POV: Nova

I stared at my phone all night.

Dr. Reynolds's message sat there, innocuous and terrifying: Please come in tomorrow at 10 AM. I have your bloodwork results to discuss.

Bloodwork results. Such a clinical way to say: we know whose baby you're carrying.

Kai slept beside me in the cabin bedroom, his breathing still labored from his healing lung. Every few hours he'd shift and wince, even in sleep. Reminders that he'd taken a bullet for me. That he'd almost died protecting me from the monster I'd married.

And now we'd find out if that monster's DNA was growing inside me.

I slipped out of bed carefully, not...