EMMA'S POV
The three minutes feels like three hours.
Emma sits on the bathroom tile with the pregnancy test in her hands, staring at it like it might change its mind. Like two pink lines might become one if she looks hard enough. If she wishes hard enough. If she begs hard enough.
The stick stays the same.
Two pink lines.
Two pink lines means a baby. Two pink lines means her life isn't just broken, it's completely shattered. Two pink lines means she's carrying Marcus's child.
Her hands shake so violently that the test slips right through her fingers.
It hits the tile floor and cracks. The plastic splits down the middle. The two pink lines are still there in the broken pieces but now they're separated. Divided. Like even the test is falling apart.
Emma stares at the broken stick for a long time.
Then she starts laughing.
It's not a normal laugh. It's the kind of laugh that comes out when everything is so wrong that laughing is the only thing left to do. Her body shakes with it. Her throat burns. Tears pour down her face but she's still laughing like something inside her has completely snapped.
A baby.
She's going to have a baby alone in a cabin in the mountains under a fake name. She has maybe three thousand dollars saved up. She doesn't have health insurance. She doesn't have a support system. She doesn't have anything except a job that pays minimum wage and a father who will never know his own child exists.
The laughing stops and the crying takes over instead.
Emma pulls her knees up to her chest and sobs into them. Not quiet crying. Ugly crying. The kind where snot and tears mix together and she can barely breathe. Her wolf wants to howl and her human wants to die and somewhere in between is a baby that's supposed to be impossible.
She sits on that cold tile floor for hours.
The light from the bathroom window changes as the sun moves across the sky. Yellow becomes orange becomes red. Emma doesn't move. She just sits there in her own small universe of broken news and impossible futures.
Her phone buzzes at some point. She ignores it.
It buzzes again. And again. And again.
Sophie probably wondering where she is. Or someone from the diner asking if she's coming back. Emma doesn't care. She can't care about anything except the two pink lines that are now just scattered plastic pieces.
By the time the sun goes down completely, Emma's tears have dried up. She's empty. Hollow. Like everything inside her has been scooped out and replaced with nothing.
She pulls herself up using the sink and her body feels like it doesn't belong to her anymore. Everything aches. Everything hurts. She looks in the mirror and doesn't recognize the person staring back.
The girl in the reflection has eyes that are dead. Completely dead. Like she's looking at a ghost.
Emma goes to her bedroom and sits on the edge of the mattress and finally lets her brain work again.
She's pregnant. That's fact one. The baby is real and growing inside her and it's going to get bigger and in about seven and a half months she's going to have to push this baby out of her body and then what. Then she's a single mother with no money. Then she's raising a wolf shifter baby alone which means the baby will shift and Emma will have to teach it how to control the wolf and manage the pain and navigate a world that doesn't want it.
Then there's the pack.
If anyone finds out about this pregnancy, if anyone even suspects that Marcus has an heir, everything changes. The baby becomes valuable. The baby becomes a target. People will come looking for them. People will want to use this child.
Emma can't go back. She can't tell Marcus. She can't tell the pack. She can't tell anyone.
She has to disappear.
Not just from the town. Not just from the shifter territories. She has to really disappear. She has to go so deep into the mountains that no one can find her. She has to become someone else. She has to erase Emma Rivers and create something new.
A mother.
Someone fierce enough to protect a baby from an entire world that would devour it.
Emma gets up and goes to her closet and pulls out her backpack. She starts throwing things into it without thinking about what she's packing. Clothes. Her fake ID. The cash she's been saving. Documents. Anything that matters.
She's not staying in this cabin. It's too close to civilization. Too close to the diner. Too close to Sophie and anyone who might connect the dots.
She'll drive deeper. Find a different cabin. A more remote place. Somewhere she can have this baby in secret and raise it without anyone knowing.
It's a good plan. It's the only plan.
Emma finishes packing and sits on the floor next to her bag and makes a list in her head of everything she needs to do. Get more money. Find prenatal care that doesn't ask questions. Learn how to deliver a baby if she can't get to a hospital. Find midwifery books. Prepare.
By the time midnight comes around, Emma is numb again. The panic has been replaced with a strange kind of calm. The kind of calm that comes before a storm. The kind that means she's made a decision and now she just has to survive it.
She crawls into bed fully clothed and closes her eyes.
Sleep doesn't come right away. Her mind races through everything that's about to change. Everything she's about to lose. She thinks about Marcus and tries not to feel anything about the fact that he will never know. She thinks about the baby and tries not to feel terrified. She thinks about being alone forever and tells herself that at least she'll have the baby.
At least she won't be completely alone.
She's almost asleep when her phone buzzes.
Emma's eyes snap open.
One text. From an unknown number.
Her heart starts pounding as she reaches for the phone. No one knows this number. She's been careful about that. She gave it to Sophie at work but Sophie has never texted her. She gave it to the diner manager but he only calls.
She opens the message and reads it.
We need to talk about your situation.
Five words. That's all it takes to send Emma's entire world into free fall again.
She doesn't know who this is. She doesn't know how they got her number. She doesn't know if they know about the baby or if they know she's here or if they're about to destroy everything.
Emma sits up in bed with her heart hammering against her ribs.
The text came from a number with no name attached. No contact. No way to know who's on the other end. Just five words that are somehow more terrifying than the two pink lines.
We need to talk about your situation.
Her hands are shaking as she stares at the screen.
Another text appears.
It's from the same unknown number.
You can't run from this. We both know that. Let me help.