by Eden Beck
“Ritual?”
All four of us jump a little as Lydia appears in the doorway.
Me, Kaleb, and Rory all look a little guilty—but Romulus just looks relieved. Like he’s been rescued.
“Really? Boys.” Lydia shakes her head as she looks at the three of us. “But I should have thought of it myself. I know exactly what we need to do.”
We wait with bated breath as she sweeps into the room and joins us in her own seat at the table. One hand reaches out to brush away the charts and graphs, the other grabbing a blank paper and slapping it down on the table in its place.
I lean forward, my interest finally piqued for what feels like the first time in days.
“So?” I ask, unable to wait any longer. I’m even more impatient than Kaleb. “What’s the plan?”
“The plan,” Lydia says, “is to do what we should have done already. We’re going to throw Sabrina a baby shower.”
A baby shower.
I fall back in my seat a bit, expecting to feel myself deflate at her words. But I don’t.
The idea is simple, simple enough to be disappointing … but it’s not.
When I look back up at my brothers, I know they’re thinking the same thing. Maybe, after all the complicated bullshit we’ve been putting Sabrina through lately, maybe simple is what we need.
20
Sabrina
“Alright, time to get dressed,” Lydia says as she comes into my room on a late afternoon when the sun is lazily casting a purplish light through the window. A rainstorm is coming, and it makes me even more tired than I already am. I can feel it in my very bones.
I’ve lost track of the days now. All I know is that the next full moon hasn’t come yet. Or if it has, no one’s bothered to tell me.
“Dressed for what?” I ask, turning over as lazily as the sunshine.
I haven’t been out of this bed for any extended period of time in days. The passing of time for me has essentially turned into the chunking of hours between when the boys come to sit with me, reassuring me with empty words that everything is going to be okay before they once again leave to go help Romulus.
All I have to look forward to is the night when the boys eventually come curl around me, and we can catch a few hours of sleep all huddled together as if we are our own little pack. Usually one of the guys falls asleep with his hand on my stomach, which is something new that started happening once they found out that I was pregnant.
Sometimes it feels like the only thing that’s changed.
It’s almost as if they take unspoken turns of who holds their hand there against me and against the baby. It’s a feeling of reassurance that let me sleep without tossing and turning with worry.
It also makes the baby calmer too. I have no basis for comparison about what pregnancy is supposed to feel like, certainly not a shifter pregnancy, but seeing as though I can’t possibly be that far along, it seems odd to me that I would already be feeling the little butterfly-fluttering movements of something inside me.
At first I thought it was just my imagination. But then I began to notice that the feeling subsided every time one of the boys had their hand on my stomach, so I knew that I haven’t been imagining it.
The baby reacts to their touch. More so even than mine.
I try to pay attention to whether or not the movements are different depending on which of the boys’ hands is holding me. I thought maybe that would give me a clue as to which boy the baby belonged to. But it doesn’t seem to matter. The baby quiets and sleeps no matter which of their hands holds it.
It’s these moments I hold on to, even when the rest of the world feels as if it’s ready to overwhelm me. These are also the moments that are always cut too short. No matter how much time Rory, Marlowe, and Kaleb spend with me, it’s never enough. I’m always left wanting more. Needing more.
“Time to get dressed for a family celebration,” Lydia smiles, as if that’s any answer to my question. It’s always riddles with her.
I look at her with a perplexed stare, trying not to let my growing annoyance show. It’s not her fault that my mood shifts as quickly as the sunlight outside. One moment, all is aglow. The next, clouds have swooped in to cast all in shadow.
“What are we celebrating?” I ask, after a moment of silence. I can’t imagine anything worth celebrating right now. All I can think of is how we’re all trying to make it through the next few months without dying.
Which seems to be inevitable, at this point. Someone will have to die.
We won’t be allowed to continue on as we are. That much has been made clear.
It’s these dark thoughts, the same thoughts that have been running over and over in my mind these days, that makes what she says next somehow surprising.
“Your pregnancy, of course!” she says, beaming.
I pause.
“What?”
I look down at my swollen stomach as if seeing it for the first time.
Lydia sits down gently on the side of the bed, one hand reaching out to me with a soft touch.
“I blame myself,” she says. “I should have done this earlier. I can only imagine what you’re going through, especially after …”
She trails off. Especially after we all thought I was made barren—poisoned and robbed by Remus just days after my wedding. Just days before the turning that never fully happened.
“Sabrina,” she continues, her voice heavy with emotion as her eyes drop down to rest on my stomach, “it’s a miracle that you’re pregnant with a pup from the boys’ bloodline. It’s a miracle that the poison didn’t take and didn’t make you barren. The fact that you were already pregnant and didn’t even know it, and that the poison that Remus gave you didn’t kill you or that precious child inside of you … is nothing short of a miracle. And that needs to be celebrated.”
Her eyes lift back up to mine, tears shining in the corners.
For the first time, I realize what this means to her.
It doesn’t matter which son bore the child within me. Not, at least, to her.
She’s going to be a grandmother … a gift she thought was stolen from her as well.
