by Kari Gregg
“The research team at Cornell, directed by Dr. Gabot, isolated a specific protein that concentrates in the blood of male omegas while they are breeding,” Bennet said.
“Ceruloplasmins.” The specialist grinned. “That’s where we went wrong before. We were searching for a hormone similar to ShCG, but the reproductive systems of male shifters differ too much from their female counterparts. Females conceive at ovulation during a specific two-day window in the menstrual cycle whereas fertilization in males happens exclusively at orgasm. The cervix to the male’s womb doesn’t dilate to allow sperm to reach an egg otherwise. They don’t menstruate or rely on cycles of menses to achieve fertilization as females do. Shifter males are capable of conceiving at any point in time after puberty. As such, male reproductive organs are fundamentally distinct from shifter females and function in drastically different ways. Searching for a hormone, when male omegas don’t rely on hormones to conceive, was doomed to fail.” Dr. Gabot spread her hands. “Once we broadened our survey to include other protein chemical markers, we found a significantly higher concentration of ceruloplasmins in the blood of pregnant omegas.”
Dio sat up straight as he attentively listened to the doctors.
Making sense of none of it, I frowned.
“Ceruloplasmins carry copper throughout the body and play a role in iron metabolism. Humans and shifters both have these blood components, just not at the same high concentration of a breeding omega. Once we determined this, developing a pregnancy test became substantially easier.” The specialist winged up an eyebrow. “The test is still highly experimental. The FDA approval process for new drugs, treatments, and techniques is thorough but especially lengthy in the field of shifter medicine, but the government approved expanding trials for the CIS test across the country. I’m very confident of the results.”
Leaning forward, Dio tightened his grasp on my hand. “What does this mean for Nox?”
“I don’t want either of you to get your hopes too high.” Bennet’s eyes narrowed. “He isn’t pregnant.”
“But he has been bred,” Dr. Gabot interjected. “And recently. His CIS levels are dropping back to normal, but there’s no mistaking the initial spike in ceruloplasmin.”
Air locked in my lungs. My eyes widened. I shook, my heart pounding.
“He isn’t sterile,” Dio said.
“His CIS levels show he’s been bred at least once, but he miscarried before the embryo successfully implanted in his womb.” Dr. Gabot smiled. “I’d like to continue monitoring him with regular blood panels to confirm my assessment. We’ll need further testing to ascertain whether he is able to carry a child to term, but advances in shifter treatments and reproductive support give us a firm basis for optimism. If you and Nox are willing to follow the not inconsiderable protocols that increase the chances of producing a healthy child… No, he isn’t sterile.”
I gasped.
Dio gulped.
“Which puts us in a very sticky predicament.” Bennet’s fingers drummed the surface of his desk. “While we’re heartened to realize Nox can conceive, the fact of the matter is he shouldn’t. Your relationship is shaky at best and fertility treatments would only intensify the stress. As his therapist and yours, I strongly recommend against it.”
On the laptop, Gabot nodded. “I concur. Physically, Nox’s body needs to be in prime condition before we attempt introducing the rigors of breeding.” Her mouth pinched. “I’ve never seen an anemic shifter, but he’s close. I’m not happy with his liver function either and his blood pressure is shockingly high.”
“That’s possibly situational,” Bennet argued. “He refuses medication to relieve his anxiety.”
Dr. Gabot eyed me from the laptop screen. “He’s been living as a feral, at least in part, and a clinical environment would’ve been traumatic to him. I want him to take home a blood pressure sleeve to see how he does away from humans before I recommend treating his hypertension. His diet should be improved immediately too, supported by the vitamin supplements I noted in my report along with the prescriptions to bolster his liver function.” She scowled. “Normally, I’d put him on Doxitel to shut down his cervix while we fortify him, but there’s a substantial risk his cervix could shut down permanently.”
“I’ll take birth control.” Beside me, Dio grunted. “I’ve done it before. No side effects.”
He had? Alphas, including fixers, hated birth control. They liked nothing better than kids, kids, and more kids. Children I couldn’t provide.
A child my ruined womb had tried and ultimately failed to produce without my approval or my notice. My free hand dipped to my stomach, my astonishment dizzying.
