Page 66 of Mating of Convenience
“Please tell me what’s going on.”
Nathan looked at me for another second and then he finally spoke. But what he said made no sense at all. “You were pregnant.”
“What?”
“You were pregnant,” he repeated.
I could only stare at him in confusion. I knew all the words in that sentence but their meaning would not compute. I repeated them over in my head, formed them on my tongue, just to see if I could grasp them better that way.
“I couldn’t believe it either,” Nathan said while I was still being dumbfounded.
“It’s not possible,” I said when I eventually remembered how speech worked. How could I be pregnant? No, wait. Nathan had said ‘were’. Ihad beenpregnant, which meant that I wasn’t anymore.
God, that meant…
“I lost it?” The words tumbled from my lips as my brain finally resumed work. I understood now why I was wearing a freaking diaper. I must have been bleeding. Maybe I wasstillbleeding. Still miscarrying. I swallowed hard, an unpleasant shiver going down my spine.
How could any of this be real?
“It’s going to be fine,” Nathan said, but I knew his words were nothing more than platitude and his voice was hardly reaching me. It wasn’t fine and it wasn’t going to be.
I’d lost our child and it was all my fault. “It was the pills, wasn’t it?” Drawing my knees up, I hugged them to my chest. Itmusthave been the pills. Pregnant omegas couldn’t go into heat.
So I’d simply miscarried.
I glanced at Nathan, but he had no response for me. He only sat in his chair and wiped his eyes surreptitiously.
“I’ve seen you cry before,” I told him. “You don’t have to hide it.”
“I don’t want to cry,” he insisted, voice steadier than I’d expected it to be. Then again, he’d had time to process this news while I was out… while I couldn’t even be there for him. Fine mate I was. Nathan dabbed at his eyes again and then he took a deep breath. “There’s no point in crying,” he said. “What’s done is done, and honestly, I’m just so fucking relieved that you’re okay.” My sweet, sweet alpha forced a smile on his face. “We can always try again, right? At least now we know youcanconceive.”
Nathan grinned at me through the unspilled tears glinting in his eyes and I could do nothing but wonder how the hell I even deserved him.
“I promise it’ll be okay,” he said when I remained silent. “Just get some more sleep and everything will look better in the morning. I honestly can’t wait to put this night behind us.”
“I’m so fucking sorry!” The words burst out of me before I could even think them. “If I’d just taken a goddamn test—”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Nathan cut me off. “You couldn’t know.”
“I could have known if I’d just… If I hadn’t been avoiding pregnancy tests like the plague.” Seriously, what was wrong with me? Why had I been so convinced that I couldn’t be pregnant? No, I hadn’t been convinced. I had to face the truth now—I’d beenscared. Scared to take another stupid test and have it be negative again and again.
And now my fear had led me here.
I’d ruined everything.
“What if we never get this lucky again?” I found myself asking, cradling my head in my hands. “What if it was our only shot? What if I lost the only child I… the only child we were ever going to have?” The words burned like acid in my mouth as I spat them out. For a second, I thought I was going to throw up, but then Nathan was there, sitting on the bed next to me and closing his arms around me.
“It’ll be fine,” he said in a soothing tone of voice, as if I’d had a nightmare he was trying to chase away--only this wasn’t a nightmare. It was allreal.Even if that seemed impossible.
Still, I let myself be calmed by his presence. If there was anything--anyone who could make this all okay again, it was Nathan. My silly alpha. My turtle. I didn’t want to put this burden on him, especially not when I knew he was grieving himself, and I knew that it was unfair to expect him to comfort me when I was the one who’d fucked up, but for the moment, all I could do was bury my face in my mate’s shoulder and let my tears soak the fabric of his sweater.
“It’s all going to be better in the morning,” he assured me again.
I wasn’t sure if I believed him, but I made myself nod anyway while I pictured a baby with my hair and Nathan’s eyes and I wondered how things were ever going to be okay again.
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Nathan
