And it felt like it too.
Sanjay headed toward the door but paused with his hand on the knob. “One last thing.”
Jace waited.
“Without that Keiran of yours, you would be dead. He kept you alive until I arrived. I think it would serve you well to remember you’re in his debt.” And with that, the doctor left the room and Don reentered.
Jace didn’t speak, just closed his eyes and waited for the nurse to come and take his pain away.
Chapter 15
Three days later, Jace stood up for the first time. It took every ounce of his strength and pained him in ways he hadn’t imagined possible, but it was progress. The next day, he took a short walk across the room and back. And the day after that, they allowed Keiran in to see him.
While Don went to fetch the omega, Jace sat on the edge of his bed and took stock of the way he felt. He was reminded of the bone-deep tiredness he felt as a child when he just started training in self-defense, but this went even deeper than just his bones. It was in his soul, dragging at everything he did. Never before had he been so aware of his own body, of the way his muscles worked. Motions that were natural and instinctual, such as walking, now had to be done with careful deliberateness. But, he reasoned, it was a fair trade for actually being able to do those things.
He wriggled his ass on the bed, staring impatiently over at the door. How long did it take to walk down a few hallways and back? Were they deliberately stalling, trying to increase his anticipation? It was impossible. He already felt like he was about to explode out of his skin with pure frustration.
Then he heard it. Approaching footsteps, two different sets, both of which he knew intimately. His heart jumped up into his throat and the anticipation he felt earlier paled in comparison to this tension. Every second seemed to drag on for an eternity, driving him insane with each one that passed.
When the door knob turned, he heard every click of the internal mechanism. As the door opened, he thought that he could hear the individual air molecules being pushed.
And then Don appeared in the doorway, but Jace didn’t focus on him. He was focused on the small, pale shape that flung itself beneath Don and raced the short distance to Jace.
“Jace!” Keiran cried, and then he slammed into Jace’s body and they fell back on the bed, rolling over and over as they had done that day they had sex for the first time. They came to a rest against the railing on the other side of the bed. Jace tightened his arms around the squirming omega, who seemed to be trying to bury himself in the alpha’s chest. “You’re alive!”
Despite everything that had happened, and despite the fact that Jace knew he shouldn’t, he couldn’t help but to start laughing as he held the sobbing Keiran in his arms. “Did they tell you I was dead this entire time?”
Keiran sobbed. “No, but it felt like death without you.”
Jace clutched him tighter, only vaguely aware of Don backing out of the room and shutting the door behind himself. “Keiran,” he whispered. “Keiran, I’m here. I promise. I wouldn’t ever leave you. I…”
I love you, he thought. He knew his omega would feel it, but he couldn’t make himself say the words out loud. It just wasn’t the right time for that.
“You’re dumb,” Keiran muttered against his chest. “So stupid.”
Jace slid one hand up into Keiran’s soft hair, then wrapped his fingers around the other man’s face and lifted his chin up for a kiss. Their lips lingered together and they breathed the same air, taking comfort from their nearness.
“I really hope no one’s been causing you any trouble?”
Keiran shook his head, looking up into Jace’s eyes. “No. But I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it out loud.”
“It’s okay.” Jace laughed. “It was going to come out anyway, right?”
The omega looked down and Jace just kept stroking him, pressing an occasional soft kiss to his cheeks and forehead. “I guess so. But what are we going to do about it?”
“You just leave that to me. Okay? I’ve got so much to do now that one more little thing isn’t going to be the end of the world.”
“But it’s not going to be just a little thing!”
Jace hugged Keiran even tighter. “I know.” They were in for some uncomfortable discussions in the future, that was for sure. Jace was ready for them, but he didn’t know how willing Keiran would be.
“Um…”
“Yes?”
“Just to add to the difficulty,” Keiran said, shyly, “I think I might be pregnant.”
For a moment, Jace had no idea what those words meant and then it hit him like a truck full of bricks. “Who’ve you been sleeping with while I was half-dead? Was it Don? Ow!”
Keiran hit him on the shoulder, which he supposed he deserved. “Idiot!” his normally sweet omega spat out. “You know I would never be with anyone but you! Even if you won’t say it, I will! I love you, Jace!”
“I love you, Keiran,” came out of his mouth before he could stop it. And once he said it, he wondered why he hadn’t just said it before. It felt good. Better than good. It was right. “So… pregnant?”
The omega blushed and didn’t say anything for a moment. Jace looked him over in the meantime. Now that he was aware he should be looking for changes, he found quite a few. In the short time since they’d last seen each other, Keiran’s body had filled out some on his delicate frame and his skin glowed. Even his hair seemed somehow healthier. There could be no doubt that something was happening to him.
“I haven’t taken a test or talked to the doctor about it, but I’m pretty sure. It’s almost like I can feel it, just like how I can feel you. Like there’s something in here that loves me.” Keiran placed both hands over his stomach. “I thought that I’d been feeling kind of different lately, but I didn’t know exactly how until I… felt it. You know?”
