Page 20 of Vegas Baby!

“Yeesh, you look rough,” Darius, one of my shift partners, told me when I rocked up to work.

I flipped him the bird and went straight to the coffee machine.

“You’re not sick, are you? You should’ve called in.”

“Not sick,” I replied, adding a liberal helping of milk to my coffee so I could chug it faster. “A lot of change overnight.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

With a sigh, I told him everything that had happened.

He listened, slack-jawed, before whistling low when I got to the end. “That is not what I expected. You definitely should’ve called out if you have a new omega.”

“I didn’t think it would feel this bad to come in.” A low-grade headache, and nausea just light enough that I could mostly ignore but it sat heavy in my body. “I didn’t want to make covering the shift difficult.”

“Family first.” Darius patted my shoulder. “The world is not going to implode because you’re not here for a couple shifts.”

“You don’tknowthat.”

Darius laughed. “At least let everyone know in case you need to bounce. They’re gonna have to figure things out fast if you’re going on parental leave soon.”

“I need to make a list of all the changes. It was so much so fast I feel like I’m forgetting important things.”

“Couldn’t hurt. I guess you guys will have to move out of that apartment too?”

“If I don’t have to relocate to New York.”

“Fingers crossed your omega hates it when she goes so we get to keep you.”

“I don’t know how to manage,” I confessed. “I’m so used to planning everything.”

“Youareexceptionally anal-retentive,” Darius said with a grin. “You can plan all you want, but life is going to do whatever it wants. Much like children. Good luck with that.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“You’ll be fine,” he assured me. “You’ll learn to get flexible really fast. Parenthood is like being a shark: sink or swim.”

Before I had even finished updating the team we were rushed off to our first call—a car accident with relatively minor injuries. While we were waiting at the hospital for our patient to be admitted, my phone rang, the number for Bryce’s personal phone sliding across the screen.

Ava.

Darius gave me a knowing look. “Go. We’ve got this.”

I stepped away to answer it, my hello met with sobbing. “Sweetness, what’s wrong?”

“I can’t get in.”

“In where? Where are you?”

“The hotel.” She sniffled, a hiccup following.

“Did you get locked out of the room? Did you call Bryce?”

“He didn’t answer. I was trying to get my stuff back.”

Shit.

“That’s not safe. I’m on my way. Keep trying to get a hold of Bryce.”

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