Fate Stained - Part Two
Chapter 15 - The Elephant In The Room

Onyx and I waited patiently in my living room for Norah to finish her phone conversation. It wasn’t too long before we both heard banging and slamming from upstairs and the loud yelling and cursing of a very angry she-bear. Onyx and I took one look at each other before we ran up the stairs to see what was going on.

“Norah, what happened? What are you doing?” I asked as we entered the room to replace Norah with a bag open on her bed and packing what little belongings she had here into it.

“My King is dead” she muttered, throwing the last item in and zipping up the bag.

“Oh my God” Onyx breathed, “So you’re going back to Yo-Na? Are you ok?”

“Goddess no! I’m not going back to Yo-Na!” She yelled.

I looked at Onyx then back to Norah. She look rattled, very rattled; which I could understand, she’d just lost her King. What I couldn’t understand, though, was why she wasn’t going home. And, if she wasn’t going home, then why was she packing her bags in such a rush?

“Where are you going?” I asked softly.

With wide eyes, Norah faced me. Rattled was an understatement, she looked bloody terrified.

“Where he can’t replace me”

“Who?” I asked.

“Darius” Onyx whispered, “He will be Yo-Na’s new King…”

“And he will come looking for me as soon as his coronation is complete”

“You’re safe here Norah” I said, placing my hand on her shoulder reassuringly, “That piece of shit excuse for a bear can’t touch you while you’re here, I promise”

Norah sighed. It was hard seeing her like this, I never thought I’d see the day that Norah ran from anything or anyone, let alone a male. The amount of times her and Jayce had come head to head over the years and she never once backed down. I’d seen Jayce let his Alpha power out full force and she still refused to budge. But, something about this bear, Darius, had her running, and it pissed me off that someone would have that sort of affect on such a strong woman like her.

“I appreciate what you’re saying Q, I really do, but once Darius is King…I won’t be safe anywhere. The only reason he didn’t return with warriors after Jayce booted him out was because he would have needed his father’s permission to do something like storm a wolf pack compound. But now that his father is out of the way…nothing will stop him. I’ve seen him when he has an obsession, he is relentless. Right now, I’m that obsession”

“You don’t think he did something to his father just so he could get to you, do you?” Onyx asked, wide eyed.

Norah shrugged, but I could tell from the look in her eyes - that’s exactly what she thought.

“King or no King, you’re safe here” I reiterated.

“No. I’m not. You will have enough on your hands soon once Fern’s pack track her here, the last thing you and Jayce need is a pissed off wolf pack and a pissed of bear tribe on your front door. Your army is good, but they aren’t prepared for that”

Fuck. I’d forgotten about Fern.

“Plus” Norah added, “You can’t expect your fighters to put their lives on the line to fight somebody else’s battle. You are the Luna of Fern Creek, it’s your responsibility to keep your people safe, not use them to fight someone else’s war”

“I—”

Norah held her hand up to silence me.

“Q, you know I’m right”

Fuck.

“So what do you need from us?”

All three of us turned to face the bedroom door where Jayce stood. I hadn’t even picked up that he’d entered the pack house, my senses were all over the place at the moment.

“I— I don’t know” Norah answered quietly.

“Well, until you have a plan, you’re not going anywhere. How long until Darius’s coronation?”

“I’m not sure, but knowing him, it will probably be sooner rather than later…a couple of days maybe”

“Ok” Jayce said, entering the room. He took Norah’s bag out of her hand and placed it back down on the bed, “So you have a day to figure out what you want to do and how we can help. There is no point running out of here half cocked with no place to go. Ok?”

Norah sighed, her head dropping forward before she nodded it slowly.

“Ok”

Onyx, Jayce and I left Norah in her room. After the shock of replaceing out her King was dead and now the stress of Darius coming to replace her, she wanted to be alone to think things through.

Onyx was very quick to disappear from the pack house as soon as we got downstairs, mumbling something about Blake needing help with the triplets; and that left Jayce and I alone.

I turned to face Jayce, an uncomfortable silence falling between us. He was staring at me, an expression on his face that I couldn’t quite read.

“What?” I asked, raising my brow at him.

He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully and shook his head.

“Nothing. Never mind. How are you feeling?”

Weird.

“I’m fine. More worried about Norah than anything”

Jayce hummed, nodding his head.

“She’ll be ok. She is tough, she just needs to take a breath and think things through”

“Don’t we all” I muttered.

Jayce sighed and sat down at the table.

“Look, I’m sorry about earlier…the thing with Kyan”

“Are you?”

Jayce paused, thinking for a moment.

“Yes” he answered finally.

“Are you sorry about attacking him? Or sorry that you didn’t kill him?”

