It was officially confirmed; no longer could she chalk up the morning queasiness to something she’d eaten the night before. No longer could she pretend that the faintest of smells hitting her nose like some kind of freight train was normal. No longer could she ignore her strange cravings for the weirdest food combinations. It had been well over a month since her last period and as much as she would have liked to continue holding out hope for something that was never going to come, attribute it to stress she didn’t have, hormones that were out of whack, she couldn’t. She purchased the test the day after Collin had gone home. The young wolf had been injured during a confrontation with nomadic vampires and Sam and Emily had been quick to open up their home and nurse him back to health. Despite he and Sam’s rocky history.

As soon as Sam had left for patrol she’d rushed into the bathroom and pulled the small box from the brown paper bag she’d gotten from the convenient store. The directions said to wait two minutes before reading the results, but the test had only been sitting on the counter for a few minutes when the unholy pink plus sign appeared. At first Emily had been filled with joy. Plus sign equaled positive, and positive was good, right? So not the case with pregnancy tests…apparently the plus sign wasn’t positive good, but positive bad. She was pregnant and she had absolutely no idea how Sam was going to take the news. Children wasn’t a topic they had really discussed much. She assumed this had a lot to do with Sam’s reservations about his capability to be a good father.

He’d often shared with her the stories of his own father; a man who had never been around much for him or his mother, forcing Sam to grow up way too soon to play the head of the house. She wasn’t sure, but she’d often got the impression that he was afraid of the type of father he would be, having never had one to model himself after. And of course there was the wolf aspect to consider. Sam had said more than once that he would never wish his affliction on anyone. Of course he had great pride and honor where the pack and the tribe was concerned, but given the choice he would have leapt at the chance to be normal…something she was certain all of the boys would have wanted.

Rattled, Emily placed the used test back into its box, and wrapped it up in the paper bag. She couldn’t tell him, there was no way…he’d be devastated, she thought, jumping to her own conclusions. Hurrying into the kitchen she made her way for the garbage can. She’d take it out before he got home to make sure he didn’t notice it later, or catch the smell as disgusting as that sounded. She was just walking away from the waste basket when a wave of nausea washed over her. Pressing her lips together to prevent any spewage, she made her way over to the sink where she lost what little breakfast she’d managed to eat that morning. Gross. She felt her eyes tearing and she sighed, turning on the water to wash away the mess she’d made.

She was just shutting off the water when her eyes lifted and looked through the bar area across the living room. She gasped when she noticed Sam coming her way, his brown eyes concerned, clearly having caught her little…bout of morning sickness. “Babe…I thought you had left already…did you forget something?” She was so busted, she knew right away. She’d been acting strange the whole time Collin was there and he’d asked her countless times what was the matter. If he couldn’t put two and two together from this, she was one lucky girl.

Sam avoided her question all together, his brown eyes utterly focused on her as he crossed the living room into the kitchen and placed warm hands on her shoulders. She tilted her head up, feeling her stomach knot and wanting to heave again. She wasn’t ready to have this conversation, she wasn’t even ready for him to know, but he’d figure it out sooner or later. "Babe... what's wrong? You've been sick for over a month... it can't just be something you ate, what's going on?" his voice was concerned, as she knew it would be. Emily felt her body go suddenly hot; her ears and neck no doubt going red…she got that way when she lied, her entire body went splotchy. Emily grappled for something to say to him, her throat thick with the words that wouldn’t come out.

“Nothing,” she attempted immediately, “Probably just a stomach bug or something…I’ll have to go to the doctor…” she looked away, another surefire sign that she wasn’t telling the truth. She felt Sam’s hands tighten on her shoulders ever so slightly, a ploy to get her attention and it worked; she looked up reflexively. His eyes held hers this time, waiting for the truth, though not accusing her with his words. She swallowed, pressing her lips together tightly in a firm line. She couldn’t lie to him, it was impossible. She had a theory about that too, that it had something to do with the imprinting. Everything inside of her wanted to tell him the truth even though she knew it would be devastating to him. If he wanted her to tell him what was wrong, she just wanted to make him happy and get it over with.

The words finally forced their way up from her throat, completely sporadic and unplanned, “I’m pregnant, Sam.” Her voice sounded stronger than she thought it would, but that wasn’t saying much. She watched his face then, refusing to look away despite the sudden urge to run and hide. His dark eyebrows rose, his mouth gaped slightly, his russet skin went a little paler. Definitely the sort of reaction she had feared. She wanted to say more, but she couldn’t, the disappointment etched across his face told her everything she needed to know. This baby wasn’t exactly good news. She stepped back from him then, crossing her arms over her chest. “We’ll have to figure out what we’re going to do…” she trailed off.

Though she wasn’t sure she’d be able to go through with it if *that* was what he wanted. The baby in her belly was a part of her and a part of Sam…and she didn’t know what she’d do if he wanted her to terminate the pregnancy. What he did next both shocked and hurt her, but she didn’t try to stop him. Without a word to her, Sam turned and made his way toward the door, letting himself out the way he came in. Emily blinked, standing in the middle of the kitchen, mouth open for several seconds before the tears came. Oh this was so bad… Her legs felt weak and she knew immediately that she needed to sit down. Taking slow steps toward their bedroom, she opened the door and eased onto the bed, pulling a pillow to her chest before letting the emotions go.

