"Never hide things from hard-core thinkers. They get more aggravated, more provoked by confusion than the most painful truths."
Tough beta cop, Wang Yibo, wakes up one morning with a hangover and some very vague memories of the previous night. One o...
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ZHAN POV
I had no idea what to do. I didn't want to make Yibo any angrier than he already was, but he needed help. He needed to see a doctor and he needed someone to be with him. Not because he was weak or couldn't handle the signs and symptoms of pregnancy on his own, but because he deserved to be taken care of. He didn't have to do this on his own. But I didn't have any idea how to convince him of that.
I knew he didn't have food poisoning or the flu or anything like that. He was already starting to show. Pregnancies for omegas were a lot different than they had been for beta or omega females. When a female became pregnant—before the pandemic that gradually caused all women on the planet to become sterile—they had the standard nine months of steadily growing belly, hips, and breasts. In omega males, the gestation period only lasted five months and everything happened very quickly. It was basically pregnancy on steroids. And after just two weeks I could already see Yibo's belly popping out over the top of his suddenly too-tight jeans.
"What about your brother?"
I asked as we headed out to the cruiser.
"What about him?" Yibo snapped.
There was that defensiveness again. He'd been like that for weeks. I'd been wanting to say something every minute of every day, but I could tell it would only make Yibo angry. If only he would let me touch him, I knew I could make him feel better. I knew that my energy would calm him and make this all so much easier.
But I wasn't going to do anything without his permission. Not after what happened that night. Even though he was the one who came on to me, I could have stopped everything. I could have been a better person and told him we should wait. If I had—if I had just been able to control myself—he wouldn't be averting his eyes every time I looked at him.
So now there was no way I was going to force anything on him. Even if he was carrying my baby. The only thing I could do was try to talk to him—show him that I cared what happened to him. That was all I could think to do to help Yibo through this. That and hope that he would come to his senses and let me take care of him.
"Well, he's a doctor. Maybe he can tell you what's going on."
"I'm not going to see my brother."
"Why not? You need to see someone, Yibo, and he's family. He can help you."
"Why? Why am I the one that needs to see someone? It's not fair."
I opened the cruiser door and slid behind the wheel.
"You're not even making sense, Yibo. We both know why you need to see a doctor. So you can either pretend like you don't know what's going on, or you can act like an adult and go get yourself checked out. Because either way you choose to deal with this, we both know what's coming out of you in four months."
