KEISHA’S POV

The clinic was a fifteen minute walk from the estate.

I had never actually been inside it before. I had walked past it a dozen times and noted the structure. But apart from the brief test I had done at the start of my stay in this pack, I hadn’t been in here again.

Now I stood outside the entrance and looked at the door and told myself to go in.

I went in finally.

The entrance had a small crate situation happening immediately. A man in a delivery uniform was crouched on the floor gathering bottles that had scattered from a dropped crate, rolling in different directions across the tiles, and a nurse was stepping around them carefully and he was apologising to everyone in his vicinity.

I stopped and picked up three bottles that had rolled to my feet.

"Thank you." He said, looking up. He was young, maybe twenty, with harassed eyes and a clipboard tucked under one arm. "I’ve been dropping things all morning. It’s been—" He made a sound. "A morning."

"Where are these going?" I said, gathering two more.

"Cafeteria." He sighed. "Down the hall."

"I’ll help." I said.

We gathered everything back into the crate and I carried one end and he carried the other and we walked it down to the cafeteria where we set it on the counter and he thanked me three more times before I told him to have a better afternoon and went back to the reception.

The nurse at the front desk looked up.

"I’d like to see a doctor." I said. "Dr. Fenn if she’s available."

The nurse’s expression shifted. "Dr. Fenn? She’s quite busy right now. Can I ask what it’s regarding?"

I looked at her. "It’s personal." I said. "I’d rather speak to the doctor directly."

She looked at me for a moment and then nodded and asked my name and wrote it down and told me to take a seat.

I sat.

The waiting room was small and had two other people in it who were both looking at their phones.

My gaze remained fixed on the wall and my fingers drummed on my laps.

My name was called after twenty minutes.

Dr. Fenn was a small woman, maybe forty, with reading glasses pushed up on her head and a smile on her face.

She gestured at the chair across from her desk and I sat. "What can I help you with?" She asked.

I looked at her. "I think I might be pregnant." I said blankly.

She held my gaze. "Okay." She didn’t look too surprised about it. This must be normal. "How late are you?"

"About three weeks." I rubbed at my face. "Maybe more."

"Any other symptoms?" She asked.

"Nausea." I said. "On and off for about two weeks. And—" I paused. "Other things. Physical things."

She nodded. "Let’s do a test first and confirm before we talk about anything else." She said. She stood. "Come with me."

The test took ten minutes.

I sat in the small side room and looked at the chart on the wall listing the nutritional requirements of various age groups.

Diane was absolutely quite in me. She could feel my anxiousness.

"We’re going to know in ten minutes," I told her.

She said nothing.

Dr. Fenn came back.

She sat down across from me and looked at me with that direct expression and said, "You’re pregnant."

The room went very quiet and I looked at her, my heart dropping.

Right.

"Okay." I nodded.

My voice came out steady and I didn’t know how. Some part of me had known for two weeks and had been preparing for this moment without my permission and so when it arrived, it landed differently than I had expected.

"How far along?" I asked.

"Based on what you’ve told me, around eight to ten weeks." She said. "We’d need a scan to be more precise." She paused. "Are you alright?"

"Yes." I nodded. "I’m okay."

She looked at me carefully. "Can I ask about the father?" She said. "You don’t have to answer."

"It’s complicated." I whispered.

She nodded. "Okay." She smiled, her voice soft. "Do you want the pregnancy?"

I thought about the answer to that question.

I thought about what Callum would say. What Dane would say. The elders. Vanessa. Osric. The forbidden triple bond that nobody was supposed to know about. A pregnancy in the middle of all of that.

And then I thought about what I wanted. What I actually wanted.

"Yes." I nodded. "I want it."

What was I agreeing to?

Dr. Fenn nodded. "Then we’ll get you started on prenatals and schedule a scan." She told me as she opened her desk drawer and pulled out a small folder.

"There’s something else I need to discuss with you." She said, her tone changing into something else. "I want to ask you first— during the period around your conception. Do you remember anything unusual? About how you felt physically?"

I looked at her. "Why?" I said.

She looked at me. "Because when you came to see me a few months ago, I ran a standard blood panel." She tilted her head. "And I found something in your results that I flagged for further review." She paused. "I found traces of synthetic heat accelerant in your bloodwork."

I stared at her.

"I’ve been meaning to discuss it with you properly." She sighed. "I wanted to be certain before I said anything." She leaned forward slightly. "A synthetic heat accelerant is not something that occurs naturally. It’s a compound that can be introduced through food, water, or other means of ingestion. It would have significantly intensified and extended a natural heat cycle." She looked at me directly. "To the point where someone in heat would have had very little control over—"

"Stop." I cut her off, feeling my stomach churn.

She stopped and I sat there.

What?

The cabin.

The heat that had come out of nowhere at the cabin. The way it had felt wrong from the beginning, too sudden, nothing like anything I had ever experienced before. The way I hadn’t been able to think or breathe or do anything except—

Someone had put something in my food.

Or my water.

Or something I had touched or eaten or drunk at that cabin and I had had no idea. The bond and everything that followed from it and this pregnancy—

None of it had been an accident.

Someone had planned it.

"Keisha." Dr. Fenn’s voice was gentle. "Are you alright?"

I opened my mouth but nothing came out.

Oh my god.