“I’m sorry that I acted in a way that upset you. He baited me and I took it. I shouldn’t have let him get the better of me”

I thought for a moment about Jayce’s answer. I was right in guessing that Kyan had done something to provoke Jayce’s attack. It didn’t mean it was right but I knew Jayce and I knew how loyal he was to me. If Kyanite had said something disrespectful then there was no way Jayce would have ever let it slide.

“Is this the way it’s going to be?” I asked, “A constant fight between the two of you? Is it naive of me to think that you two could ever live in harmony?”

“Harmony?” Jayce snorted, “yes, very naive”

“What about just not having you trying to kill one another?”

Jayce rubbed his strong jaw and looked off into the distance like he was seriously thinking about my question and contemplating his answer.

“I don’t think I can really give you a straight answer on that Quinn. The guy is a fucking arse. I can’t promise you that I won’t try to kill him again if I hear him speak like that about you. What I can promise, is that I will never treat you in a way that would make him have the need to kill me”

Smooth.

“Aghhhh! And you wonder why I am exhausted” I groaned, “You two are draining me”

I sat down at the table next to Jayce and leant my forehead on the cool wood. I felt like the energy that Flynn had given me was all but gone and suddenly all I wanted to do was curl up and have a sleep…for about five years.

The feeling of Jayce’s large hand rubbing circles in the middle of my back made me smile, a small sigh escaping me.

“Could there be any other reason for your exhaustion?” Jayce asked.

I almost detected a slight hint of apprehension in his voice but I could tell he was trying to hide it.

“You mean another reason that isn’t ‘I have two mates that hate each other and are driving me crazy’? Isn’t that reason enough?”

Jayce’s hand stopped rubbing and I sat up to look at him. I’d seen that look before. Jayce’s mouth was set into a hard line, a distinctive crease across the bridge of his nose and a tell tale twitch in his right jaw. The man had never been good at holding things in. If he had something he wanted to say, but was worried about the potential answer, then this was his face. We’d both learnt over the years, though, that asking the question was the only way to move past things.

“Out with it” I sighed.

The Alpha cleared his throat, fidgeting in his chair slightly before looking back up at me. Fuck. Those big brown eyes got me every time. They softened slightly as they looked into mine and Jayce cleared his throat again before opening his mouth to speak.

“Quinn. Is there a chance you could be pregnant?”

Fucking what? That was not the question I was expecting.

“Pregnant?” I repeated, “No. well, I hadn’t even thought about that…”

Could I be pregnant? Of course I could be. But I would know, wouldn’t I?

“You’re tired. You’re sick. What if it isn’t just the stress and jet lag from Hell?”

I’d already been pregnant before and Moira had told me that the next time we conceived I would know almost instantly. The first pregnancy can confuse your senses and your animal subconscious but any pregnancies after that were detected by your animal at the time of conception. If I remembered correctly, Moira also said that the mate would sense it too, maybe not as early, but earlier than any pregnancy test could detect.

“I would know” I answered, sounding more like a question than a statement.

“So, you’re not pregnant and just hiding it from me?”

I narrowed my eyes at Jayce.

“Why would I hide it from—”

No. Surely fucking not.

“—You think I’m pregnant with Kyan’s baby and hiding it from you? What sort of person do you think I am?”

Jayce sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and shaking his head.

“Can you blame me Quinn? I know you’ve had sex with him…multiple times if I’m to believe what Kyanite told me. Sex can lead to pregnancies and fated mates are more fertile with one another than anyone else”

“I don’t need a fucking biology lesson Jayce” I spat, “I know sex leads to pregnancies; been there, done that - remember?”

Jayce winced.

Low blow Quinn. Low blow.

“I’m sorry” I reached forward and clasped Jayce’s hand in my own, “that was uncalled for. But the answer is no, I’m not hiding a pregnancy from you”

Who were we? Only a few days ago the thought of me hiding something from Jayce, like a pregnancy, would have seemed preposterous to him; he wouldn’t have even entertained the idea. But now here we were, my mate sitting in front of me, seriously thinking that A. I was knocked up by Kyan and B. I was intentionally keeping it a secret from him.

It literally made my heart hurt. I fucking adored this man sitting in front of me and once the idea of doing anything to hurt him would have been blasphemy to my ears. But he was hurt and I’d hurt him - there were no two ways about it.

A baby, a fucking baby! I was sure that pregnancy wasn’t the reason for the way I had been feeling - but the fact that I hadn’t even considered the possibility of falling pregnant to Kyan upset me more than I wanted to admit.

I loved Jayce and I loved Kyanite. I’d waned to start a family with Jayce, and we’d done that, but it had been cut horribly short. Before I went to Hell - that had been the plan - I’d come home and we’d try to have another child. I wanted to fill that hole that Delilah had left…and I wanted to do that with Jayce.