onto his own hair and pulled. "No!" he screamed, voice echoing off the walls of the room. "He couldn't — he didn't —"

  Bement took Ben's hands and disentangled them from his hair. "We still don't know. It's possible that he found some other means of escape. It's still early. There are a few people who are still unaccounted for, and we're working to track down all possible leads. I'm going to keep you posted, Mr. Maxwell. I don't want you to be in the dark any longer than necessary, okay?" He patted Ben on the back.

  Ben didn't reply. "We're — we were — going to have a baby," he said instead. When he switched to the past tense it felt like something in his soul ripped in two. "We were a family. We were starting a family. You can't tell me he's gone. You just can't."

  Bement sighed, keeping his hand on Ben's back. "We don't know. Like I said, the investigation is still going on."

  "Can you take me there?" Ben turned to him. "Can you take me to… I never went there." He felt something scalding trickle down his face. "I never went to his office. I didn't think it was important. I mean it was important to him, but I didn't think he'd want me there, you know? But if it was where… I need to see it."

  Bement went still, seeming to think about Ben's request for a long time. Ben couldn't see what the problem was. He was a grieving man. Was it so hard to bring him to see the place where he'd lost his love? "I suppose. But you have to stay back, no matter what you see. If you interfere in the investigation, you risk letting whoever made this happen go free. And I know you don't want that."

  Right now, Ben didn't give even half a crap about anyone going to jail or going free. He just wanted Ty back. "I understand," he said, hanging his head.

  Bement drove him up to the scene, which could be smelled long before they were within visual range. Everything that Ty had worked for was there, and up in smoke. The building itself was made of stone, but it wasn't hard to see that the interior had been gutted. "What could make a fire move so fast?" Ben asked.

  "Accelerant." Bement shrugged. "We know at least a couple of different types were used, but we need some tests to come back before we can figure out what kinds. It's going to be a long investigation, Mr. Maxwell, but we're in for the long haul. I'm not going to rest until I find out who did this." He quirked up half a grin. "I was in a Gray House program myself, when I was young."

  "Huh." Ben didn't care about that. Maybe he would later, after the stabbing pain of loss faded, but right now he only cared about Ty.

  "Mr. Maxwell," Bement told him in a quiet tone, "I need for you to understand something. Whatever else happens, whatever we find or don't find, Mr. Ostry rescued over a hundred people, women and children, from that fire. Those are people that the arsonist chose to kill when he barricaded the doors. Remember that. He saved so many lives today."

  Ben nodded, but he still didn't care. Those lives didn't mean anything without Ty by his side.

  Chapter Nine

  Ty woke up to a metronome picking out the beat of Bob Marley's "Buffalo Soldiers" not far from his head. This wasn't a normal feeling for him, since he had all of the musical talent of the average goat and didn't own a metronome. He also wasn't the world's biggest reggae fan, although he had a proper appreciation for Marley's work because he wasn't a heathen.

  "You don't do well on sedatives, do you?"

  He'd said that out loud? Ty let his eyes flutter open. He recognized the voice, although it took him a minute of picking through his fuzzy brain before he could figure out why. "Sgt. Smith?" He tried to sit up and grunted as pain tore through his arms. "You look funny. No armor." Now that he could focus a little better, he could see that the metronome was actually a heart monitor.

  "Well, no. No armor, buddy. I was off duty, actually, but they called me in to sit with you." Smith grinned. "And believe me, you're going to want to get very used to that song. It's the best way in the world to soothe a fussy infant back to sleep."

  "How do you know…" Ty struggled to keep his thoughts together. "I'm sorry. I'm feeling really floaty right now and I'd rather not be. They shouldn't be giving me sedatives."

  "They couldn't avoid it, when you were brought in. If it's any consolation, they said that this sedative was relatively safe for a pregnant person." Smith pulled his chair closer. "Do you want me to help you sit up, with the bed?"

  "I think so." Ty grimaced as the bed moved, pushing him into a sitting position. "Thanks. So I survived."

  "Only thanks to that one kid, Stuart. He warned them that you were pregnant. And the big kid, what's his name, Musa? He pointed out where you'd gone down. You did good, Ty. You got all of those people out. You can rest."

  Ty whimpered at the pain, but he had to check. Something itched on his face. When his fingertips found the offending item, he found a tube. "Oxygen?" he guessed.

  "Oh yeah. You were dealing with some exciting smoke inhalation. You've also got burns on your forearms, on your legs, and on the small of your back. You won't be getting those clothes back; we had to cut them off of you." Smith leaned forward, with his elbows on his knees. "I say we, but I mean the nice staff here at the ER."

