Every Dawn Forever (17 page)

The nurse came into the room, sat down at the counter and logged into the computer.  “Have you ever been to an OB?” the nurse asked, as Sydney fiddled with the paper gown she wore.

“Yeah, when I was a teenager.”

She made a humming noise and typed on the computer.  She asked a few cursory health questions and then said the doctor would be in to see her shortly.

“You’ll like Dr. Gershwin.  She’s really funny and nice,” Alyssa said and then stood.  “I’m going out into the waiting room.  I’ll see you when you’re done.”

She smiled silently at her friend and watched the door shut.  The almost silent snick of the door closing sounded like a gunshot in her ears.  She was jumpy, and she felt like she was about to be choked to death by her past.

There was a double knock and then the door opened a few seconds later, a woman in her early thirties stepping inside and holding out her hand.

“I’m Dr. Gershwin.  How are you today, Sydney?”

She didn’t want to start out their new doctor/patient relationship with bullshit, so she said what she was feeling.  “Freaking out.”

The doctor paused as she was sitting down on a small wheeled stool, blinked and cocked her head to the side and then finished sitting down.  “I appreciate your honesty.  Alyssa wouldn’t tell me what was up, just that it was important you see me right away, so here we are.  Why don’t you tell me what’s going on with you, and then we’ll go from there.”

There was only a heartbeat where Sydney felt like burying her head in the sand and pretending that she’d never thought of the ramifications of what might be growing inside her, if she was even pregnant, but that wasn’t an option.  Weres had an extraordinary sense of smell, and it wouldn’t be too long before they would be able to tell that she was pregnant.  If she was.

The sad, brutal story of her life flowed from her mouth.  She spared no details, pulled no punches.  Within the confines of this room, their conversation was sacred.

The doctor pursed her lips together and then reached for Sydney’s hand.  “But you’re safe now?” the doctor asked.

“Very,” she nodded.  Of that she was certain.  She would always be safe within the house and the
baro,
but the question that remained on her mind, regardless of Alyssa’s assurances, was if she was carrying her former mate’s child, would they want anything to do with her?

“Good,” the doctor said, blowing out a relieved breath.  She pulled a paper calendar from a drawer and handed it to her, instructing her to find the date of her last period.

The doctor looked at the date and then typed into her computer, letting Sydney hold the paper calendar.  After what felt like an eternity, Dr. Gershwin said, “According to your last period, your conception days were most likely the fourth, fifth, and sixth of September.  Did you have unprotected sex during those days?”

Her heart seized in her chest.  The fourth was the night she had been rescued.

“I did.”

“With the one you’re afraid is the father?” she asked gently.

Sydney shook her head and felt something wet hit the top of her hand and realized she was crying.  The doctor handed her a tissue and she blotted at her eyes.

“I always used natural birth control before, Queen Ann’s Lace.”  She’d been able to gather it during the times that she was let outside and had never been questioned about it, for which she was grateful.

Her eyebrows went up.  “I had heard that it worked on weres, but it definitely doesn’t work on humans.  Tell me about the night that your mate drugged you.”

She closed her eyes, her happiness at the good news slipping away as she revisited the night she was willing to die rather than stay in that hell one night more.  She remembered it as clearly as if it had just happened.  The evil glint in his eyes.  The sharp stab as the needle struck her.  His crass humor and the threat that lingered in the air between them.  He’d meant for her to suffer, and she would have if she’d stayed.  That drugging had been so very different from the ones before, and she knew that it was because her guys were so willing to take care of her.

The doctor leaned back against the counter and said, “I’m not certain, so what I’m about to say is an educated guess.  Since we don’t have the needle and it’s been so long since it happened, there’s really no way to know what he injected you with.  But you mentioned that pains occurred after you were drugged.  It sounds to me as if the drug he injected you with not only increased your libido, but probably amped up your ovulation.  Since the natural birth control had stopped your ovulation, it most likely forced you to ovulate and possibly increased the number of eggs, which would explain the pains that you had.  There are drugs out there that work that fast for weres — within hours really — that will cause the uterus to release eggs like there’s no tomorrow.”

As if on cue, there was a knock at the door and the nurse handed the doctor a sheet of paper.

“Your pregnancy test came back positive.”

Sydney let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding since the doctor had told her about the potential effects of the drug concoction her former mate had injected her with.

“Whatever you were injected with was strong enough to counteract the natural birth control and throw your body into ovulation.  Whoever you had sex with that night was in the right place at the right time, so to speak.”  She paused, but only briefly.  “From your relief, I’m guessing that the one that drugged you is not the father.”

She shook her head.  “The fourth was the night I was drugged and several hours later I had sex.  But for several days before that, the one that drugged me hadn’t had sex with me.”  She wondered now if he’d been abstaining because of the drug.  Instead of taking out his aggressions in bed, he’d used his fists.  Shivering, she tried not to think about how violent he would have been with her after restraining himself.  She probably would have been lucky to be conscious the next day.

Dr. Gershwin examined her and then gave her a pamphlet about pregnancy.  “You’re about four weeks along.  I’d like you to come back in another four weeks and we’ll do the wand ultrasound.  Your baby should be due around June twenty-fourth.”

Sydney shook her hand and sat by herself in the exam room for several minutes, letting her thoughts roam.  It was the best news she’d heard since the relo group told her that she was going to be rescued.  She was
not
carrying her former mate’s legacy, but the child of one her mates.  The ones that had set her free and come to mean everything to her.  She yawned, covering her mouth with her hand.  She hadn’t been sleeping well the last two nights.  Worry over her possible pregnancy, along with dreams of what she’d witnessed in the den, had left her exhausted in the daylight.  Even the arms of her mates around her at night hadn’t stopped her from worrying over…everything.  Now that she had good news, she knew her dreams would be sweeter and sleep would come back to her.