The bedroom they shared felt oddly cold, as though he’d taken all the warmth in the house with him. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to pretend that the pillow she held in her arms was him, that things hadn’t taken a turn for the absolute worse, that they were going to sort through this together… But the longer she lied there, trying to imagine, the harsher the reality became. He was gone…would he come back? Did he just need a minute alone to think? She remembered a few months ago when Jacob had taken off, remaining in wolf form and avoiding the human world. What if Sam did the same thing? What if this was too much to handle? She should have never told him, she decided. Why hadn’t she kept her mouth shut?

A part of her knew how irrational that was. How was she supposed to hide her growing stomach from a man who saw her every day? Not to mention all the symptoms she’d been having; clear indicators that something was wrong. She cried so hard her throat became raw, her eyes red rimmed, her nose stuffy, and by the time she heard the front door closed she’d half cried herself to sleep. Her eyelids fluttered back open as she took in a shaky breath. She could hear him walking around in the living room, but she didn’t move. She would wait for him to come to her. She didn’t want to force him to confront anything he wasn’t ready to face. Besides, a part of her wondered if she could even cope with whatever decision he had made. She didn’t want to bring it to a head just yet…

When their bedroom door squeaked she felt her breath hitch in her throat and she cringed her eyes tighter like a child trying to hide from a scene in a scary movie. She heard his heavy footfalls on the hardwood floor and eventually the looming presence of her fiancé behind her. She could smell the thick musky scent of him, an almost woodsy aroma that she found pleasant, but not even that could comfort her. His voice when he said her name sounded upset, broken, and she couldn’t answer him, she couldn’t find her voice. Not until the words became an apology, the heat from his large hand lingering a merely centimeter from her skin. She rolled over slightly to look at him, waiting for him to say more, but he didn’t.

This caused Emily to do something desperate, something she’d been dead set against just a little over an hour ago. An hour…had it really only been an hour? It seemed like a lifetime since she’d seen his face, since they’d been so close. There was an ache in her chest as she forced herself to say the words that she hoped would save their relationship, their engagement, their future. She didn’t care if they never had children as long as they could be together. “We don’t have to have the baby…” she managed, her voice quaking painfully with every word, her brown eyes still flooded with glossy tears. “Whatever you want to do…that’s what we’ll do…just don’t go.” She sounded pathetic, desperate, as though she was blubbering, but he couldn’t help it.

She couldn’t gage his expression; it seemed so foreign to her, like it wasn’t even him standing in front of her and Emily felt a sense of impending doom spread throughout her middle, prompting her to get out of the bed and hurry into the adjoining bathroom. She hardly made it to the toilet before her insides lurched and she expelled the remainder of whatever it was she’d eaten a few hours ago. She stayed hunched over the bowl, still sniffling and sobbing, trying to keep her hair back and off her face. She heard him behind her, but she couldn’t look at him. She was too embarrassed and she didn’t want him to see her like this. Sweat beaded her brow and ran down her spine and she wiped at her damp forehead with the back of her hand.

She could hear him, but she didn’t turn her face toward him, her brown eyes staring at the raised lid of the toilet. She sat on her hip, arms crossed one over the other, resting on the seat. When he turned on the water, she couldn’t help but look up to see what he was doing. He twisted a washcloth, ridding it of the excess water before coming to kneel down next to her. Though her face was tilted toward him her eyes drifted off to the side, she was mortified that he was seeing her like this. She felt the damp cloth touch her skin and she allowed him to clean her up. She knew the smell was no doubt far more disgusting to his highly sensitive nose, than it was to her, but he didn’t recoil, he stayed next to her.

“We might have to keep a bucket by the bed for the next nine months; can’t have you ruining the carpet,” his smile broadened slightly, but Emily didn’t return it. He was trying to make her feel better, his inner wolf no doubt making it impossible for him to see her in this state, but if this wasn’t what he wanted, she didn’t want him to agree just to make her happy, nothing good would come from a decision like that. She sniffled, pushing herself up to a sitting position, her hands falling to her lap. She felt his warm arm slip around her shoulder, pulling her toward him. She closed her eyes, enjoying the strength that was evident even in his lightest of touches. His deep voice rumbled in his chest, closer now that her ear was closer to his lips, “It scares me Em… I don’t trust myself to be a good father. But that doesn’t matter. I love you and I could never even consider destroying any part of you, anything we created together. All I want is you... and anyone else who comes along is more than welcome... let’s just hope he doesn’t have my nose.”

Emily licked her lips, pushing up from their place on the floor, using the ledge of the sink counter to get to her feet. Sam followed immediately, towering over her in height, hands left open to stabilize her if need be. “I need you to be sure before you agree,” she found herself saying, her voice surprisingly more stable than she would have thought. “This is something that’s going to change both of our lives and if you’re not ready…it’s just going to turn out bad in the long run.” She knew he was afraid, that was the reason she’d kept her suspicions to herself, not wanting to add more stress to the burden he already carried. “It’s still early…we have a little time for you to think about it.” She could see him opening his mouth to protest, but she cut him off, silencing him with a slender finger to his lips, “When you’re sure, then we’ll move forward, until then I don’t want you accepting this because you feel like it’s too late to do anything about it.”

It killed her to say every word, but she had to think of Sam…of their future together. She knew he wasn’t his father, but he had to realize that and put the past behind him or Levy Uley Junior was going to be looming in the back of his mind forever. Deep inside, she knew Sam would make the right choice; it was that very thing that separated him from his father. He knew right from wrong and he was selfless. “We’ll talk about it when you get back.” She pulled her finger back, flushing the toilet before slipping out of the bathroom.

*FIN*