Kneel Alpha: The Surgeon Omega's Revenge

Chapter 3

Nora’s POV

I told Wren about Iris on the first night I spent in Ironveil. We were sitting on the floor of our shared apartment — sublet, thirty days, all I could afford — eating cereal because neither of us had made it to the store yet, and she was being very careful not to ask me anything direct, which meant she was absolutely dying to ask me something direct.

“I’m pregnant,” I said.

She put down her bowl.

“About eight weeks,” I said. “I found out four days ago. I’ve been running on denial and spite since then.”

Wren was quiet for a moment.

“Okay,” she said.

“That’s all you’ve got?”

“I’m processing.” She picked her bowl back up. “Is the father—”

“Yes.”

“Does he—”

“No. And he’s not going to.”

She looked at me over her spoon. I looked back. After a moment she nodded, slowly, like we’d made a decision together that I’d actually already made alone.

“Okay,” she said again.

“That’s it?”

“Nora. I’ve known you for three months. In that time you have passed the qualifying exam for the surgical residency program, started volunteering at the overnight clinic, learned the entire Ironveil transit system from memory, and built a budget spreadsheet so detailed it made me want to cry.” She pointed her spoon at me. “You are going to be an absolutely terrifying mother and that baby is going to be deeply, almost unfairly fine.”

I looked at my cereal.

Something cracked open a little, somewhere in my chest.

“I’m scared,” I said. The first time I’d said it out loud.

“I know,” she said.

She didn’t tell me it was going to be easy. I loved her for that.

That was three years ago.

Now I was standing outside the break room at 6 AM, holding a sippy cup that had come to the hospital with me because I’d forgotten to take it out of my bag after I dropped Iris at Mrs. Holt’s, and I was very deliberately not thinking about the man on the fifth floor who had silver-gray eyes exactly like my daughter’s.

Wren appeared at my elbow with two coffees.

“She’s with Mrs. Holt?” she asked.

“Till seven.”

“He asked about you this morning. I heard from the night nurse.”

“He can ask.”

“She said he was—” Wren tilted her head. “Quiet. Said he just sat there most of the night. His monitors were fine, he wasn’t in distress. He just didn’t sleep.”

I took my coffee and drank it.

“Nora.”

“Do not.”

“He doesn’t know about Iris.”

“I know that.”

“He’s going to find out. He’s going to be here for two weeks, in a building where your brother works the front desk and your daughter comes to visit you for lunch on Thursdays.”

I looked at her.

“I know,” I said.

“So what’s the play?”

I thought about it. I had been thinking about it since last night, honestly, lying awake in the dark while Iris made the small sleeping sounds she made when she was dreaming and the city hummed outside the window.

“The play,” I said, “is that I do my job. I treat him like a patient. When he’s well enough to leave, he leaves.” I drank more coffee. “He doesn’t get to know things just because he showed up.”

Wren looked at me for a long moment. She had the expression she got when she thought I was wrong but understood why.

“Okay,” she said. Not agreeing. Just giving me the rope to hold.

I went to rounds.

Damien was sitting up when I came in. Someone had brought him a change of clothes — pack logistics, probably, they were efficient that way — and he’d clearly made an effort: he was cleaner, more alert. Less like a body I’d put back together and more like a person. That was the part that was going to be difficult.

“Good morning,” I said, and looked at the chart.

“Good morning,” he said. He paused. “You look tired.”

“I’m fine.”

“I didn’t mean it as a criticism.”

“Vital signs are good. Silver level dropped another point overnight. At this rate we might be able to pull you off the drip by Friday.” I turned a page. “Any pain?”

“Nora.”

“Any—”

“I know you don’t want to hear it,” he said. “And I’m not going to make you. But I need you to know that what I’m feeling right now—”

“I need your pain level.”

Silence.

“Three,” he said, quietly.

“Good.” I wrote it down. “I’ll have the nurse check the wound at noon. Try to get up and walk the hall this afternoon — circulation matters for the recovery.”

I turned to go.

“She has my eyes,” he said.

I stopped.

I didn’t turn around. The back of my neck was very warm.

“Marcus,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

“He didn’t tell me. I saw her picture. On his phone — he dropped it outside the room this morning and I was faster.” His voice was low, careful, like he was holding something he didn’t have the right to hold. “She has my eyes. Doesn’t she.”

I turned around.

He looked like a man who had been hit with something heavier than a silver blade, and was still deciding whether to get back up.

“Her name is Iris,” I said. “And I will tell her about you when I decide it’s the right time. That is not your decision. That has never been your decision.”

He opened his mouth.

“If you push me on this,” I said, “you will regret it. I promise you that.”

He closed his mouth.

I left.

My hands shook the entire way down the hall. I pushed them flat against my thighs and kept walking.

He knew.

Everything was about to get much more complicated.