After she dressed, she stuffed the paper gown in the trash and gathered her purse, tucking the pamphlet inside.  Alyssa was sitting in the waiting room, rubbing her large belly and reading something on her smartphone.  Sydney smiled at her and then made an appointment with the receptionist for the following month.

“Well?”  Alyssa asked, pushing herself up from the chair with a grunt.

“I’m pregnant.  And it’s theirs…not
his
.”

Alyssa made a little girly squealing noise and hugged Sydney, and she didn’t hesitate to hug her back.  “Thank you for being a friend to me.  I wouldn’t want to be here by myself.”

“I’m glad I could be here for you.”

Alyssa’s Camaro roared to life and as they pulled out onto the street, she asked, “When are you going to tell them?”

“I don’t know.  Soon.  Before our mating on Saturday.  Do you think they’ll be mad that I didn’t talk to them first?”

“I’m not sure.  I don’t know them all that well since they’ve only lived here for a few months.  But if it were my guys, I hate to say it, but they’d probably be a little upset that I didn’t want to confide in them.  Or that I thought they couldn’t handle the situation.  Men are funny about trust.”

Indeed.

But even if they were mad at her for keeping it from them, she knew that they wouldn’t stay mad for long.  Not only did they love her, a feeling she most definitely returned in spades, but they were honorable and amazing, and would burst with joy at hearing the news.

Chapter 14

Sterling tightened the bolts on the bottom of the new office chair that he had picked out for Sydney.  Although he really enjoyed it when she hung out with him during work, he knew that handing him tools wasn’t exactly the most stimulating job in the world.  When they first came to work at the gym, the office that Orion claimed had been entirely empty.  It was a new addition to the gym that Dante and his brothers had done to make room for the two clans to have offices to work in.  Sterling had picked out a simple metal desk and filing cabinets, and Orion had brought an old, ratty desk chair that he’d used in college, and that was the extent of the furniture in the small space. Now that Sydney was staying with them and spending most of her working hours in the office, it was important to Sterling that she was comfortable.  Along with Alyssa, the two women were dragging the gym into the twenty-first century by making all the files digital, which involved a lot of typing and shredding of old documents.

Earlier in the day he had put together an oak two-person desk and was now putting together a comfortable leather desk chair for her.  Turning the chair upright, he sat down in it to make sure that it wouldn’t fall apart, and then scooted back and forth a little to make sure the wheels didn’t squeak.

Orion walked into the office.  “Hey, that’s nice.  Syd will love it.”

The chair Orion sat in had a split in the seat that had been repaired with black electrical tape, and it creaked whenever he moved, but Orion refused to give it up, saying it was comfortable as hell.  Maybe so, but it was still an eyesore.

“I hope so.”  Glancing at his watch, Sterling wondered where Syd was.  She’d said that she was going to lunch with Alyssa, who had picked her up at the house at noon.  It was now almost four.

As if she knew he’d been thinking about her, she walked into the office.  “Oh, I love the chair!”

Sterling stood up and took her hand, leading her to the chair.  She smiled up at him.  “This is so nice.”

He grinned like an idiot.  Making her happy made him want to dance a jig.

Dropping a swift kiss to her cheek, he said, “I’m glad you like it, love.”

He paused for a moment, certain he smelled disinfectant like they used in doctor’s offices and hospitals, but he dismissed the thought as soon as it happened.  If she was ill, she would have told them.  Wouldn’t she?

Before he could ask her if she was okay, one of the guys that worked the front desk paged him over the intercom, so he filed the thought away for later and went to see what was going on.

About 9:30, Orion called him into the office.  Syd was asleep, her head resting on her bent arm.

He lowered his voice.  “I looked up from the computer and she was out.  Can you take her home?  Crux has a client right now and I’ve got to finish up this report for Dante.”

“You bet.”

Finding her purse in the bottom drawer, he slung it over his shoulder and picked her up as gently as he could.  She stirred a bit, but settled quickly.  As he nodded at his brother, he wondered if she hadn’t been sleeping well.  A lot of shit had happened in the last couple of weeks.  Her ex tracking her down like that was enough to give anyone a case of the heebie-jeebies.

Tucking her into the passenger side of his truck, he buckled her in and shut the door, jogging around the back and climbing in behind the wheel.  Pulling away from the gym, he reached over and stroked her cheek, which was warm and soft.

The drive to their home was short and silent, and he carried her into the house and straight to the master bedroom.  The bedroom was mostly dark, save for a spill of moonlight through the open window near the bed.  The purse dropped to the floor as he let go of it and settled her in the middle of the bed, tugging off her shoes and jeans before covering her with the sheet.  She made a soft, snorting sound and rolled onto her side, never truly waking.

The purse had fallen open when it hit the floor, illuminated by the moonlight, and he bent and scooped up her wallet, lipstick, and a pamphlet.  When he turned the pamphlet over, the word
pregnancy
leapt off the page at him and everything in his world narrowed down to that one word.  He looked at her in the darkness, her form a darker shadow among the shadows.  Was she pregnant?

Happiness rose up in him, but he tempered it quickly.  If she had gone without them, then she must not believe the child to be theirs.  Blowing out a breath, he stuffed the pamphlet in the purse and set it on the dresser.  He walked out of the room and shut the door quietly, leaving her to sleep.

Worry assailed him, making him question what was going on.  He wanted nothing more than to mate with Syd and have cubs.  But even if she carried her former mate’s baby, it wouldn’t change how he felt about her.  And he knew it wouldn’t matter to his brothers either.  He’d love any child she carried, because he loved her.