Page 31 of His Captor

We bought two packs with two tests each.

I took all of them.

I was pregnant.

CHAPTER NINE

Hayden

Eight months later…

“You know, it’s amazing to me how fast a life can fall apart and then get put back together in just eight months,” I commented to Simon as the two of us sat in Hywell Park, eating our lunches on a sunny, spring day.

“Your life did not fall apart,” Simon said, eyeing my enormous, pregnant belly with a grin as he picked the tomatoes out of his sandwich.

“Why do you order it with tomatoes if you won’t eat them?” I asked, instantly side-tracked from my original point. That happened a lot with pregnancy brain.

Simon shrugged and looked sheepish. “I like the essence of tomato in my sandwich, not the actual tomatoes.”

I burst out laughing, which sent the little guy in my belly wriggling. I placed my hand on my stomach, giddy to feel my baby, then extended it to Simon. “Here. Give them to me. Baby loves him some tomatoes.”

“Yes, well, baby can have them.” Simon gingerly handed me his tomatoes, which I promptly ate, without even putting them in the sandwich I held in my left hand. “And like I said, your life has not fallen apart.”

I was too busy chewing and swallowing tomato slices to answer him right away. I supposed he was right. Getting knocked up on a business trip by a stranger I’d met through a kink app wasn’t exactly ruining things.

Although I still had nights where I lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling and remembering Ace’s gorgeous face, his intoxicating alpha scent, and his massive cock and knot as they rearranged my insides.

Damn, I missed him. And I didn’t even know who he was or what he was doing now. The day after I’d gotten home from Port Lucia and realized I was pregnant, I’d made the rash decision to turn my life around and be more serious, more stable. I’d deleted the Dark Fantasies Club app straight away. Before attempting to send Ace a message or to save his contact information.

Yes, I still had his contact in my phone, but in another fit of pique, the one I’d had after surprising my parents with the news that I was pregnant and having them rage at me for an hour, then kick me out of their house and more or less disown me—Simon insisted they hadn’t disowned me, they were trying to teach me a lesson about responsibility—I’d deleted that, too.

It had been monumentally stupid, but stupid things happened when your life fell apart in a heartbeat.

I swallowed the last of the tomato, then replied to Simon with, “Even you have to admit that Junior here threw a wrench in my life.” I rubbed my belly, smiling at the quick burst of happiness I got every time I did that. “Papa and Dad threw me out?—”

“Prompted you to get your act together and start your own life,” Simon corrected in an undertone.

“—I lost a ton of friends?—”

“Who were mostly a bad influence anyhow,” Simon continued to mutter.

“—and I lost my job,” I finished.

Simon paused, a chip halfway to his mouth. He lowered it, then said, “Okay, I’ll give you that one. It was wrong for the Goulding Group to fire you for being pregnant. So wrong, in fact, that I think you should sue for wrongful termination.”

“Is that what you think, Mr. Paralegal?”

Simon reacted like I’d spit on him. “I might not love my job, but it’s taught me about the law. That includes people’s rights. Companies do not have a legal leg to stand on when it comes to firing omegas for being pregnant.”

I grimaced as I bit into my sandwich. I chewed and swallowed, then said, “I’m excited about this new job, though.”

Simon arched one eyebrow at me. “I don’t know about this new company you’re so excited about. It seems a little unstable and sketchy.”

“It’s a new tech company start-up,” I said, defending Canton Enterprises as though I’d worked there for years instead of just a month. “They’re innovative and exciting.”

“You said they don’t even have their HR system or their employee directory set up yet,” Simon said.

“We’re getting there,” I insisted. “I mean, the IT department is getting there. I’m just the office manager. But I can tell you that I’ve ordered the best office chairs in the business, and we definitely won’t run out of copier paper anytime soon.”

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