Page 8 of Broken Pregnant Mate
“If Emin doesn’t answer, call Oren,” I joke, but this time, Dorian doesn’t laugh. Instead, a wrinkle appears between his brows.
“About Oren.” Dorian steps back, running a hand over his beard and leaning against the wall, scanning me as though looking for clues. “You know I’m giving you priority in this thing, right?”
I swallow, averting my eyes from him. First, because there’s a tug within me to do it—it’s not something I’m used to, as an alpha, but alpha leader trumps me in the hierarchy. Which means holding Dorian’s gaze feels awkward at best, uncomfortable at worst.
“Right.” I bite my tongue, clap my hands together, and turn, facing the hallway. “I’d better get a move on—don’t want the prisoners rebelling.”
Dorian says nothing, but it’s like I already know what he’s thinking—he’s thinking that eventually, he’ll get me to talk to him. Maybe he’s thinking he just needs to give me some time to open up, and I’ll tell him everything about what happened, that I’ll talk to him about Oren and the entire situation.
He’s a talker, Dorian. When he sees a problem, he immediately wants to get to the bottom of it, to find a solution. He doesn’t like to let things linger—this much I’ve learned about him during my time in the Ambersky territory.
But I amnota talker. In fact, I don’t ever want to talk to Dorian about what happened to me. I went long enough in my life without a parental figure that the absence of it doesn’t feel that strange. I’m used to acting as my own leader, my own confidant. I can keep everything bottled up inside my own head, where it’s safe, and I don’t have to worry about other people expanding it, growing its influence.
If I share it with Dorian, it not only becomes real, but it becomes bigger, networking outside of my body. He could tell Kira, and she could tell others, and the idea of that makes the truth feel like a plague.
“Alright,” Dorian finally says, the word coming out as a quick sigh. “Good luck, man.”
In an effort to hurry away from him and avoid any more potential conversation, I start making my way down the hallway. Most of the inhabitants of the cells are shifters, but there are a few other species—one fairy, who is brushing her hair in the mirror when I pass—and another being I’m not really sure how to define, lying in bed, dark energy seeping from their form and dripping out over the sides of the mattress.
When I pass a cell and the person inside looks up, I’ll wave to them. For five minutes, I talk to a shifter who’s still trying to prove his innocence in a local theft. I feel for him, but also, it really seems like he did it.
It’s not until I’m halfway down the hallway that I catch a familiar scent, and my entire body flushes with a potent mix offeelings—recognition, anticipation, and something so forceful it punches up at the bottom of my throat.
Emaline.
There’s no way—I would have known if we were down here together. I would have caught her scent long before now.
I walk faster, turning right and heading down a different hallway, my breath coming fast. When I pass the cells now, I just hold up a hand, unable to stop.
Because when I reach the very last cell, at the very end of the furthest hallway, I see her.
Sitting at the table, chin in her palm, hand hovering over a rook on the far side of a chess set.
The air knocks right out of my lungs. It’s really her—that dirty blonde hair longer than I remember, halfway down her back now and curlier than ever before. She’s skinny, too, even skinnier than the last time I saw her, outside that foster home.
Gorgeous. Even after all this time, even just looking at her side profile—I catch the bags under her eyes, see the weary set of her shoulders, understand immediately the exhaustion in her posture.
I watch, time stretching out as if in slow motion, as her nose twitches, her eyes widening.
Then, as though she doesn’t quite trust herself, she looks up, her eyes locking on mine. We hold that gaze for a beat, then two, then something happens that I’m not expecting.
Emaline goes pale, her body goes limp, and she slides right off her chair and onto the floor with athudso audible that the other denizens of the jail call out, asking what the hell that sound was.
Chapter 4 - Emaline
When I come to, Aidan is touching me.
It’s so overwhelming, so unexpected, that I gasp and start to writhe away from him. Not only is it Aidan, but I haven’t been touched byanybodyin almost two years, with the exception of the physician who’s given me a very cursory once-over each year that I’ve been here.
Now, I’m embarrassed by the way my body reacts to him, the immediate pull of my soul to his. The soft tingling in my skin, the way I heat and melt, everything inside me urging to mold to him, to fit myself against his shape.
Even after all this time, I want him.
Aidan, with his Grayhide hair, that blonde that’s more silver than yellow, shifting in the light like prairie grass in the wind. Aidan, with his soft touch, the concerned look on his face—always that outward worry for others, but never for himself.
“Emaline,” he says, reaching out to me again, “hold still—I think you hit your head when you fell.”
Part of me wants to run, to get away, but I can’t ignore a command from him, so I lower my eyes, body falling still as his fingers move through my hair, apparently feeling for a bump.
