What happened a month and a half ago?

The original Cecilia of this universe had married Arzhen Vasiliev just like she did in the real world. She had also signed divorce papers, then proceeded to sleep with three men in a club, either by choice or by trap or by some catastrophic combination of both.

But then she had spent a month and a half doing... nothing. Staying married, keeping quiet, letting the signed papers gather dust in a shared men’s apartment while her pregnancy developed in secret and her husband’s mistress plotted her downfall.

What Cecilia knew was this. Ruby Vaiva knew about the sex. That much was clear from the confrontation in the hospital. Three men with a McKing uniform and dark worker overalls at the same time. Ruby had seen it, or Ruby had arranged it. Either way, she was the source of the accusation.

AU!Cecilia had signed the divorce papers either before or after the encounter. But after that night, she had kept quiet and had not filed the papers. She had not gone through with the divorce.

For a month and a half, she had remained legally bound to Arzhen Vasiliev, carrying the evidence of her infidelity in her womb, while the men she had slept with waited in their shared apartment with her signed documents.

Why? What had stopped her? Had she been afraid? Had she been waiting for something? Had she simply not known what to do next?

Cecilia did not know.

The next thing she knew was that the baby in her womb was most probably Oathran’s.

The egg and the calcium deposit. The oviparous nature of whatever creature was growing inside her.

Of the three men she had slept with that night, only one was capable of making her produce an egg. Only one was something other than mammalian.

She had Googled it.

The phone was a gateway to an endless, self-updating ocean of information, curated by millions of anonymous contributors and accessible through something called a search engine. This, she also Googled the fact.

She had typed in her query about how human wombs carry reptilian baby and the answer had come from something called Beast Wiki, and it had been unsettlingly detailed.

Under normal circumstances, the egg in a human womb would break and reassemble its shell inside the uterus in tiny, incremental cracks every day.

It would grow slowly, steadily, absorbing nutrients and amniotic fluid from the mother while remaining attached to the walls of the womb, slowly absorbing the placenta into the shell.

Day by day, the egg would expand, the cracks healing and reforming, the shell adapting to its growing occupant like a living, breathing cocoon.

After approximately four months, a human-baby-head-sized egg would be ready to be birthed. The egg would emerge from the mother’s body and then the real waiting would begin.

The egg would continue to grow outside the womb, new cracks appearing on its surface every day, and those cracks would be reinforced from the inside over and over, layer upon layer of calcified protection, until the baby reptilian reached full term and emerged from the shell.

The gestation period varied, the article noted, according to species and incubation conditions. A dragon’s egg, if that was indeed what she was carrying, might take longer. Or shorter. Or require specific temperatures, specific rituals, specific conditions that no human doctor had ever documented.

Cecilia filed everything in her brain.

A reptilian baby inside a human’s body, an egg that would crack and heal and crack again. And the birth would be nothing like the births she had witnessed in her entire life.

She would need more information. She would need to ask Oathran, but how could she ask him without revealing that she was carrying his child? And how could she reveal that without revealing whatever was wrong with everything?

Later. She would figure it out later.

For now, she filed the Beast Wiki article in her memory and researched the next thing that came to mind.

Which was how to use the oven.

She researched it and found a video on YouTube. The woman in her screen explained the difference between bake and broil, the importance of preheating, and the mysterious symbols that corresponded to various heating elements.

Cecilia had watched the video three times, pausing to take mental notes, her lips moving silently as she memorized the sequence of buttons.

She was just reaching for the oven handle, ready to attempt her first experiment in this world’s culinary technology, when a gentle beeping sound from the front door startled her.

She blinked and looked at the clock on the microwave. Half past nine in the morning. Who could be here so early? Had the work day ended so soon? Had one of them forgotten something and come back to retrieve it?

That was when she saw the flowers.

A massive bouquet of white blooms rounded the corner of the kitchen doorway, so large it seemed to float on its own, a cloud of petals and greenery that filled the entire passage.

Cecilia took an instinctive step back, her hand rising to her chest, and then Oathran emerged from behind the bouquet, his white hair slightly windswept, his eyes widening the moment he saw her.

The two of them stood frozen in the kitchen. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

"Ahem." Oathran cleared his throat. "This is for you. I thought you were not home. I did not see your shoes at the front."

He extended the bouquet toward her, a mountain of white lilies whose scent had already begun to fill the kitchen with its delicate, heady sweetness.

Cecilia reached out to take it and was immediately swallowed by the flowers. The bouquet was enormous, easily the largest she had ever seen, a cascade of white petals that obscured her entire upper body and tickled her nose and made her sneeze.

"Ah, uh—thank—"

Oathran gently took the bouquet back as an awkward chuckle escaped his lips. He rescued her from the floral avalanche and set it on the kitchen island, where it occupied roughly the same square footage as a small piece of furniture.

"They are so beautiful..." Cecilia whispered, her eyes wide and glistening as she gazed at the lilies. The petals were perfect, creamy white with the faintest blush of yellow at their centers, each bloom open just enough to reveal the delicate stamens within.

She sighed, and a smile curved her lips that made Oathran forget how to breathe.

He stood there, not knowing what to say. His hands, which had been holding the bouquet, now hung empty at his sides. She was still admiring the lilies, her eyes tracing the curve of each petal, and her expression soft, full of wonders.

"I love them." Cecilia stepped forward, closing the distance between them, and wrapped her arms around his waist. She hugged him tight, her cheek pressed against his chest, and chuckled.

He closed his eyes, savoring the way the sound vibrated through his ribcage.

"Thank you, Oathran."

Oathran was still speechless. His arms, after a moment of frozen hesitation, came up to rest on her back.

He didn’t think she would react like this. He had even felt stupid buying the largest bouquet the flower shop had to offer, all for a woman he had thought would not even be home.

"Eastiel bought me a lot of shoes," Cecilia said. "So I put them away inside. Since I am not going out anyway, I will take them out when I want to go. It is a bit of a mess if I put them there."

Oathran seized on the practical detail like a drowning man grasping a rope.

"Take one out and put them on," he said. "We are going to custom a new shoe rack. For your shoes especially."

"Hm?" Cecilia pulled away from the hug just enough to look up at him, her brow furrowed with confusion. "Eh?"

Oathran was already pulling out his phone, his thumb flying across the screen as he typed a message to his coworker. Cover my shift today. I’ll pay you serious money.

Cecilia saw the screen and giggled into her words, "Why do you always make a point about competing financially against Eastiel, hmm?" She teased. "Just accept that he is richer than you."

This had happened before. In the school romance trope, Oathran had done something remarkably similar. He had shoved his entire savings, the money he had been planning to leave for Professor Baswara after his supposed disappearance, directly into her hands, just because she said Eastiel sent her money.

"What do you mean he is richer than me?" Oathran’s eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. "That little shit begged me to cover his rent for an entire year when he first got here."

Cecilia burst out laughing. "But isn’t his family super loaded?"

"His family is rich, but he’s broke. He only got financially stable around two years ago." Oathran sneered. "Who are you comparing me to, hmm?"

But even as the words left his mouth, his expression soured. After all, this woman had been married to a billionaire. Of course money mattered to her to a certain degree. How could it not? She was accustomed to a certain standard of living and a certain level of luxury.

Cecilia hugged him again. She pressed her face against his chest, smushing her cheek into the fabric of his overall, and held him tight.

"Don’t worry. I am rich too." She said. "I will support all three of you financially."

After all, she could access her inventory in this world. She had all the gold in the world.

But—

Oathran’s eyes faltered. His breath caught in his throat.

The divorce.

When a divorce happened, the wife usually got something, did she not?

Was that what she was talking about?