BOREALIS ☽ Leah Clearwater ✔

Chapter 33... Priorities

The ultrasound wand in Dr. Cullen's hand glided over my protruding stomach. Josh was beside me, his hand in mine, squeezing it tightly. This time the ultrasound screen was turned to me. There, in grainy black and white, I could see three small figures curled up together. My babies.

"They seem to be developing on track," Dr. Cullen said, moving the wand back and forth. The image on the screen adjusted as he did. "And at a normal pace."

Josh and I smiled at each other as relief softened our features.

It had been just over three months since we had found out we were expecting. Outside the huge windows along the backside of the Cullen house, the leaves of the trees were beginning to shift from green to gold. Things had finally started to settle. It had been a bumpy ride at first, with the morning sickness and the adjusting to the reality that I was going to be a mother, but having Josh at my side made everything easier.

Even the looming threat of whatever had happened to the missing sisters had dissipated. They hadn't been found, but there hadn't been any other disappearances since. We figured the girls had simply met an unfortunate accident and left it to Charlie and the rest of the Forks police. And so our patrols, finally, stopped.

That meant Josh now spent his free time—when he wasn't with me—working on our new house. He had bought a fixer-upper on the border of La Push for us to live in, once it was done being renovated, of course. Sam was even helping Josh do the construction after they had made their peace. Working together had been a good way for them to bond and to put the last of the awkwardness to rest.

I spent most of my time with Mom and Emily. Emily had a headstart, but she was ecstatic we could be pregnant together. She helped me navigate all the newfound weirdness of being impending motherhood. She even threw me a baby shower—that Alice had helped turned into a massive event—and we no longer worried about anything the babies could possibly need. We were set.

Even the babies were doing well. Once my morning sickness passed, I was shocked to find it was all very easy. It felt natural and I had quickly gotten used to loving the three small lives I was growing. I had even gotten used to coming to the Cullen home for my twice-weekly checkups, though Josh was still a little on edge about the vampires.

Just a little.

Dr. Cullen put away the wand and handed me a soft cotton cloth to wipe my stomach. "I'm happy to say that your children are doing well. I also got the results back from the tests and it's all clear."

"Does that mean we won't have to come here as much?" Josh asked, a little too excitedly.

I shot him a look. "We'll come as often as we need," I said, my hands going protectively to my stomach. "I don't want to take any chances." Even though things were going well, I didn't want to jinx it. The memories from Bella's birth that I had seen in Jacob's head were seared into my memory.

If Dr. Cullen had detected Josh's tone, he didn't show it. He didn't hold Josh's hesitancy against him. Something told me that Edward had explained Josh's history with vampires to the family. "We could possibly push back to once a week, for now. If we need to, we can increase the checkups down the road. Now, tell me. How have you been feeling, Leah? Keeping active?"

I nodded. "I go for a light run every morning." He had told me that since I was a runner before my pregnancy that it was okay for me to keep up my regular runs.

"That's good, that's good," Dr. Cullen continued, jotting down notes in my chart. "What about phasing?"

My jaw went tight. Even though I had phased into a wolf while in the earliest stages of my pregnancy—before I knew—I had since refused to do it again. Like Bella, this pregnancy was entirely uncharted territory. I didn't know how the changes in my body when I phased would affect the lives inside me. What if it hurt them? Killed them?