**Trigger Warning: This episode contains discussions and depictions of pregnancy loss. There is a summary of the important events of the chapter at the bottom. Please scroll down to get the SparkNotes.**
"Was the baby mine Paige?" He asked her. He knew what the answer was. He knew it was his but he still needed her to say it.
"Yes." She breathed, barely more than a whisper. "Yes he was yours."
"He?" Nathan let out. "We were going to have a son?" She simply nodded. "Why- why didn't you tell me?" A flurry of emotions was flowing through him. Sadness mixed with anger mixed with regret.
"I didn't know where you were, I had no way of finding you. And now-"
"And now what? Where you ever going to tell me?"
"I didn't see what difference it would make.
"You didn't see what difference-? Paige, I had a son, we had a son and you didn't think to tell me?" Anger was taking over now. How could she not tell him? How could she keep something this big from him?
"It happened, it's in the past." She spoke quietly. "I handled it. I didn't think you'd-"
"You didn't think I'd what? Want to know?"
"I didn't want you to feel more guilty than you already do. I don't-" she broke down, unable to keep it together anymore.
"Oh Paige." He said, the anger he was feeling quickly evaporated at her tears. He quickly crossed the room and gathered her into his arms, holding her close as she cried. He told himself he was doing it to comfort her, but really he needed her to comfort him. This past week had been awful not having her near. All he wanted to do was sweep her off her feet but all he had done was push her further away. When he told her yesterday, he thought for a moment that everything would be okay. Then she yelled at him he realized how much of an inconsiderate jerk he had been.
Of course finding her wolf would mean so much more for her than it would be for him. It was a total game changer. Everything she had worked the last ten years for would be thrown into chaos. He picked her up and carried her to the couch. Holding her to his chest they cried together. For the child they would never know, for the years they had loss, for the fear that this might not work and they would have to say goodbye again.
When their tears had stopped, they still sat together. Patrick had mind-linked him to ask what was going on but he just sent back a "Not now!" And cut the link. Locked in her embrace Nathan had felt more at peace than he had in the last five years. The had to find a way to make this work. They had to wake her wolf up. If they didn't and she left again, he wouldn't survived. Patrick was right to be worried.
"Do you want to tell me about it?" He asked.
"Not really, but you deserve to know." She took a deep breath. "It took me a bit longer then it should have for me to realize that I was pregnant. After you left, I went to London and was staying in a hostel while looking for somewhere to live. Things were a bit chaotic and I didn't realize my period was late. I thought that maybe it was just because of the stress. My period was never super regular so I wasn't worried. I found a flat and some flatmates. One of them was Lennette, actually. Remember her?" She pulled her head up off his chest to look at him.
"How could I forget? I think she hated me more than you did."
"Well you were a complete and total ass in the beginning." She chuckled, she looked down at her hands and Nathan wished she'd put her head on his chest again. "Anyways, I got sick I thought it was just a stomach bug but when it didn't let up she made me go to the doctor. They did a test and then I knew. When I was less than thrilled at the news they asked if I wanted to terminate." Nathan stilled. The thought that Paige would terminate the pregnancy was a shot to his heart. Werewolves generally frowned on abortion and while he supported a woman's right to choose, he couldn't stomach the thought.
Paige sniffled, "I thought about it. I wanted too at first, I wanted to focus on my career, I wanted to forget about you." Another shot.
"What made you change your mind?" he asked.
"Lennette," she smiled. "She said that while you were a total wanker and she couldn't understand why I loved you, she could see that I did. She said that while you may be gone for good, I could keep some part of you."
"I guess I need to thank Lennette."
"Yes, you do. For so much."
"What were you going to do if your child was a wolf? Were you going to go back to your pack?"
"Gods no." she balked, "I didn't want him raised around that. I was going to raise him in the human world, he'd know about werewolves of course. I wouldn't keep him from my parents but we'd live as humans, and if he discovered his wolf, well, I guess I thought we'd cross that bridge when we came to it. Only we never did.
"Lennette became my rock. She came to all my appointments with me, made sure I took my vitamins and did all the pre-natal things I was supposed to be doing. One night as I was going to bed I noticed some blood in my underwear. I wasn't overly concerned because the doctor said it happens to about 25% of women." She took a deep breath and Nathan copied her. He could tell where the story was going next.
"When I didn't get up for our run the next morning Lennette came looking for me. Apparently I was covered in blood and almost cold to the touch. She got me to the hospital and they told her I needed surgery, that I was bleeding out." She huffed a small laugh that was really nothing more than pushing more air out her nose. "She had to say she was my wife so she could sign the consent papers." Nathan smiled, he'd really have to thank Lennette, she was there for his mate when she should have been.
"When I woke up and they told me I lost the baby, I lost it. I stopped eating, stopped going to classes, doing my research all of it. Lennette kept me going. She talked to my advisor and got me leave, she made sure I ate, she even did a little memorial for him. I had told her everything about me, how I had grown up I mean. She knew I didn't have any type of faith in the Goddess but she thought that since I had grown up with it and you did believe it that maybe it'd be best to honor the traditions of his parents. I wrote out everything I had hoped for him, wrapped in around the grief herbs and burned it under the full moon."
When werewolves die, their bodies are burned during the full moon. They believed that light of the full moon would be brighter than the light of their funeral pyre and would guide them back to the moon goddess. Garden sage, rosemary, and thyme were often included wrapped with the body during preparation to help the mourners. Nathan was glad something was done for his son. Even though they believed that life didn't begin until a babies first breath, that potential for life still meant something.
"Did he have a name?" Nathan asked.
"Gregory." She said with a smile.
"But that's-"
"Your middle name, yeah."
"How did you know my middle name? I'm pretty sure I never told you."
"You were drunk off you ass one night and the cops stopped us. I had to show them your passport. I saw it then."
"Paige, I don't know- I don't know how to-" He kept trying to find the words to say to her. Nothing could express the depth of his regret, of his sorrow, of his guilt. That was perhaps the hardest one. He felt so guilty for leaving her, for her having to go through that alone. "I never should have left you." His tears started up again. "If I had been there..."
She looked at him and put her hands on his face. "Nathan, no. That's not a road we're going to go down. There wasn't anything you could have done. It was a miscarriage. Even if you had been there the baby still would have been lost." She used her thumbs to wipe the tears off his cheeks.
"But you shouldn't have gone through that alone, I should have been with you."
"I wasn't alone. And you were fighting a war. It happened, there's no changing the past, we can only learn from it and move on." He only nodded and tightened his arms around her, she laid her head back on his chest and they sat there, taking comfort in one another.
Summary:
Paige tells Nathan the baby was his. He is initially angry at Paige for keeping the news from him, he calms when she breaks down crying. He carries her to the couch and sits down holding her in his lap. She tells him the events leading up to the miscarriage. Lennette, who was the friend Nathan first hit on in the bar in Sydney, lived with Paige and takes care of her before and after the loss. Paige tells Nathan she was going to name the baby Gregory after his middle name. Nathan begins to apologize and express regret for how things played out. Paige tells him that there is no use in that, there is no changing the past. All they can do is learn from it and move on. Paige and Nathan take comfort in each others physical presence, they sit holding each other through their grief.