“I didn’t think you guys believed in miracles,” I say without meaning for it to sound as blunt as it probably comes out.
But it doesn’t faze Lydia. She only laughs.
“We do sometimes,” she says. “And you should, too. Especially now. Your body itself is a miracle right. Never before to my knowledge has a turned wolf been able to survive for multiple moons without completing their first transformation. Not only have you survived that, and still have yet to complete your first shift, but you have also survived being poisoned, being pregnant, and being in battle whist dealing with it all.”
“Yeah,” I chuckle. “No wonder I’m so fucking tired all the time.”
Lydia smiles at me gently again as she helps me up and lays out a few of her dresses on the bed for me to choose from.
“Oh, it’s a fancy event, huh?” I tease as I look at all the dresses that I note are carefully chosen from a selection of very loose bohemian styles.
“The boys want to do something nice for you,” she says with a glint of excitement in her eyes. “Which one do you want to try on first?”
I point to a dark purple dress that looks soft and sparkly, and then I start to pull my T-shirt up over my head to try it on. Before I even get the shirt off, with my face still stuck inside of it and unable to see Lydia’s expression, I hear her gasp.
I immediately worry that someone has come into the room with us and that perhaps Remus and his pack have already found a way inside the house for some sort of surprise attack. I pull my shirt off over my head quickly, because it is closer in the direction of coming off than getting pulled back on; and I look at Lydia’s shocked face.
But she isn’t looking at the doorway or at anyone else. She’s looking at me. And when I look down to see where her eyes are fixated, I see why.
How had I not noticed how much
fuller and rounder I had become just these last couple weeks?
I guess being in one of the boys’ soft, oversized T-shirts all the time has made it easier for me not to feel the restriction that my normal clothes would have made me feel around my waist. I stand there looking down at my very obviously protruding stomach and my swollen breasts and realize that not only have I started to show way earlier than I would have expected, but that I am showing a lot.
Too much.
A horrible, all-encompassing terror overtakes me.
What if it isn’t a baby at all, but a monster growing inside me?
I’m left standing, frozen, as suddenly it isn’t just Lydia’s eyes on me.
As if that moment wasn’t already full of enough shock; Rory, Marlowe, and Kaleb show up at the door. Their faces, eager to escort me to this impromptu celebration, fall as soon as they catch sight of me.
They are frozen as I am, staring at me in a stunned awe that is a mix of concern and amazement.
Finally able to move, I cross my arms over my chest, feeling embarrassed and exposed for some reason … even though the boys have definitely seen me naked on more than one occasion and I am as comfortable with Lydia as I am with my own mother. More comfortable, actually.
I look down at my stomach, feeling sick.
“Lydia,” Marlowe says as the three of them start to slowly walk into the room toward me. “She shouldn’t be that big so soon … should she?”
The thought of monsters crosses my mind again, and my skin begins to crawl. My head snaps up to Lydia, hoping for reassurance.
But I find none.
“I don’t know,” Lydia answers, making the pit in my stomach drop further. “I’m going to call the doctor.”
The doctor.
This is a discussion we’ve had several times without actually discussing it. From what I’ve gathered, the shifter doctor that Lydia knows isn’t as sympathetic to our kind—the turned kind—as we’d like. Any mention of him before this has been immediately quelled by one of the boys, or sometimes, by Romulus himself.
For Lydia to suggest calling him now, it only confirms my growing fears.
Something is wrong.
“No,” Kaleb says as he stands close to me and puts his hand on my plump belly. “I don’t want anyone touching her.”
“I agree with Kaleb,” Rory says. “We can’t trust anyone to be around Sabrina right now. There are too many people that want her dead.”
All three boys stand around me, with each putting one hand on my bare stomach. This time the baby isn’t calming down, it’s doing somersaults inside my abdomen. The boys’ eyes are wide with astonishment as they watch their fingers being pushed up and down by the movement beneath my skin.
Lydia seems amazed too.
I just feel like I’m going to pass out.
Lydia’s hand on my shoulder calms me some, enough at least for me to blurt out my fears.
“Is it … is it something else? Could it be something other than a baby?” I ask, not daring to utter the words stuck over and over in my mind.
Monster. Monster. Monster.
What if the poison didn’t make me barren at all? What if it changed the thing inside me into something else?
I think I’m going to vomit, but Lydia’s hand grows tighter on my shoulder.
“No. Nothing like that,” she says, as if reading my mind. “But sons …” She fixes each one of them with a stare that silences any future arguments, “It’s time. We’ve waited long enough. Sabrina needs to see a doctor. We can’t put her life or the baby’s life in even greater danger by ignoring this.”
After a second, each one of them nods their head in agreement.
Despite Lydia’s attempt to reassure me, I can’t stop the spinning fear in my head.
As we wait for the doctor to arrive, the boys and I lay back down on the bed. They don’t leave me this time. Not for a second.
21
Sabrina
Even though Lydia trusts this doctor, there is a thick and heavy tension when he arrives.
He doesn’t come alone—he comes escorted by a table of medieval-looking contraptions meant to be used, of course, on me.
