Chapter Four : Triplets

Lena's pov

Six weeks passed like breathing.

I stopped flinching at the sound of engines. Stopped sleeping with one eye open. Stopped counting the men in every room like I needed an exit strategy.

The compound had become something I didn't have a word for yet. Not home exactly. But the closest thing to it I'd ever had.

I had a routine now. Morning coffee with Axel who talked enough for three people before nine AM. Afternoons helping Doc restock the medical room because he asked once and I said yes and somehow it just kept happening. Evenings when Ghost would sit in the common room reading and not say much but always know exactly where I was.

It was the quietest I had ever felt inside my own head.

Which is probably why my body chose a perfectly calm Tuesday morning to fall apart completely.

I made it to the bathroom.

Barely.

I knelt on the cold tile floor and was sick until there was nothing left. Then I sat back against the wall and pressed my forehead against the cabinet and waited for the room to stop spinning.

This was the third morning in a row.

I'd told myself it was stress. The adjustment. Six weeks of adrenaline finally catching up with my body all at once.

I was running out of things to tell myself.

I cleaned my face at the sink and looked at my reflection for a long moment. Something was sitting heavy in the back of my mind that I had been refusing to look at directly for two weeks now.

I looked at it now.

My stomach dropped to the floor.

Doc found me sitting on the bathroom floor ten minutes later.

He didn't ask what I was doing down there. He just looked at my face and then crouched down in front of me with those steady green eyes and said "how many mornings."

"Three," I said.

He nodded slowly. Like he'd already done the math and was just confirming it.

"Anything else," he said.

"Tired," I said. "Really tired. And I can't look at food before noon without wanting to die."

He was quiet for a second. Then he stood up and held out his hand. "Come with me."

"Doc..."

"Rook," he said. Quiet correction.

I took his hand and let him pull me up.

He drove me himself.

Not to a hospital. To a small clinic two towns over run by a doctor who Ghost apparently trusted with things that couldn't go through official channels. The waiting room had three chairs and a plant that needed water and an old man behind the desk who didn't ask for my name.

Rook sat beside me in the waiting room with his elbows on his knees and said nothing. His knee was warm against mine. He didn't move it.

I didn't either.

The doctor called me in alone.

She was small and grey haired and efficient in a way that made me feel immediately calm. She asked questions I answered honestly. She took blood. She did the test.

Then she did the ultrasound.

She got very quiet.

I watched her face and felt my heart rate climb. "What," I said. "What is it."

She turned the screen toward me.

"Miss Graves," she said carefully. "I need you to look here." She pointed. Once. Twice. A third time. "You're not just pregnant."

I stared at the screen.

"Triplets," she said. "You're carrying triplets. Approximately six weeks along."

The room went completely silent inside my head.

Six weeks.

Six weeks ago was the night in the basement. The night Ghost promised nobody was taking me anywhere. The night everything shifted and I had stopped being someone else's transaction and started being something I didn't have a name for yet.

Six weeks ago.

"Are you alright," the doctor said.

"No," I said honestly. "But thank you."

Rook knew the moment I walked back into the waiting room.

He read it on my face before I sat down. His jaw tightened slightly. "How bad."

I sat down next to him and stared at the plant that needed water and said "I'm pregnant."

He said nothing.

"Triplets," I added.

The waiting room was very quiet.

"Six weeks," I finished.

Rook leaned forward and put his face in his hands for approximately four seconds. Then he straightened back up and looked at the wall and exhaled through his nose slowly.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay?" I said.

"Okay." He stood up. Held out his hand again. "Let's go tell the others."

I looked at his hand. At the tattoos running across his knuckles and down his fingers. At the steadiness of him that never seemed to waver no matter what I threw at it.

I took his hand.

He didn't let go the whole drive back.

I told them in the kitchen.

All three of them at the table. I walked in, pulled out a chair, sat down, and put the ultrasound photo flat in the middle of the table.

Axel picked it up first. Stared at it. Put it down. Looked at me. "Is this...."

"Yes," I said.

"And the three...."

"Yes," I said again.

Ghost hadn't moved. He was looking at the photo with an expression I had never seen on him before. Something cracking open underneath all that control. Slow and quiet like ice in spring.

Then Axel leaned back and said "that's mine" with the complete confidence of someone who had never been wrong about anything.

"Yours," Rook said flatly.

"I was there."

"So was I."

"Both of you stop," Ghost said. His voice was low and final and both men went quiet immediately. He looked up from the photo and his eyes went straight to me. Not to the picture. Not to the other men. To me. "Are you okay."

My throat tightened. "I don't know yet."

He nodded. Like that was enough. Like he wasn't going to push me to be okay before I was ready. "We do a paternity test. All three of us. No arguments."

"I already know...." Axel started.

"No arguments," Ghost said again.

Axel closed his mouth.

Rook nodded once.

Ghost looked back at me. "Whatever those results say, nothing changes. You're here. Those babies are here. That doesn't move."

I looked at the three of them.

Axel already building a case in his head for why they were his. Rook saying nothing but watching me with those steady green eyes like he was already planning how to protect something. Ghost sitting at the head of the table like a wall between me and everything outside these walls.

Three men who had fought for me before they even knew my last name.

I pressed my hand flat against my stomach under the table and thought, whatever happens, at least they're here.

I didn't know how wrong I was about to be.