Free Web NovelChapter 72: THE DREAM
KEISHA’S POV
I curled up on Nadia’s guest bed with my knees to my chest, stared at the wall and thought about tomorrow.
Tomorrow I was going to tell them.
How would I even say it?
Callum. Dane. I need to tell you something.
I’m pregnant.
I’ve been pregnant for eight to ten weeks and I only confirmed it today and I’ve been carrying it alone since before I knew for certain because I was scared of what you would say.
Because I thought you would tell me to get rid of it.
Because some part of me had been certain that to the two of you this was a complication. A problem. Something that needed to be managed and quietly resolved before it became something that threatened the pack or your positions or the careful act we had all been performing for months.
I pressed my hand flat against my stomach.
They wouldn’t tell me to get rid of it.
Would they?
I tried to picture Callum’s face. The expression he had when he came to my door in the dark.
I tried to picture Dane. His lips on my forehead. The way he told me to go back to sleep.
They wouldn’t.
I didn’t actually think they would.
But thinking and knowing were different things and I didn’t know and the not knowing was the part that had been keeping the words lodged somewhere below my throat for weeks.
The reason why I was hesitating.
I turned onto my back and looked at the ceiling.
The synthetic heat accelerant was the other thing.
Someone had planned the cabin. Had planned the heat and the bond and— if they had known enough about omega biology to source an accelerant— possibly the pregnancy too. Someone had wanted this to happen. They had orchestrated it carefully and from a distance and I was lying here in the middle of their plan not yet knowing who they were or what the endgame was.
I needed to tell Callum about the accelerant too. He needed to know. It was information that changed the shape of everything and he needed to have it.
Tomorrow.
Nobody was going to take this from me.
I held onto that, and then I went to sleep.
Soon enough, I had a dream. One that plagued me since I was a kid. It always started the same way.
I was small. Eight, maybe nine. The kitchen of our old house in Coldridge, the one with the yellow curtains our mother had sewn herself and the table that was slightly too big for the room.
Lyra was across from me making faces.
I was trying not to laugh and failing. "Stop it." I laughed. "You’re going to make me spill."
"I’m not doing anything." She laughed as she did the face again.
"Lyra." I pressed my hand over my mouth. freёwebnovel.com
She grinned. "You have no self control." She hollered. "Absolutely none."
"I have plenty." I scowled. "Stop making the face."
She made it again.
I laughed. It came out in a burst I couldn’t stop and I knocked my cup and the water went across the table and we both scrambled to contain it.
Our mother’s phone rang and the laughter stopped.
My mother’s face turned pale.
"Mama?" Lyra whispered.
She didn’t answer. She was already standing, already moving toward the door, her face looking blank of color.
"Mama what’s wrong?" I was already standing.
She went out the door and we followed.
The compound outside was different. There were people standing in it who were never usually there and there was something on the ground covered with a cloth and our mother was already at it, already kneeling, already pulling the cloth back with hands that were shaking so badly she could barely grip it.
I saw my father’s face under the cloth.
Pale.
Still.
"Papa." I whispered.
He wasn’t moving.
"PAPA—" freewebnσvel.cøm
I woke up with a scream, looking around. Where was I? It took me a long second to find out where I was.
Nadia’s room. Nadia’s guest bed. Ashveil pack.
I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth and took a deep breath.
It was a dream.
It was a memory and a dream but both of those things were true at once and my father was still dead either way and the compound was still there in my memory exactly as it had been. I couldn’t ever forget it.
I lay back down and stared at the ceiling.
I hadn’t dreamed about that in a long time. Months maybe. Why now?
The door opened and I looked up.
Nadia came in with her coat still on and her hair slightly messy with a takeaway container in one hand but she stopped when she saw me sitting up in the dark.
"You’re awake." She frowned.
"You’re back late." I stretched, my voice hoarse.
"Lisa’s parties always run long." She sighed as she came inside and turned the small lamp on before she sat on the edge of the bed and looked at me. "Were you asleep?"
"For a while." I admitted.
She looked at me. "What’s wrong?"
My expression changed. "Bad dream," I said vaguely.
She went silent for a while, just studying me.
"Something is going on with you." She finally said. "And I don’t mean the dream." She held my gaze. "Something has been going on for weeks and every time I get close to it you redirect me or say fine and change the subject." She shifted to face me fully. "I sat through that whole party thinking about you and whether you were okay and I came back here and you’re sitting in the dark looking like—" She gestured at my face. "That."
"Nadia—"
"I’m not finished." She cut me off. "You are my best friend and I love you and I have known you since we were nine years old. I know every single version of you." She looked at me directly. "And the face you’ve been wearing for the past month is not one I recognise and I am tired of pretending I don’t see it."
I looked at my hands quietly.
"Don’t you dare lie to me." She whispered. "Tell me the truth."