When Lydia and Romulus escort the doctor back into the bedroom, he’s barely taken one look at me before his face twists up in disgust.
“What is this about?” Marlowe says, jumping up from the bed and posturing himself in front of the doctor. “I thought you said you trusted him?”
“I do,” Lydia answers calmly, from the doorway. “But that doesn’t mean he’s in agreement with how Sabrina was made.”
“And I don’t have to be,” the doctor says, his voice full of disdain. Disdain for me, no less.
There’s a low, guttural growl that emanates from all three boys as they stand around me.
“We don’t want him touching her then,” Rory says protectively, one hand stretched out behind him, as if sheltering me from the doctor we invited here in the first place.
“Fine with me,” the doctor says, nodding once before he turns to leave. Only he can’t, not with Romulus blocking his other path through the doorway.
“Look, I know that you’re all on edge,” Lydia says, “but Sabrina needs to be seen by a doctor. We have a doctor, and despite his personal beliefs, he is here to help us.”
I look from her, to my boys, and back to the doctor. The sense of dread grows stronger within me, even as Rory, Marlow, and Kaleb deflate where they stand—moving aside.
I don’t like how any of this feels.
Romulus motions to the boys for them to leave the room with him, but I grab onto Kaleb’s sleeve before he can go.
“I want you all to stay with me,” I whisper to him. “Please.”
He tries to tug his hand away at first, but I don’t let go. My fingers dig into the threads like claws.
After a second, Kaleb looks into my eyes and nods, sending a glance over at Rory and Marlowe.
They freeze where they stand.
“We’re not leaving,” Kaleb says to his father.
Romulus doesn’t even argue with them, but he also doesn’t remain—much to my relief.
Though the doctor reluctantly begins the examination, he’s anything but thrilled about it.
His hands are rough and his words demeaning, to the point that if there was literally anyone else to take his place, he’d no longer be standing—not in one piece, anyway. Not from the looks on Rory, Marlowe, and Kaleb’s faces.
I’m certain that he’s making this experience as awful as possible, but I have no choice but to bear it. Rory and Marlowe pace the room, trying not to watch but also making sure that the doctor knows they’re there and ready to tear his head from his shoulders if he does anything to actually harm me. Kaleb sits by my head and holds my hand, his own head turned away from me, facing dead ahead.
I focus on Lydia’s face as she calmly waits to hear what the doctor has to say. She’s worried, I can tell, but she still tries to hide it gracefully.
When the exam is finished, I sit up next to Kaleb and pull his arms tightly around me. Rory and Marlowe come to stand in front of the doctor to listen, their own faces doing a poor job of concealing their obvious concern.
The doctor flips through some charts for a long minute, drawing out the expectant moment as he prints out a picture from the portable ultrasound machine he brought along with him. I imagine this isn’t the first emergency birth he’s attended for our kind, though from his obvious distaste, not one he’s particularly keen on.
“Is everything okay?” I ask, unable to remain silent any longer.
He looks at me but doesn’t answer, almost as if he deems me unworthy of speaking to.
“Answer her,” Kaleb growls. I see the flickering light of his glowing eyes emerge.
The doctor is intimidated, rightfully so, but still arrogant.
“Everything is fine,” he scoffs as he yanks the picture gruffly from the machine and hands it to Lydia instead of me. Her mouth drops
open as soon as she sees it and I start to ask her what she sees on the picture, but the doctor interrupts me before I have a chance to speak.
“That’s the problem. She’s already in her third trimester,” he says, his voice flat as he stares straight ahead. “Would’ve been made a whole lot simpler if she’d just admitted she conceived much earlier than she insisted.”
Earlier than I insisted?
I’m in too much shock to point out the dripping condescension in his voice.
“Third trimester?” I say, my voice coming out broken. “But I’ve only been pregnant for … for two?”
Two months.
Two months since the wedding. Since I made love, at last, to Rory, Marlowe, and Kaleb.
Two months since I was poisoned.
Two months wasted.
My mouth grows dry as I struggle to keep myself propped up. My elbows and knees feel suddenly weak and unreliable.
“That’s … that’s impossible!” I say, after a moment choking on my own words.
The doctor just looks at me down the end of his nose. “And are you the doctor here, or am I?”
I’m not the only one at the end of my patience.
“How can it only be a three-month pregnancy?” Rory growls at him. “You heard what Sabrina said. I know her, and she’s no liar. But you …” he trails off. “Perhaps you need to get your medical degree checked.”
“My degree of expertise is just fine,” the doctor snaps at him, but he presses his lips together and sweeps his gaze over me again. He does it in a slow, probing way that makes me shrink in my own skin. “But if you’re all telling the truth, then it sounds like she was impregnated in the midst of her turning.”
“We are telling the truth,” Rory says, taking a dangerous step forward.
Marlowe is quick to swoop in, pulling him back. But even he can’t leave the doctor’s words to hang uncontested between us.
“But what would it matter anyway?” he asks, eyes glued to the doctor as Rory struggles to compost himself in his brother’s grip.