I could have kids. My body had already tried to. The human doctors discussed prescriptions and dietary changes to build me up so that I could—
I might be able to—
“I want to see Joth,” I said, my shock roaring like a speeding train in my ears. I focused on the prison doctor, Joth’s doctor. “Does he know?” I waved at the laptop. “About this?”
On the laptop screen, the human frowned. “Your medical records are covered by HIPAA laws, like any human’s. We are forbidden from discussing test results and prognosis with anyone, including insurance companies, until and unless we obtain your permission.”
Bennet pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Joth isn’t aware your fertility has been reassessed, much less the results of those tests.”
Dio cradled my hand in both of his. “Nox…”
“I want to see him.”
Dr. Gabot glowered. “We still need to review the shots to be administered, your diet—”
“Fuck my diet. I want to see my brother.” Stomach a tight ball, shaking like crazy, I lifted my chin and I stood. “Right now.”
“I can’t allow this. Nox is in no emotional state to see Joth,” Bennet said to Dio, who had pushed to his feet alongside me. “Their relationship is still extremely fragile.”
Frustrated, I grimaced. Typical human. Finding no help there, I turned to Dio. “Take me to Joth.”
The alpha—my alpha, despite my snarling—regarded me with cool brown eyes. He didn’t smile or frown. He didn’t do anything, just stared. What did he see? The broken omega the pack had drafted him to fix? His mate? The mean son of a bitch who had taken a chunk out of his leg? I didn’t know, couldn’t begin to guess.
“He meets with his brother for weekly visits because I forced the issue.” Calm, composed, he blinked at me, and then shifted his stare to Bennet. “Have you asked him if he wants to restore a relationship with Joth?” His lips curved to form an evil smile that sent shivers up and down my spine. “If you believe I sent my mate into a visiting room with a murderer to renew the bond that has caused him agonizing pain, you are mistaken.”
“We assumed the pack agreed to resume visits to continue our research into shifter psychosis, but if the sibling relationship can be repaired…” Bennet trailed off when Dio shook his head. “I realize shifters aren’t a very forgiving species. Family bonds are nevertheless important building blocks within a pack.”
“Even if he hadn’t killed most of his kin, Joth was exiled. His claim on Nox ended then. Joth is not pack, and we don’t care about the science around what made him wrong.” Dio’s mouth thinned. “Nox needed to confront his brother. He still needs it.” His grip on my hand tightened. “I’ll do whatever it takes for him to come to terms with what he lost that day. Seeing Joth and sessions with you helps him process his anger and grief.” He sighed. “So if he wants to see Joth—”
“I do,” I said.
“All right.” Dio dipped his chin in grim acknowledgment, and then glared at Dr. Bennet. “Make it happen.”
A crazy, broken, maybe/maybe-not sterile omega couldn’t prod the humans, but when it comes to alphas, humans were as prone to heeding dominance as any shifter. Bennet wrapped up the conference call with Dr. Gabot and rushed off to prepare Joth, leaving Dio and me in the care of the familiar if still frow
ning Yolanda. She guided us through the administration wing of Westfield, tracing a path to the cramped visiting room with my single plastic chair, metal table, telephone, and viewing window. While humans cleared the route my brother would walk to the visiting room, the other side of the reinforced glass remained empty.
Dio pulled me close. “Are you sure?”
I couldn’t look at him, didn’t want to. The gentle warmth in his voice made my eyes sting. Instead of answering him—my throat was so tight I didn’t think I could choke out a response—I nodded.
“Do you want me to stay?”
“No,” I shouted, apparently able to force sound from my airless lungs after all. My already taut nerves stretched and stretched, threatening to break. My hands shook in Dio’s grasp. I wanted him to stay at my side and never let go of my hand. I didn’t want to face down my murderous brother alone, but more than that, I couldn’t tolerate Joth’s poison touching my alpha. I knew my brother, knew him well. Better than anyone, including our dead father who had visited Joth for years and the humans who studied him. Joth would taunt Dio, seek to provoke him. Do whatever he could to hurt Dio. Because that’s what my brother was, what he did and craved to do. Part of him might try to resist, but in the end, Joth couldn’t help his nature any more than I could resist mine.