  "I need to call Ben. He's got to be worried sick." Ty fought down a wave of nausea.

  "Yeah. No." Smith fussed with his collar. "I mean, first of all your phone didn't like the heat one little bit. It's shot. Sorry. The phone company can try to restore whatever data you had saved to the cloud or whatever, but the machine itself is shot."

  Ty frowned. He didn't know if he could afford to replace his phone. "I don't think that the warranty covers office fires."

  "Most don't." Smith looked down.

  "So I'll call him from the land line." Ty tried to look around.

  Smith stood up. "The thing is, Ty, the fire was arson. We know that."

  Ty snorted. "Yeah. I figured that out when the exits were barred." The memory slammed into Ty with all the force of a fall from a building. "That was arson," he said, as his pulse hammered away in his neck. "That was… someone was trying to kill us!"

  "They were." Smith had pulled out a notepad, but he put it down now. "Ty, I know it's hard, but you need to calm down or you're going to make yourself sick."

  "They were trying to kill us!" Ty said again. "They wanted us to die!"

  "I don't think that the residents were the target, Ty." Smith sat on the edge of the bed. "Do you?"

  Ty forced his muscles to relax. He thought that the sedatives might be helping with that, although he wanted them out the of his system. "No." It
hurt to admit that, hurt more than the pain in his chest or from his burns. "No. I don't. Not after the bomb. Or the rats." He looked down and picked at the light cotton blanket. "It is possible, though. I mean, none of our residents live there because they're coming from a paradise, you know? Between the teen residents and the folks in the women's shelter, we've all got folks who would like to see us buried."

  "Maybe." Smith's smile had a touch of pity to it. "But not all of them have someone with the same level of determination and entitlement. The arson unit is pretty sure that the fire started on the second floor of the teen division side."

  "Over near the dorms." Ty's voice was raspy with the smoke, and with the horror of what he now knew to be true. "The rooms for alphas are on that floor." He swallowed. "I gave my laptop bag to Stuart. There's a file in that bag. I'm not sure if you can legally use it, or even legally access it. It's got details about an alpha who lived at Gray House seventeen years ago, one who was supposed to claim Richard Hartmann and refused." Ty coughed and restrained a grimace. It hurt, just to take the breaths necessary to cough.

  Smith was on his feet. "Do you need me to call the nurses? Don't hurt yourself, please."

  Ty fought the spasms down. "No. No nurses. Please, I just want Ben."

  Smith looked over toward the window. "So. About that. Here's the thing. Obviously the arson is a crime. And attempted murder. Attempted mass murder, technically, although I'm not sure that there's a legal distinction." He scratched his head. "I guess we'll leave that one up to the DA's office."

  "So… Ben?" He blinked. "You can't think that Ben did this. He's the perfect alpha. He'd never hurt me, or anyone else."

  "I don't think anyone seriously considers him a suspect. The detective in charge is talking to him, but it's just to get information. Here's the thing," Smith cleared his throat, "no one knows you survived."

  Ty sat up straighter in the bed, which hurt like hell. His anger carried him through it. "What the hell? You told my alpha that I died?"

  "Wasn't my idea." Smith held his hands up. "The detective working the case is called Bement, and you have my permission to kick him in the nads just as soon as you get that IV line out."

  Ty looked down. He hadn't noticed the IV. "So why would he tell a man that his pregnant omega was dead?" He wasn't going to take it out on Smith, not if it wasn't Smith's fault, but hell if he was going to pretend to like this situation.

  "Two reasons." Smith lowered one hand, and held up one finger with the other. "First, we wanted to keep you as safe as we could while we get the evidence we need. You were right the other day, when you told me that this Hartmann guy is smart and sneaky. He's going to be hard to pin down, and if he's willing to kill over a hundred innocent women and children just to get to one guy, he wouldn't hesitate to come in here and do something to you while you were vulnerable. If he thinks you're dead, though…"

  "You think he'll leave me alone." Ty folded his lips together and glared. He could follow the logic, he guessed, but he didn't have to like it.

  "That's the theory. Of course, you've still got one cop in the room and two outside, so you see how well I trust that theory." Smith shook his head. "Anyway. There's another reason. I'm not sure if it's genius or an idiotic risk, but I'm not the one calling the shots here."

  "What's the reason?"

