Chapter Five
1010 Words
Clara POV
I don't remember deciding to look at the test. I just find myself staring down at it a few minutes later, two clear pink lines glowing back at me like they belong to someone else's life.
Positive.
I should be crying with joy right now. This is everything I wanted, everything I fought for through betrayal and job loss and every closed door of the last few weeks. Instead, all I feel is a cold, spreading dread that has nothing to do with the tiny life growing inside me and everything to do with Nora's shaking voice on the phone.
Someone very important. Someone very powerful.
I try calling her back three times. Each call goes straight to voicemail. I pace my apartment, phone clutched in my hand, trying to piece together what "mix-up" could possibly mean. Wrong donor. Wrong sample. Someone else's private, sealed donation instead of the quiet, simple stranger I picked from a folder.
I don't know anyone powerful. I don't know anyone remotely connected to whatever world Nora's voice suggested. My entire life has been ordinary in every way, small apartments and small jobs, nothing that would ever brush up against the kind of person whose donation needs to stay locked away and sealed from the world.
By the time evening comes, I've worked myself into a near panic, still unable to reach Nora, still with no real answers about what any of this actually means for me or for the baby I'm suddenly, terrifyingly responsible for.
My phone finally rings again around eight that night. I answer so fast I nearly drop it. "Nora?"
"It's me," she says, and she sounds exhausted, wrung out in a way I've never heard from her before. "I'm so sorry, Clara. I've spent the entire day trying to sort this out before I called you back."
"Just tell me what happened," I say, forcing myself to stay calm even though my whole body is trembling. "Please."
She exhales slowly. "During the shift change, a private sample got mislabeled. It happens sometimes, rarely, but it happens, and today of all days it happened with yours. Instead of donor 4471, you were given a sealed personal donation that should never have left secure storage."
"Whose was it?"
There's a long pause before she answers, and when she does, her voice drops low, almost fearful. "It belongs to Alpha Logan Vance."
The name means absolutely nothing to me at first, just two ordinary-sounding words. "Who?"
"Clara." Nora's voice tightens further. "He's not just some random client. He's a shifter. A powerful one. Right now he's campaigning to become the next Alpha King, the leader over every pack in the region. His donation was sealed and private specifically because he didn't want anyone, especially any political rival, ever getting near his bloodline."
I sit down hard on my couch, my mind spinning uselessly, trying to fit these words into some kind of shape that makes sense. Shifters have always existed on the edges of my world, distant news stories, occasional public figures, nothing I ever imagined touching my actual life.
"Nora, are you telling me I'm pregnant with a wolf's baby?"
"I'm telling you," she says carefully, "that you're pregnant with the child of one of the most powerful men in the entire shifter world. And Clara, I don't think this is going to stay quiet for long. Not once his people realize what happened."
"His people?" My stomach drops. "You mean he already knows?"
"I don't know for certain," Nora admits. "But given how careful the estate was about keeping that sample sealed, I have to assume someone is going to notice it's missing very soon, if they haven't already."
Panic claws its way up my throat. "What do I do?"
"I don't know," Nora says, and for the first time since I've known her, my steady, confident best friend sounds completely lost. "I could lose my license over this. Maybe worse. I'm so sorry, Clara. I never meant for any of this to happen."
"I know," I tell her, and I do know, because Nora has never once been careless with my trust. Whatever chaos caused this, I refuse to believe it was anything but an honest, terrible accident. "We'll figure it out together. We always do."
She doesn't sound convinced, and honestly, neither am I. We stay on the phone a while longer, going in useless circles, trying to guess what happens next, whether this powerful stranger will even notice, whether we might somehow keep this quiet until I've had time to process it myself.
We don't get that kind of time.
The knock on Nora's clinic door comes the very next afternoon, while I'm sitting in her office trying to plan our next move. I hear raised voices first, sharp and commanding, cutting straight through the clinic's usual calm hum. Nora's face drains of color as she glances toward the sound.
"Clara," she whispers, standing abruptly. "I think you need to leave. Right now."
"Why? What's happening?"
Before she can answer, her office door swings open without so much as a knock, and every ordinary thing about my day disappears in an instant. A man fills the doorway, tall enough that he has to duck slightly beneath the frame, broad-shouldered, dressed in a dark suit that looks like it costs more than everything I own combined. His eyes are dark, sharp, and furious, sweeping the room until they land directly on me.
I don't need Nora to tell me who he is. Somehow, impossibly, I already know.
There's something about the way the air in the room seems to bend around him, a pressure I can feel against my skin even from across the office. My pulse pounds so hard I'm sure he can hear it, and for one strange, disorienting second, I have the wild thought that he already knows exactly what I'm feeling, exactly how afraid I am, without me saying a single word.
"Where," he says, his voice low and dangerous, "is my sample?"
- Writer