“No,” I said, struggling to make my tone softer, calmer. My stare fastened to the buttons of Dio’s shirt and no higher. “I need to know I’m strong enough—me! just me—to stand up to him when it matters most. I need to tell him he failed, that I can do anything and be anything despite what he took and tried to take from me six years ago.” I gulped. “And I need to do it myself.”
“Okay, Nox. Whatever you want. This is your show.” He held me close and breathed me in until the humans were ready. He kissed my forehead when the humans indicated Joth was on the way and murmured, “I’ll be right outside,” before leaving me.
I couldn’t sit. I fidgeted, rocking lightly from one foot to the other. Emotions I couldn’t hope to identify coiled and twined inside me. Some strange and frightening, others euphoric. I wanted to scream out my fury, but at the same time, howl with giddy happiness. I loved my brother. I hated him. My toes curled inside my shoes with my longing to be somewhere, anywhere else. My hands fisted at my side, my feet spread to brace, to stand my ground.
The intensity of all I felt stole my breath.
Joth’s hair stuck out at odd angles when the human guards opened the door to escort him inside. Instead of his regular chambray shirt, he wore a plain black T-shirt. Gray shadowed his eyes, as though he hadn’t been sleeping.
His shoulders slumped when he saw me. “Oh, thank God.”
I arched a silent eyebrow.
“The guards know how important my routine is to me.” He obediently sat while they unlocked the cuffs at his wrist and ankles. “I thought something must have happened to you.”
Something had happened to me. Joth had happened.
Dio had.
The certainty that Dio waited for me outside the door prompted me to stiffen my spine. I glared at Joth through the special glass and grabbed the telephone receiver from the handset bolted to the wall, my nostrils flaring with my every gasping breath. I jutted my chin at the telephone on Joth’s side of the visiting room. We were shifters, our hearing sharp. We could talk without any stupid phone, but this, I wanted my brother to hear perfectly.
Gaze pensive, Joth slowly lifted his hand to reach for his telephone. He pressed the receiver to his ear. “What’s wrong?”
The laugh bubbled out of me. I couldn’t stop it. I hadn’t known I was still capable of laughter, but cold and bitter cackling rolled out of me.
My brother sat up in his plastic chair, his concern grooving lines at both sides of his mouth. “Nox?”
I rubbed my wet eyes, still mirthlessly chortling. “I’m not sterile.”
Joth gasped. “What?”
His screams followed me from the visiting room as I dropped the phone and walked out.
Chapter Seven
We made love in my new den.
I wanted it to be about fucking. When we’d returned from the prison, I’d raced from the Cherokee as soon as Dio braked in his driveway. He hadn’t talked during the drive, for which I’d been grateful. Too many emotions had churned inside me, twisting and turning. I couldn’t begin to parse them. After years of trying my best to feel nothing, the floodgates had opened. I’d wanted no part of that. None.
I should’ve stripped and shifted. Maybe I would have, but Dio had jerked the keys from the ignition and sprinted after me. Across the driveway. Through the bushes. Into my workshop. I’d paced, circling the new space I’d claimed as mine, my hands fisted in my hair at my temples.
I’d conceived. We’d made a life together, Dio and I, somehow in my damaged and barren belly… perhaps not barren anymore. The humans had said so. How could I have carried that spark inside me and not known? Never recognized the stirring of a baby within me? I’d squeezed my eyes shut, my fingers clenching tighter. I’d tugged at my hair, relishing the pain because it anchored me in the here and now instead of tossing me into the chasm of possibilities spread out ahead of me.
A wounded wail had worked up my throat.
Dio had walked to me, not stalking me like an apex predator, but quietly, carefully, his every move guarded. When I hadn’t rejected him or his approach, he’d lifted his arms. He’d enfolded me in his embrace, not to control me during sex, but offering comfort.
His gentleness disarmed me. My explosive anger banked from a fiery conflagration to hot embers. It didn’t die. My rage at his high-handedness felt awry—an omega should gladly obey, after all—but along with that inescapable sense of wrongness, my fury also felt just. Moving me from my home to this new one? Without my input? Perhaps other omegas and the rest of the pack approved of and condoned his alpha bullshit, but it wasn’t okay with me. I wouldn’t let that slide.
