Chapter 138: THE PREGNANCY REVEAL

CHAPTER 138

THE PREGNANCY REVEAL

SELINA

Julian stared at me.

Not the quick blink of surprise. The full, unblinking stare. Her face went completely still, as if her mind had stopped processing new information and needed time to catch up. The afternoon light caught the side of her face, highlighting the sudden tightness around her mouth.

Her lips parted. “How…” She stopped, then started again, voice lower. “When did you… how did you do it?”

I turned and started walking again. Standing still made the words feel larger than I wanted them to feel. The dirt path felt uneven under my boots. My chest stayed tight. “I didn’t do anything. It happened.”

Julian’s footsteps quickened immediately. She caught up and matched my pace, her shoulder nearly brushing mine. “Selina. You are going to stand here and explain this to me properly. When did you find out?”

I exhaled through my nose and stopped walking. The air tasted faintly of dry leaves and dust. “Three days ago.”

Her hand closed around my arm and stopped me. The grip was firm, almost hard. “Three days ago and you said nothing?”

Heat rose in my face. I didn't like the way she's bashing me. I kept my eyes on the road. “I was trying to understand it myself first.”

She studied my expression for a long moment, reading past the surface the way she always did. Then she released my arm. Her frown deepened.

“Tell me from the beginning,” she ordered.

FLASHBACK

Three days ago.

I had been in the bathroom running the shower. The water temperature sat high the way I always set it in the morning. Steam filled the small space quickly, clouding the mirror and thickening the air until it felt heavy against my skin. That kind of warmth usually settled something in me.

That morning it did the opposite.

The nausea arrived without warning. No sharp twist in my stomach. No warning of dizziness. One moment I was reaching for the shampoo bottle. The next I was on my knees on the cold tiles, both hands gripping the edge of the tub while last night’s dinner left me in a rapid, undignified rush.

It lasted two minutes. Maybe three.

Afterward I sat back on my heels. The tiles pressed hard against my skin. I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth and breathed carefully through my nose, waiting to see if more would come.

Nothing came.

I stood up slowly. My legs felt slightly unsteady. I turned the water back on, finished the shower, and told myself it was stress. The past weeks had been relentless with running around trying to stop Charlotte from continuing whatever relationship she's having with Dorian, trying to talk to Dorian to make him see things and running around to see Maeve. And now the news of Dorian arranged meetings with the fathers of other women. The body did things under that kind of pressure. This was one of those things.

I wrapped the towel around myself and wiped the mirror clean with my palm. My reflection looked the same. Maybe slightly more tired around the eyes. My skin has been different lately. Softer in some places. More sensitive when fabric brushed against it. I had been waking in the night for no clear reason. The smell of the kitchen in the mornings had started bothering me in a way it never used to.

I stared at my reflection and the thought arrived quietly.

When was my last period?

I stood very still for a long time, doing the calculation in my head.

END OF FLASHBACK

I looked at Julian. My voice stayed level even though something cold sat low in my stomach. “It’s been three months. I’m three months late.”

Julian’s jaw dropped. She repeated the number under her breath, as if checking whether it would change if she said it out loud. “Three months. Selina. Your period was off for three months and you are only getting worried now?”

I shrugged. The motion felt stiff. “It happens to me. It has always happened to me. You know stress can cause changes in routine. My cycle always goes irregular. I didn’t think anything of it.”

Her voice rose a fraction, her eyes widening. “Three months is not irregular. Three months is a message.”

“I know that now.”

She pressed her lips together and looked at me, then at the road ahead, then back at me. The afternoon light had shifted lower. “We need to do a test right now and today.”

I had known she would say that the moment the word left my mouth. I had already been thinking of the pharmacy on the east side of town, the one that sat far enough from the pack that none of our people used it.

“There’s a pharmacy,” I said. “East side.”

“I know the one.” She was already adjusting direction. “Come on.”

The pharmacist barely glanced at us. Julian picked two tests from the shelf, paid without conversation, and walked out with the small paper bag in her hand. It looked ordinary. Almost insignificant. I focused on that smallness so I would not focus on everything else.

We returned to my room. I locked the door. Julian sat on the edge of the bed with her hands resting in her lap. She handed me the bag and nodded toward the bathroom.

I took it without speaking and went inside. The instruction sheet felt thin under my fingers. The specific intimacy of the moment settled over me… the knowledge that two minutes could change the shape of everything depending on which direction the result decided to go.

I came out and set the test on the desk. We both looked at it.

Neither of us spoke while we waited. There was nothing useful to say, and Julian understood that. She sat on the bed. I stood beside the desk. The room stayed very quiet except for the ordinary sounds of the pack house around us… footsteps somewhere above, a door closing, a voice in the corridor that faded quickly.

Two minutes.

The result was clear.

I looked at it for a long time without speaking. My hands rested against the edge of the desk. The wood felt cool under my palms.

Julian came to stand beside me. She looked at the test as well.

Her voice came quiet. “Okay.”

I sat down on the chair. The room felt slightly smaller than it had before. My pulse beat steadily in my throat.

Julian’s next question arrived carefully, without accusation. Only the next logical step. “Do you know who the father is?”

I nodded once. “Yes.”

She studied my face. “Are you certain?”

“A hundred percent.” I held her gaze. “It’s Dorian.”

Julian stayed quiet for a moment. Her eyes moved across my expression, checking something. “Are you sure Dorian is truly the father of your child?”

“Yes. I am.”

She nodded slowly. “When did it happen?”

“The night of Charlotte’s induction.” The words came out steady even though the memory of that night still carried a particular weight. “The drinking. You know what happened.”

She nodded again. She had not known. She sat back down on the bed and looked at the test still resting on the desk between us.

Something crossed her face. Not quite a smile. Something more complicated. The expression of someone who had just identified a piece on the board she had not seen before.

Her voice dropped into a quieter, more deliberate tone. “Well, congratulations to you, Selina. You have just found a way to pin yourself to Dorian.”

I looked at her. My chest tightened. “What do you mean?”

“Think about it.” She leaned forward slightly. “The Council is already pressing him on the Luna situation. He is arranging meetings with other packs. There is a timeline building around him.” She paused. “And you are carrying his child.”

The word child sat strangely in my chest. I had not fully arrived there yet… at the reality of it, at what it actually was beyond a test result on a desk. I was still in the part where I processed the fact of it before I could reach the implications.

Julian was already past that stage.

“Tell him,” she urged softly.

I shook my head immediately. I shot her a pointed look. “He will not even look at me on a normal day. If I walk into his office with this he is going to assume I am trying to trap him. He will not believe it.”

She held my gaze without blinking. “If you are certain Dorian is the father, and you know when and how it happened, then you explain it. You tell him the date and the details. Everything specific enough that it cannot be invented. You stand on the truth of it, Selina. If it is true, stand on it.”

My voice became quieter. “And if he still refuses? If he denies it regardless? If he tells me I have been sleeping with other men and this is not his?”

Julian looked at me for a long moment.

The evening light sat lower now, coming through the gap in the curtain at a slant and catching the dust in the air between us. The test remained on the desk. The room stayed very quiet.

She gave a small shrug.

“Then you will have no choice,” she answered, “but to take it to the Council of Elders.”