Rejected While Pregnant with the Alpha’s Secret Heir

Chapter 14 – Paper Shields

Two weeks slide by in a strange, stretched rhythm.

Mornings at the clinic or curled on my secondhand couch with prenatal books I barely read. Afternoons at the café, stool firmly under me, Marco glaring every time I so much as eye a heavy tray. Evenings: the slow walk home with Corin at my side, an unspoken border drawn at the building door.

He hasn’t missed a single one.

Each night, he stops on the sidewalk, shoves his hands in his pockets like he’s anchoring them there, and asks the same three questions.

“How are you? How is he? Do you need anything?”

I answer, because lying about the first two feels like tempting fate. The third I usually brush off.

Usually.

On the thirteenth night, my ankles are swollen, my back aches, and Lio has apparently decided my ribcage is a drum.

“Yes,” I say when he gets to the last question. “I need you to stop looking like a kicked dog every time you say goodbye.”

His mouth falls open. Then, to my surprise, he laughs—short, rough, but real.

“Noted,” he says. “Anything else?”

“An actual chair for my apartment,” I grumble. “And for you to tell me whether you’ve decided to put your name on a birth certificate or not.”

The humor flickers out of his eyes, replaced by something more sober.

“Tomorrow,” he says. “We talk tomorrow. After your appointment.”

Which is how I end up sitting in Dr. Alvarez’s office the next afternoon, heartbeat hopping around my throat while she taps something into her computer.

“You’re doing well,” she says, scrolling through my chart. “Vitals are steady. Baby’s growth is on track. You’ve scared me twice already; I’ll take a boring month, thank you.”

“Me too,” I murmur.

She swivels her chair to face me fully. “I wanted to go over some paperwork while you’re here. Pre-registration for the hospital, emergency contacts, that sort of thing.”

There it is. The word I’ve been circling in my head for two weeks.

Paperwork.

She slides a form across the desk. “You don’t have to fill everything out now, but it helps to have it started.”

Name: Aeryn Vos. Address: the little apartment over the laundromat.

Father: __________

The blank line gapes up at me.

My fingers cramp around the pen.

The first time, in that motel bathroom, leaving it empty felt like an act of defiance. A boundary. A wall between my child and the man who’d cut us loose.

Now that same emptiness feels like a different kind of violence. A denial—not of his choices, but of the simple, biological fact that half of Lio’s blood belongs to a man who has spent the last two weeks showing up without once asking for more than I’m willing to give.

Dr. Alvarez watches me quietly. “This isn’t a test,” she says. “You get to decide who’s on that line. Or if anyone is.”

“What happens,” I ask, “if I put a name there?”

“In practical terms?” She counts on her fingers. “He can get information about the baby if you authorize it. He can be contacted in an emergency. Later, it makes custody and guardianship questions clearer, if something happens to you.”

If something happens to you.

My wolf growls at that. Superstition prickles my skin. Wolves don’t speak those what-ifs aloud.

“And if I don’t?” I push.

“Then legally, you’re the only parent,” she says. “Full rights, full responsibilities. No one else gets a say unless a court is involved.”

A court. Human or wolf.

Morin’s voice slithers through my memory: The pack can’t afford you.

“What about people who… don’t like uncertainty?” I ask carefully. “People who think a child should belong to a group. Or a… community.”

Her eyes sharpen. “Someone pressuring you?”

“Not yet,” I say. “But they will.”

She doesn’t press. “Paper can’t stop everything,” she says, softer. “But it can put some weight on your side of the scale.”

My side. Not theirs.

Not his.

Ours.

The clinic door opens behind me. Footsteps. A soft knock on the frame.

“Sorry,” Corin’s voice says. “She said I could come back.”

Dr. Alvarez glances past me. “Good timing. We were just talking about you.”

He freezes. “That sounds… ominous.”

“Relax,” she says dryly. “No one’s in trouble. Yet.”

I don’t turn around. Just tap the Father line with the pen.

“I need an answer,” I say. “Before I write anything here. Because once it’s down, we don’t get to pretend you’re a ghost anymore.”

He’s quiet for a beat. Then he comes closer, the air shifting with his scent.

“I talked to our lawyers,” he says. “To Siles. To Ivara. To a human attorney who doesn’t know what we are.”

I half-turn in my chair. “And?”

“And every path has teeth,” he says. “If my name is there, Morin can use it to prove I have a child he has a ‘right’ to drag into our world. If it isn’t, he can paint you as hiding him from his father and use that to pry your life open in human court.”

“Well,” I say dryly. “That’s comforting.”

Corin moves to stand beside my chair, not behind me. Equal, not looming.

“But there’s one thing we can do that makes it harder for him either way,” he says. “If you’re willing.”

I hate that my heart jumps. “What.”

He nods at the form. “You put my name there,” he says quietly. “And alongside it, we file a human agreement that spells out, in writing, that decisions about him are made by you and me together. Not my pack. Not your nonexistent extended family. Us. With language that makes it very hard to claim I’m absent, and just as hard to argue you’re alienating him.”

I swallow. “And your council?”

“I won’t show them the paperwork,” he says. “They already know enough. If they find out, they’ll see a father taking responsibility in human law, not a weapon for them to swing.”

“And if they swing anyway?” I ask.

He meets my eyes. There’s no hesitation there now. No apology disguising cowardice.

“Then we fight,” he says simply. “Together. With every tool your world and mine have. But I won’t stay a blank line in our son’s life because I’m afraid of a man whose time is already ending.”

Our son.

The words land like a stone and like a warm hand, all at once.

My wolf studies him, then nudges me forward.

“‘Our’ is doing a lot of work there,” I say, but my voice has lost its sharpest edges.

“It should,” he answers.

Dr. Alvarez clears her throat gently. “Whatever you write, it’s your choice,” she says. “Not mine. Not his. Not anyone else’s.”

I look at the form. At the pen. At the man who once tore me apart and is now, brick by brick, trying to help build something new.

My hand moves before my brain can overthink it.

Under Father, in careful, deliberate letters, I write:

CORIN VARGAN.

The pen doesn’t explode. The ceiling doesn’t fall in. Somewhere deep inside, Lio gives a faint, answering flutter.

Paper isn’t everything.

But as shields go, this feels like the first one we’ve chosen together—not because a bond commanded it, not because a council demanded it, but because for once, we are both standing on the same line.