But I’d rested against his shoulder as he held me. I hadn’t cried. I’d wept fiercely for so long, I didn’t think I had any tears left. I’d breathed through the pain and confusion, struggled to ride the storm rather than always fighting against it. My chest had swelled with each inhale. Dio had rubbed my back in slow, steady strokes as I’d blown out the air through my parted lips. His scent had soothed me, the zing of fresh pine I’d come to realize was Dio and not just scent markers carried from the last pack he’d led. For once, his strength hadn’t quickened my blood or intimidated me. I could lean on him. He’d invited me to sink into his warmth with the caress of his hands and the soft murmur of his voice. The burdens I carried didn’t scare him. Nothing did.
Lost in my bewildered hurt, I don’t know when it became something else, but when I finally lifted my cheek from his broad shoulder, I only cared about the promise of his kiss. Dio lowered his mouth to mine. The tenderness of his lips shattered me and rebuilt the pieces of me, all at once. My fingers dug into his biceps. I pushed in closer, reveling in his strength. The sweep of his tongue into my mouth delighted me.
“You’re going to be okay,” he said against my tingling lips. “We are.”
Lifting onto the tips of my toes, I greeted his mouth with my own again. I wanted nothing more than his hands on my hips, his scent in my nostrils, and the desire he stirred within me burning me up. Still, as much as I’d coveted his greedy lust, I wanted this strange gentle seduction more.
He removed my clothes in a dreamy haze, his kisses so consuming I hardly noticed the disappearance of my shirt. The wonder of his touch on the bared skin of my chest alone registered. The scrape of my zipper lowering reverberated in a quiet broken by husky moans. He tugged sturdy denim down my hips. I saw only him, felt only him. His dark eyes sparkled with mysteries I couldn’t hope to understand, the sharp slash of his smile beckoning me. His panting breaths, beautiful and right, filled my ears.
Pushing me down to the bed I’d made from wool blankets in the corner, he skated his mouth over my pecs. Arousal coil
ed inside me at his tongue bathing my nipples and at the edgy nip of his teeth. I writhed beneath him, my hands mapping every inch of him. I slid them beneath his shirt to explore contours of muscle, the prick of my claws signaling my loss of control. His groan against my damp skin answered and his own claws rising to dive into my hair and scrape my scalp responded in kind. Moans bled into growls. Soft kisses into needy bites that stung.
When I dared to release his rigid dick from his jeans, he grabbed my wrist to halt me.
“I want,” I said on a plaintive, protesting whine.
“I know. I do too.” He lowered his forehead to brush mine, his stare unwavering. “But we can’t.”
I could be as evil as any shifter and proved it by stroking his hard length, satisfaction searing me when he hissed out his pleasure. “I want,” I said again, my tone no longer pleading, but demanding.
He gulped. “The prison infirmary isn’t supplied with shots for shifter birth control, Nox.”
A frisson of cold fear spiked through me, but I turned away from such thoughts, as I’d rejected anything else I didn’t want to—or couldn’t—deal with. “Fuck me.” I lifted up my head to mouth his throat, giving him a hint of teeth. “You can take care of me after.”
“If my semen has already filled your ass, I could make you pregnant by bringing you off after fucking you.” He groaned while I gnawed at his Adam’s apple. “I won’t risk it. Won’t risk you. Or us.”
I bit him hard enough to break his skin and draw blood. My dick jerked happily.
Dio cursed. He shuddered. “All right.”
He shucked out of his jeans so fast I barely missed the intimate press of his body, my hands busy tugging off his shirt. He resettled atop me, as naked as me, but glorious. Golden skin stretched over dense muscle, the hair on his chest like silk between my questing fingers.
“All right,” Dio repeated, digging a slim packet from his discarded blue jeans pocket. He tore it open with his teeth, and then squeezed lubricant from it. He spread slick wet onto my aching dick. I whispered his name, so damn hungry I ached for him in the marrow of my bones.