Chapter 6

Logan's POV

My heart dropped into my stomach. Cold terror washed over the burning heat in my blood.

Before Maxwell could take another step toward me, James shifted his body, completely blocking me from his brother's line of sight. He let out a low, warning growl that vibrated through his chest.

"He's sick, Maxwell," James barked, his voice dripping with venom. "He has a severe fever Back off."

"A fever?" Maxwell sneered, tilting his head "That's not the scent of a fever, brother. That's"

"I said back the fuck off" James roared, stepping forward and flashing his Alpha eyes.

Taking advantage of Maxwell's surprise, James scooped me up into his arms, shielding my face against his chest, and sprinted past his brother toward the dorms. Maxwell didn't chase us, but his dark laughter echoed down the hallway behind us, sending chills down my spine.

The moment James kicked our dorm door shut and locked it, my self-control shattered completely.

The heat was consuming me, burning away every shred of my pride. I tangled my fingers in James's shirt, pulling him down onto the bed with me.

"James please," I sobbed out, my sanity slipping. "Make it stop sleep with me Please."

James pinned my wrists to the mattress, his face inches from mine, his breathing ragged as he fought his own Alpha urges. "No If I knot you during your heat, you will get pregnant. I'm not doing that to you."

Instead, James spent the entire night taking care of me. He wiped my burning skin with cold towels and used his hands to give me relief fingering and jerking me off until I came hard against the sheets, sobbing from sensory overload before passing out from sheer exhaustion.

Two weeks passed in a blur of anxiety. My heat ended, but my body never recovered.

It started with a wave of morning sickness that hit me like a freight train. I spent hours hunched over the toilet, dry-heaving until my throat burned. My appetite vanished, my energy plummeted, and my scent spiked uncontrollably whenever James entered the room.

I didn't have a period to track, but as an Omega, I knew the physical signs of a failed contraceptive. The busted condom. The sudden, overwhelming fatigue. The unnatural sensitivity in my chest.

I was pregnant.

Panic consumed me. I stopped eating. I couldn't focus on the field. When James cornered me in our room to demand why I was spiraling, I snapped, slapping him across the face before breaking down in tears. I screamed that it was his fault, that he had ruined my life.

James didn't hit back. He held my shaking shoulders, his voice strangely steady: "If you are, I'll take responsibility , I'll handle it."

Desperate for absolute proof, I snuck off campus late one afternoon to buy an emergency test strip from a human pharmacy.

I hid in the pharmacy's small bathroom, my hands shaking as I waited for the test lines to form.

Three minutes felt like three years.

One line , Negative.

A sob of pure, overwhelming relief escaped my lips. I wasn't pregnant. The severe nausea and physical exhaustion were just a massive hormonal crash caused by my body fighting off the heat while loaded up on double-doses of inhibitors.

I wiped my tears, a genuine smile breaking across my face for the first time in weeks. I couldn't wait to get back to the dorm and tell James that our nightmare was over.

I hurried back through the university gates, practically floating with relief. I shoved the dorm room door open, calling out, "James! You won't believe"

The words died in my throat.

The dorm room was completely trashed. Books were scattered across the floor, furniture was overturned, and sitting on the edge of James's bed was Maxwell.

In Maxwell's hand was James’s phone and lying on the floor at Maxwell's feet was James, bleeding from his lip, pinned down by two of Maxwell's upperclassmen Alphas.

Maxwell looked up at me, a sickening grin on his face as he held up a file folder. "Look who finally decided to join us. Thanks for leaving your inhibitor prescription receipts in your desk, Logan."