Somehow, Jace knew exactly what he was talking about. He just sighed and held his boyfriend closer to himself, cuddling him. “When do you think it happened?”
“I’m not sure. I mean, we never used protection so it could have been any time.”
That was true, and a major oversight that Jace should have taken into account. Oh, well. What was done, was done and what happened next seemed obvious, but Jace wasn’t going to force that on Keiran if he didn’t want it. It seemed like they’d be having this talk a lot sooner than he thought.
“What do you want to do about it?”
The omega glared at him. “I’m not getting rid of it!”
“Whoa!” Jace held up his hands. “Not what I meant. Of course you’re not getting rid of it. I just meant, what do you want to do about… us? I said I would never leave you and I won’t, unless you leave me. Which… you can do. If you think it’s best.”
Keiran reached out and grabbed onto Jace’s hands, holding them tightly. “I’m not going anywhere. Ever. I love you.”
“And I love you.” Here came the toughest question of all, and he hadn’t even had time to prepare for it. “Would you like to be my mate?”
“I think you’d like to be mine.” Keiran laughed, almost hysterically. “After all, you’re the one who’s always trying to mark me.”
“That’s instinct.” Jace laughed too. “And I really do want to. Of course I do. I’ve wanted to for ages. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. But what do you want?”
“I want you to mark me. I want to be your mate. But, Jace, how would that even work if you’re the prince? That means you would be Head Predator someday and I would be a prince? A king? I’m not royalty. Wouldn’t everyone hate that?”
Jace lightly touched his fingertip to Keiran’s lips, shushing him. “You worry too much. There might be a lot of sticklers for purity of blood, but there will also be a lot of people who will think it’s quite the love story. And judging by the turning tides, maybe it’s time that something like this happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that our baby might end up being bo
rn into a world more torn than we were,” Jace admitted. “Civil war is coming. I might not have been restored to my full duties yet, but I’ve heard that the crime rates are rising. On both sides. At an alarming rate, Keiran. And those shapeshifters we captured didn’t really know anything about what the leaders of this movement are planning, but they did get across the message pretty clearly that it was going to happen soon.”
Keiran hesitated, body stilling slightly in Jace’s arms. He didn’t know why no one had come in to interrupt them yet. Every second counted. “Go on,” Jace encouraged.
The omega hesitated for only a heartbeat longer before pushing his face against Jace’s shoulder. “I’ve always felt like everything is unfair,” he murmured. “In this life we live. I’ve always felt pushed aside and discounted because I’m an omega, but then I stop and think that if things are this bad for me, what must it be like for the prey shapeshifters? It has to be awful. It’s like we really aren’t any better than the animals inside us, whether we’re a lion or a mouse.”
Jace agreed, but he had taken enough lessons in debate to realize that acknowledging the other side of the argument was just as important as defending his own views. “But we are animals, Keiran. Animals naturally fall into this kind of hierarchy.”
“But we’re humans too!” the omega said, lifting up his brilliant blue eyes to peer at his alpha. “We’re born as humans. We aren’t born as animals. We can do things that normal animals can’t, because we have the intelligence and memory for it. Everything we have right now, including this very castle, is because we’re human. We need to stop treating ourselves like labels can define us.
“And I want to point out that the animal kingdom is full of chains. Full of those different kinds of hierarchies, at all different levels. You don’t normally find lions and tigers in the same chain, same as you don’t find deer and mice in the same one. They’re on different levels, or equal levels in different places. The animal kingdom allows for that. But our intelligence… makes us stupid about that. We want everyone to be the same, when we need to be trying to make sure that different people have the same opportunities.” Keiran pulled in a deep breath. “If my worth hadn’t been judged based on my supposed standing in life, Pa never would have sold me.”
And I never would have met you.
Jace knew the omega was right. More than right, he was dead accurate. “What you’re saying is that this clearly isn’t working and we need to figure out another way.”
“Yes.”
“People don’t like to admit they’ve made mistakes.”
Keiran smiled bitterly. “I guess we’ll just have to hope that they can see admitting to a mistake is worth the price of being able to stay alive.”
They clutched at each other in the bed in silence. The clock on the wall ticked away the seconds as Jace thought hard over the situation. “I think we should wait on me marking you. I think it would be a good… ace in the hole to have, you know? To show that I’m taking this seriously. Making the change that I want everyone else to make.”
Keiran made a face. “I guess that makes sense, although it’s kind of scary to think that I’m now part of this weird, backward world that wants me to make personal decisions based on politics.”
“You get used to it.”
“Well, you had just better make sure that if you propose to me in public or something, you better make it good.”
Jace laughed and kissed his love. “I promise.”
Chapter 16
“You’ll do fine.”
Keiran glanced over at his alpha, the one who had taken his virginity and stolen his heart. Beautiful, powerful Jace, who now walked around as if he hadn’t been bedridden only three weeks ago. He smiled encouragingly, but Keiran didn’t really feel very encouraged. In fact, he felt as if he was about to throw up, only this time it wasn’t from morning sickness or a sudden bout of nausea when facing down a food that he normally loved.
