Page 54 of The Dragon's Perfect Omega
Instead of saying anything, I slid the item I'd bought under the door to Zim's stall. He picked it up, and then his tone of voice grew incredulous. "What is this?" he asked, even though it saidPregnancy Testin big letters on the box. "Are you serious? You want me to pee on this thing?"
I might as well have asked him to run naked through the airport for all the indignation in his voice.
"Only to rule out all possibilities," I said.
"It's not a possibility," he insisted.
"Please just do it for me? You'd really put my mind at ease. It's only because of that vision I had. I'd feel a lot better if I knew it wasn't coming true."
He sighed. "Okay. But I'm only doing this for you."
"Thank you." Leaning back against the tiled wall, I waited. Someone else entered the bathroom, but I didn't pay them any mind, and they ignored me just the same. Zim waited for them to be gone before he spoke up again.
"Lowen?" His voice shook.
Oh, no."What's wrong?" My heart squeezed painfully in my chest, feeling like I already knew why my mate was upset.
"I don't know if I'm reading this wrong. I must be reading it wrong."
I took a deep breath, trying to remain calm. "Want to open the door and let me in?"
Zim didn't say anything in response, but the door fell open. As Zim handed the test stick to me, his face was even paler than it was before. I laid an arm around his shoulders, pulling him close as I looked at the test result. Two lines. I knew what that meant. I'd studied the box before. The impossible had come true.
My mate was pregnant.
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Zim
How could this be real? I stared at the stick in Lowen's hand. "You have to buy another. It has to be wrong." A false positive. That was the only explanation. "I can't be pregnant. I'm not... I'm not an omega." I'd know if I was. It would say in my ID. There'd been times in my life when I'd secretly wished I was omega, because so many of my emotions would have made more sense if I was, but I wasn't.
"It's okay," Lowen said. "We can buy another test if you want to." But he sounded like he was already convinced the test in his hand was telling the truth. Even when it couldn't be.
"I need to get out of here," I found myself saying, panic laying ice cold fingers around my chest. I was going to freak out, and the airport bathroom was just about the last place I wanted to be when that happened.
"You can come back to my hotel room with me," Lowen suggested. "We can get another test and figure out what's happening." He seemed so calm. Was he trying to be calm for me? I wasn’t sure that I liked it. For some reason, Iwantedhim to freak out a little too. Couldn't he see how terrible all of this was?
"I need to go home," I said. "I need to talk to my parents." To my mom. She would know why this was happening. She would have an explanation—and I desperately needed an explanation.
"Are you sure about that?" Worry seeped into Lowen’s voice now, like he didn't trust my parents.
Maybe he's right not to.
I shoved that thought aside. This was not the time to be falling into paranoia. I had enough on my plate without seeing an enemy around every corner. I needed to stay calm—as calm as I could—and figure out what was happening. There had to be a good explanation for all of this. I only needed to find it.
"I'm sure." Going home was the only viable course of action right now.
Lowen scratched the back of his neck. He obviously wasn't liking this, but neither was I.
"C'mon," I said, tugging on his arm as I left the stall. "You can come with me if it'll make you feel better." It was time to tell my parents about him, anyway. It was time to tell them everything.
And hopefully, we were going to get some answers too.
* * *
We reachedmy house around four in the afternoon. My father wasn't home from work yet, but my mother was in the living room, putting together a seating chart for some charity event she would be hosting in a few weeks' time. When Lowen and I entered the room, she looked up from the sheets of paper on the table in front of her.
"Maximilian!" she greeted me with a smile on her face, and then her eyes strayed to the person by my side. "And who's this? One of your friends?"