  "If he thinks you're out of the picture, Hartmann might be cocky enough to tip his hand. We're watching Ben, because for whatever reason Hartmann has fixated on him. As soon as he slips up, he's ours and we'll find everything we need." Smith stood still.

  Ty tried to get out of the bed. He didn't get very far; between the sedatives, the pain, and his very real weakness, he barely managed to get his feet over the side of the bed. "You have got to be kidding me. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

  "It might be a long shot, but it would save us a ton of time and pretty much secure us a conviction if we were able to get that confession. I don't know. I don't necessarily feel comfortable with it, but it's not like we're leaving him alone. He's got people around him at all times, and he's as safe as we can make him." He looked over at the door, hand on his gun as the door swung open.

  The intruders were two nurses, one Asian and one Black. "Excuse me, but you're not supposed to be getting up and out of that bed quite yet," the latter told him. Her nametag told Ty that her name was Sandra.

  "But now that you're awake, we can tell the doctor that you're able to talk." Alicia, the other nurse, gave him a sweet smile before turning to Smith with a frown. "Are you agitating our patient?"

  "No ma'am." Smith pulled himself to attention. "Just filling him in on his situation."

  "Stress isn't good for him right now," Sandra told him, while Alicia stepped out to page the doctor. "He's in a very delicate condition. He needs to stay calm and heal, not get all worked up about whatever put him here. Mr. O, I'm sorry. We're not allowed to know your name, part of the security measures for now. My name is Sandra, I'm going to fix this nasal cannula so you can breathe a little easier. You came in with pretty severe smoke inhalation. We're still trying to make sure that your lungs haven't suffered permanent damage. The doctor can talk to you a little more about that, but we don't want you to have any problems."

  He let her guide him back into a reclining position and fix the tube on his face. He hated to admit it, but breathing did seem easier with the stupid tube in place. "Look. I know this sounds weird, but, um, I am, or I was, pregnant when I came in. I don't know if —" He couldn't finish the sentence. He didn't want to break down in front of these strangers, didn't even want Smith to see him cry, but he had to know.

  "We'll let you talk to the doctor, Mr. O." Sandra reached for his hand and remembered that it was bandaged.

  Well, that sounded ominous.

  Smith sat down in the visitor chair, shaking his head. "Keep the poor guy guessing," he muttered. "Not like this isn't hard enough on him."

  "Not like you folks aren't making it harder," Sandra added with a sniff. Ty decided he liked Sandra. She clearly wasn't going to take any crap from anyone, not even the cops.

  The doctor arrived within a few minutes. "Mr. O." He looked down at Ty over his horn-rimmed glasses. "It's nice to see you finally awake. "I'm Dr. Madison. I'm your physician while you're with us. I'm a pulmonologist by training, although I've done some work with omega pregnancies before as well."

  "Of course." Ty wheezed out a little laugh, trying to keep the hysteria out of his tone. "Those two things totally go together."

  "Let's just say that I decided I wasn't so much into babies. Not at all, in fact." Madison made a face. "You know, all the squirming they do. Lungs don't squirm, as a general rule. I like that about lungs. I studied some obstetrics in medical school and did a rotation in an omega ward, but found my true calling with pulmonology." He picked up Ty's chart. "So. You're probably wondering about the damage."

  Ty rolled his eyes and flopped his head on the pillows. "I'm sore. I'm short of breath. My skin hurts. Those seem normal." He reminded himself that this wasn't Dr. Madison's doing. "I'm sorry. I'm a little frustrated, because I'm not feeling well and I'm anxious about my alpha. I'd rather that he was here. Also the sedatives are making me fuzzy, which is just making me more anxious."

  "Understandable. If you'd rather, we can take you off the sedatives, but you're going to be in for a world of hurt. You have second-degree burns, Mr. O, and they're not going to get miraculously better overnight. It's going to take them about three weeks to heal. Then there's your lungs. You were out for a good few hours. It sounds like you're already showing symptoms, which is normal. What we want to make sure doesn't happen is edema, and pneumonia, and infection. You're going to be here for a few days, and if we see any signs of those things we'll treat them as we come to them."

  Ty let it wash over him. "Will I be able to run marathons again?"

  "Probably not in the next few months." Madison gave him a funny look. "If you're pregnant, you shouldn't be doing the marathon thin
g anyway."

  Ty swallowed. What was it with doctors and always needing to have everything spelled out for them, anyway? "And am I still pregnant?"

  "Oh. Well, I'm not sure. You were our first priority, honestly. About how pregnant would you be?" Madison put the chart down. "The person who called 911 didn't have many details."