Pregnancy sucked, and not the least because of all the uncomfortable physical changes. Shapeshifters went through a pregnancy from start to finish much faster than humans did, in about half the time, similar to many animals. There were exceptions, of course, such as elephant shifters who held onto their babies for almost two whole years before releasing them into the world.
For most, that speed meant symptoms were doubled in intensity. And it meant that Keiran was now showing to the point where his predicament would have been obvious to anyone around him… if the entire castle hadn’t already known. An omega in the public eye, as a prince’s servant, could only visit the doctor so frequently before others started putting the puzzle together.
And those visits were a pain in the ass too. It always seemed like he was doing something wrong. He wasn’t eating enough, and not enough of the right thing. He’d accidentally missed taking a vitamin out of the dozen or so he’d been prescribed. He was exercising too much. He complained too much.
Sanjay would complain too if he had a little wolf jumping up and down on his bladder all night.
It all sucked, but Keiran was already smitten with the child. It was healthy and active, and its presence in the back of his mind made him feel paternal. More than that, it made him feel ready to be a fother. He really wanted to meet the kid.
“Keiran?”
“Oh… sorry. Did you say something?” he asked, turning toward Jace. Pregnancy brain was another thing that sucked. The baby was stealing all his brain cells, somehow.
“I said you’ll do fine.”
“I guess. Maybe. I really don’t want to do this, fine or not.”
Jace rubbed his hands over Keiran’s shoulders in an attempt to soothe some of their tension away. “I know but, if you do good, I’ll reward you tonight.”
I really hope I feel good enough to be rewarded.
So much had happened over the past couple of weeks. Auroris had officially topped the charts as one of the deadliest cities in all of Dexus, due to the sudden extreme rise in crime as the different shapeshifters fought against one another. Not only that, but there had been the whole grueling process of discussing their ideas for the future and actually getting the council to want to agree to listen to those ideas. The 13 council members weren’t pleased that their young prince had gotten himself attached to a pregnant commoner omega. Yet, there was nothing they could do about it except to be incredibly ornery all the time.
How it had come to be decided that Keiran would be the one proposing the ideas to them, he had no idea. But, here he was, standing with Jace just outside the grand meeting room and waiting for the others to arrive.
“Do you remember everything we practiced?” Jace asked.
Keiran scowled at him. “Of course I remember! I’m pregnant, not brain dead! Unlike you were, Your Highness.”
Jace caught his face in his hands and pressed a kiss to his lips, sliding his tongue into the omega’s mouth and back out again. “I wasn’t brain dead. Just taking a very long nap. For days.”
Keiran growled at him, wrapping his arms around Jace’s neck. With everything he felt these days, physical attraction wasn’t high on the list. He felt it now, however, a pleasant stirring of warmth deep in his loins. He just hoped he’d be able to feel it again for later on.
The door next to them opened. Keiran sprang away from Jace but didn’t get anywhere because the alpha kept an arm around his waist. He felt that Jace was trying to tell him that they weren’t doing anything wrong, but under the stern gaze of the councilman glaring at them he couldn’t help feeling like a teenager who had been caught out past his curfew.
“We’re ready for you,” the man said. He sounded as if he spoke through a mouthful of marbles, probably due to the fact that he had his lips peeled back and his teeth visibly clenched. And what shiny-white, pointy teeth they were.
Keiran swallowed hard and followed Jace into the room, aiming to take his usual place just to the right of the head of the table. That arm around his waist had other ideas, guiding him to take the se
at that Jace normally occupied as prince; the alpha settled beside him, taking a spot of less importance.
The significance of this action didn’t go unnoticed by the council. A murmur ran down their line. Keiran didn’t know any of their names despite having sat in on many meetings ever since he came to the castle. They didn’t speak one another’s names very often, no doubt because they all knew each other so well that there was no need to distinguish who was talking to whom. They knew each other’s habits and beliefs, with enough history between them for long-lasting arguments to form. Really, it made everything all that much more confusing for an outsider.
“Well,” one of them said. “We gathered here because you summoned us, even though it’s supposed to be our day off. This had better be worth it.”
Another spoke, “Judging from what they just did, it looks to be interesting, at least.”
Keiran opened his mouth but a third council member spoke, cutting him off before he could even get started. “If this is about the relationship between you two, we do not support it.”
“No, that’s not…”
He was interrupted again by another person. “Who asked you for your opinion?”
The third speaker twisted in his seat to glare at the other. “While you might be a closet romantic, I am a realist!”
“Afraid of a changing world,” yet someone else muttered.
“Their relationship is more than just a fling! The omega is pregnant! They are mates in everything but name!” The council member waved his arms in agitation. “Who knows what effect this will have in the future? And in such a treacherous time already!”
“Excuse me,” Keiran said. Jace sat beside him, hands folded on the desk. Keiran was irritated with him for not helping, but also thankful that the alpha was giving him a chance to take care of this on his own. “Hey!” Keiran barked.
It took a moment for the arguing to stop, but slowly the members of the council turned to look at Keiran with expectant looks, eyebrows raised.
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