The Alpha's Accidental Heir

I stared at the dark shape on the screen, waiting for it to make sense. "I'm sorry, Clara." Dr. Patel set down her pen. "Your egg count is very low for your age. I don't usually see numbers like this in women under forty." "I'm twenty-nine." My voice came out smaller than I wanted. "I know." She said it gently, like she was breaking something already broken. "If you want a biological child, you don't have years to plan this. You have weeks, maybe less, before your next cycle closes that door for good." Weeks. I'd spent my whole life waiting for this part: the husband, the house, the babies falling asleep on my chest. I grew up in a group home where nobody's arms were only for me. I promised myself that when I finally had a family, it would never feel like that. It would feel like mine. "There has to be something I can do," I said. "There is. But you need to move fast, and you need to decide what matters most to you." She slid a pamphlet across the desk. Fertility Options: A Guide. My hands shook when I picked it up. I drove home on autopilot, gripping the pamphlet like it might fly out the window if I let go. Jason would know what to do. Jason always knew what to do. That was one of the first things I loved about him, how calm he stayed when my whole world tilted sideways. We'd been together three years. Engaged for one. We'd talked about kids since our second date, both of us laughing about how many we wanted, both of us meaning it. I let myself into our apartment, already rehearsing how I'd tell him. My key stuck in the lock the way it always did, and I jiggled it twice before the door gave. That's when I saw the shoes. Red heels, kicked off carelessly by the entry table, next to a handbag I recognized instantly because I'd helped pick it out. Kayla's handbag. My best friend's handbag, sitting in my apartment, in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon when she should have been at work. "Jason?" I called, my heart already climbing into my throat for reasons I didn't want to name yet. No answer. But I heard something. A rhythm, low and steady, coming from down the hall. The bed frame, knocking softly against our bedroom wall. I don't remember deciding to walk toward it. My feet just moved, carrying me down the hallway I'd walked a thousand times, past the photo of Jason and me at his sister's wedding, past the coat rack where his jacket usually hung and now didn't, because he wasn't wearing it. The bedroom door was open two inches. Enough. I heard Kayla laugh, breathless and pleased with herself. I heard Jason say something back, and every word of it drove into me like a nail. "...can't believe she still thinks we're going to have a family. God, imagine me as a dad." He laughed too, easy, like it was the funniest thing in the world. "She's so sweet about it," Kayla said. "Doesn't she know you can't get pregnant on birth control pills you're not actually taking?" "She takes them. I just make sure they don't work." His voice had a smugness in it I'd never heard directed at me before, only ever about other people, people he thought were beneath him. "Crushed one into her coffee every morning for two years. Some kind of blocker. Cost me a fortune finding a doctor willing to write it that quiet." The pamphlet crumpled in my fist. Two years. Two years of trying, of charting, of crying every month when the test came back negative, of him holding me and telling me it would happen when it was supposed to happen. He'd been poisoning my coffee. I don't remember making a sound, but something in me must have shifted, because the bed frame stopped knocking against the wall. "Wait," Kayla said. "Did you hear that?" I stepped back into the hallway just as the bedroom door swung open. Jason stood there in nothing but boxers, and for one full second his face did something I'd never seen it do before: real fear. "Clara. Baby, this isn't..." "Two years," I said. My voice came out steadier than I felt, steady the way a held breath is steady right before it breaks. "Two years, Jason." Kayla appeared behind him, clutching a sheet around herself, her face gone pale. "Clara, I can explain..." "Explain what?" I looked between them, my former best friend and my fiancé of one year, standing in the wreckage of a life I thought I understood. "Explain how long you've been planning to keep me from ever having a baby, while telling me you wanted one more than anything?" Jason's jaw worked. He didn't deny it. That was the worst part: he didn't even try. "I never wanted kids," he finally said, like that made it better instead of infinitely worse. "I was going to tell you eventually. I just... I needed more time." "Time." I laughed, and it sounded ugly even to my own ears. "I don't have time, Jason. That's the whole reason I came home early. My doctor just told me I might already be out of it." Something flickered across his face, and it wasn't guilt, I realized. Relief. Actual relief, like my ruined fertility solved a problem for him. I turned and walked out. I heard him calling my name down the stairwell, heard Kayla's voice tangled in with his, and I didn't stop, didn't slow down, didn't let a single tear fall until I was three blocks away and sitting on a bus bench with my whole future in ashes around my feet. There was only one person I wanted to see. I pulled out my phone and dialed with shaking fingers. "Nora," I said when she picked up. "I need you. I need you right now."