Chapter 13: Missing Days

Chapter 13: Missing Days

Three weeks passed in a strange, fragile peace. Glenmorrin's contacts continued digging into Castellan's operation, piecing together information in careful, measured steps. Jhonatan spent his mornings learning things he never imagined he'd need to know—how to read a room full of strangers for hidden threats, how to disarm someone twice his size, how to disappear into a crowd without drawing a second glance.

In the evenings, something softer took over. Quiet dinners. Conversations that stretched late into the night. The strange, careful unfolding of two people learning how to exist beside each other without the shadow of violence hanging over every moment.

It was during one of these quiet mornings, three weeks after that first night together, that Jhonatan noticed something was wrong.

He stood in the small bathroom, staring at the calendar app on the phone Glenmorrin had given him, counting days over and over as if the numbers might change if he willed it hard enough.

They didn't.

His cycle should have come a week ago. He'd always been irregular before his differentiation, but Glenmorrin had explained that once an Omega's body settled after their first heat, cycles tended to become predictable, almost clockwork.

A week late wasn't nothing.

Jhonatan's hands trembled slightly as he set the phone down, his mind racing through possibilities he wasn't ready to name out loud.

He found Glenmorrin in the kitchen, back turned, focused on the coffee brewing on the counter.

"Can I ask you something?" Jhonatan said, his voice betraying more nerves than he intended.

Glenmorrin turned, immediately reading the tension in Jhonatan's posture. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, exactly," Jhonatan said carefully. "I just have a question. About Omega biology. About bonding."

Glenmorrin's expression shifted into something more focused. "Go on."

"When an unbonded Alpha and Omega are together during a heat cycle," Jhonatan said, choosing his words with deliberate care, "how likely is it that... that something happens? A pregnancy, I mean."

The coffee pot finished brewing behind Glenmorrin, but he made no move toward it, his full attention locked on Jhonatan now.

"During an active heat, extremely likely," Glenmorrin said slowly. "It's one of the reasons unbonded pairings are usually avoided unless both parties are prepared for the possibility."

"And after the heat had already broken?" Jhonatan asked. "Like it had for us, that night?"

Glenmorrin went very still. "Less likely, but not impossible. Residual hormones can linger for days after a first heat specifically, since the body hasn't yet learned to regulate itself."

Jhonatan swallowed hard. "How many days?"

"Jhonatan." Glenmorrin's voice had dropped low, careful. "Why are you asking me this?"

"Because I'm late," Jhonatan said, the words tumbling out before he could stop them. "A week late. And I've never been late before, not since you told me my cycle would stabilize."

The silence that followed stretched long enough that Jhonatan could hear his own heartbeat in his ears.

"Okay," Glenmorrin said finally, his voice steadier than Jhonatan expected, though his hands had curled slightly against the counter behind him. "Okay. We don't panic. We find out for certain first."

"How?" Jhonatan asked.

"There's a clinic I trust, run by someone outside all of this—no connections to my world, no connections to your father's," Glenmorrin said. "Discreet. We can go this morning."

Jhonatan nodded, though his mind was already spinning through implications he wasn't ready to fully confront. A child. His and Glenmorrin's. Born into a world already hunting them both.

"Jhonatan." Glenmorrin crossed the kitchen, closing the distance between them, his hands settling gently on Jhonatan's shoulders. "Whatever the answer is, we'll handle it. Together. I promise you that."

"I know," Jhonatan whispered, though the fear coiling in his stomach didn't loosen.

---

The clinic was tucked into a nondescript building on the edge of the city, unremarkable enough to avoid attention, clean and quiet inside.

The doctor, a middle-aged woman with sharp eyes and a calm, professional demeanor, drew blood without asking unnecessary questions, promising results within the hour.

The waiting room felt suffocating. Jhonatan sat rigid in a plastic chair, Glenmorrin beside him, close enough that their shoulders touched, a silent anchor against the storm building in Jhonatan's chest.

"Whatever it is," Glenmorrin said quietly, breaking the silence, "it doesn't change anything between us."

"You don't know that," Jhonatan said. "A child changes everything. Especially now, with Castellan, with everything hanging over us."

"It changes the stakes," Glenmorrin admitted. "Not what I feel."

Jhonatan looked at him, searching his face for any trace of doubt, finding none.

"I'm scared," Jhonatan admitted quietly.

"I know," Glenmorrin said. "So am I."

The admission surprised Jhonatan—Glenmorrin, who faced armed men without flinching, admitting fear over something as fragile as this.

Before Jhonatan could respond, the doctor reappeared in the doorway, a folder in hand, her expression unreadable.

"Mr. Alinsky," she said, gesturing them toward her office. "If you'd both come with me."

They followed her into a small consultation room, Jhonatan's pulse hammering so loudly he could barely hear his own footsteps.

The doctor sat behind her desk, opening the folder, glancing between them both with practiced neutrality.

"The results confirm what you suspected," she said. "You're pregnant. Approximately three weeks along, which aligns with the timeline you gave me."

The words hit Jhonatan like a physical weight, his hand instinctively moving to his stomach, though there was nothing yet to feel.

Glenmorrin's hand found his other one, gripping tight.

"Is he healthy?" Glenmorrin asked, his voice tight with something between fear and awe.

"Everything looks normal at this stage," the doctor said. "I'd recommend regular check-ins, given the circumstances you've described to me. Stress isn't good for either of you right now."

Jhonatan barely heard the rest of her instructions, his mind caught in a strange, suspended moment between terror and something that felt almost like joy, the two emotions tangled too tightly to separate.

They left the clinic in near silence, the city noise around them feeling distant, unreal.

"We need to tell no one," Glenmorrin said finally, once they were back in the car. "Not yet. Not until we understand exactly how much danger this puts you in."

"You think Castellan would use this against us," Jhonatan said, understanding dawning cold and sharp.

"I think if Castellan or your father discovers you're carrying my child, it stops being about a debt or an Omega he wants to sell," Glenmorrin said grimly. "It becomes about leverage neither of us can afford to lose."

Jhonatan's hand tightened over his stomach protectively, an instinct he hadn't known he possessed until this exact moment.

"Then we make sure they never find out," Jhonatan said.

Glenmorrin nodded, though the tension in his jaw didn't ease. "I'll increase security around the house. No one comes near you without going through me first."

They drove the rest of the way in silence, the weight of the secret settling heavy between them.

It was only once they'd pulled into the driveway, the house coming into view through the trees, that Jhonatan noticed something wrong—the front door, which he was certain they'd locked that morning, standing slightly ajar.

Glenmorrin noticed it in the same instant, his body going rigid, his hand immediately moving toward the weapon at his side.

"Stay in the car," he said quietly, already reaching for the door handle.

"Glenmorrin—"

"Someone's been inside," Glenmorrin said, his voice dropping to barely a whisper. "And whoever it was might still be."