Page 5 of Broken Pregnant Mate
Whenever he got food, he made sure to share it with me. Always.
“Good morning, Emaline,” someone says, and I look up at the door to see Trenan standing just outside the clear door, holding a plate of breakfast food in one hand. He’s my favorite guard—a beta, on the shorter side, his sandy hair always mussed, a light spread of freckles over his nose.
He’s kind, grew up in a home like mine, and loves grape-flavored candies. Carefully, he lifts the little sliding slot, pushing the plate through and toward me.
I catch the scent of sausage, and while I’m not exactly hungry, it’s not appalling to me, either. A little bottle of orange juice follows, and that’s what I’m most excited for. A tiny taste of sunshine in my windowless room.
“Morning.” I stand from the edge of the bed, feeling pins and needles flood through my legs. Breakfast couldn’t come at a better time—I need something to keep me from my thoughts. From reminiscing on the past. From letting that dream drag me back into what happened to put me in this cell. “Looks good.”
“Biscuits and gravy,” he says, nodding toward the plate as I pick it up, unsheathing the little plastic spork. It’s rounded and slightly bendy, so you’d have to work very, very hard to hurt someone with it, like beating a person to death with a pool noodle.
Trenan is my favorite of the guys who come down here, watching over me and the other prisoners, delivering our food, making sure we have what we need. He’s usually bright and happy, in a good mood, and willing to share details of the outside world with me.
Nothing that bad happens down here. As far as I can tell, wherever I am must be for nonviolent captives. The ones not trying to fight the guards or break out.
That, or they don’t let the violent ones live.
“What’s the weather like out there today?” I ask, as I settle down at my little table with the food, digging the fork into the edge of a biscuit. Some places will make them too hard—make it impossible for the gravy to soak in—but here, they always deliver soft biscuits.
In some ways, living here is much better than back at home, or with Vern, where I was lucky to get the last smashed taco at the bottom of a fast-food bag. I was lucky to try and eat it without the pressure of eyes on me, sticking to my fingers, watching as I licked them.
“Clear skies,” Trenan laughs, tucking the tray under his arm and leaning against the wall. “Like always—although itdoes look like a dust storm might be moving in. That happens sometimes, when it’s really dry. But other than that, it’s just another hot day. Around here, there’s like one week a year that we get anything but clear skies. Well, except for the storm that came through last year.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Storm?”
“Yeah.” Trenan’s brows pull together, and he casts his eyes upward, like he’s thinking about it. “Out of nowhere last year, this huge storm comes rolling through the valley. Like nothing we’ve seen in a long time. No idea what caused it, but the plants around here were blooming like crazy, even though it was practically autumn by then.”
“Wow.” I put another bite of biscuit in my mouth, chew, swallow, then start, “And nobody—”
But Trenan straightens up, looking at something out of my view.
“Sorry, Em. Gotta go. Have a good day, alright?”
And just like that, my conversation for the day is done. I sigh and look back down at my plate, my appetite suddenly gone.
Like always, the second I have time to think, it all comes back to me.
How royally I’ve fucked up the past few years. Everything I’ve lost. How much I wish—desperately—that I could go back and change everything.
I would go back to the night Aidan left and fight harder to go with him. Force him to let me come along.
But then I remember what he said, and the idea crumbles into dust.
“Aidan,” I’d said, finding him with his bag, sneaking out of the barn. “What are you doing?”
“I have to get out of here,” he’d said, his jaw set, his eyes flicking back to the barn where, up until five minutes ago, we’d been cuddled together, bodies slotted firmly together, like a litter of puppies. “Go back inside.”
“Aidan,” I was breathless, wild with the sudden possibility of leaving. “I—I want to come with you. We—I mean—”
“It’s too dangerous,” he’d said, shaking his head. “There’s no reason for you to come with me, Emaline.”
“There is,” I’d said, pleading with him not to make me say it. To let the truth of it exist between us like I’d felt it always had, just under the surface, so real and true that it didn’t need saying, like the ground beneath our feet.
“No, there isn’t—”
“Because I love you, Aidan. Because…because we’re mates.”
He’d blinked, stunned, and for a wild, impossible moment, I thought that would be it. I thought, naively, that this would be when I finally kissed Aidan, after years of wishing it would happen.
