“Are you feeling alright?”

“Hm... What?” Kyle drew suddenly to attention, pulled out of his reverie. He looked into the half-familiar face of the man who'd saved his life. Adam's friend Derric who, true to his word, had taken on the responsibility of looking after him now that he'd joined his lover's former pack. “Oh, yeah-” he stammered, nodding vigorously as he came back into the present moment. “I'm fine.”

This wasn't true at all, but of course he needed to put up a front. A brave face, in order to disguise his true feelings.

For whose benefit, exactly, he wasn't totally sure he could say...

“You miss him, don't you?” Derric asked, and this irritated him a bit.

Obviously he missed him... That was like asking a fish on dry land whether it missed the water.

He didn't say any of this, though.

He just shrugged.

“Yeah. I miss him.”

He put a hand on the swell of his stomach. It had ballooned to whole new levels in the weeks since Adam had departed- months now, it might have been. Time had ceased to mean all that much to him these days...

It was strange, he thought, how one's mind processed this sort of thing. How events stretched and contorted, their duration in your head not at all resembling the real world time of their occurrence.

When he considered it, it occurred to him that he'd been apart from Adam now far longer than he'd ever been together with him. Yet as short as it had been comparatively to the chasm of their separation, those fleeting moments of togetherness were what stuck with him. They were what stretched out in his mind, replaying over and over again in his head, almost without ceasing.

Their early, awkward encounters. Their first, excruciatingly pleasurable night together. The night he'd told him about his pregnancy, and consummated the flame that had been growing between the two of them, once and for all.

And most of all, that last night.

After Rannulf had made his decision to cast Adam out of the forest, but to let Kyle remain behind.

He'd given them a chance to say their goodbyes in the privacy of one of the huts, and the moments that had ensued between the two of them still played in his head on an almost constant loop, day in and day out, without ceasing.

“Don't go,” he'd begged Adam. “Please, don't leave me here...”

“I don't have a choice in the matter,” Adam had said. “You know I would never leave you if there was anything at all I could do to change things. But there isn't... You heard what Rannulf said. I either leave this place and you stay, or else-”

“We could both go,” he'd tried to say, but Adam shook his head.

“You know he isn't going to let that happen. It has to be one way or another, exactly like he said. He isn't going to make an exception...”

“There has to be something we can do. Anything... You can't leave me here. I don't know anyone here. I don't understand anything about your way of life, nothing at all!”

“Derric will look after you,” Adam had said calmly. “He's a good friend of mine. He'll make sure you're okay.”

“I don't want Derric. I need you, Adam. I can't do this by myself. I just... I'm positive that I can't...”

“I'm positive that you can,” he'd said. “Because it's the only choice on the table right now, and there's nothing either of us can do about that. Don't think I don't wish to God that there was, because I wish it with all my heart. I love you, Kyle. I promised I would take care of you, and that's what I'm trying to do, in the only way it's possible for me under the circumstances. We need to do this. Both for you, and for our child.”

He'd placed a hand on Kyle's swollen belly, but Kyle brushed it away in anger.

He wished he hadn't done so in retrospect, and he wished more than anything that he hadn't said what he did next.

“You're just doing what you've always done. Running away from your problems. You didn't want the responsibility of taking care of your sick father, and taking over his position. And you don't want to have to take care of me. Of us. And so you're running. Again. Like always...”

He'd known, even as he said it, that it was nothing but spite. It was true that Adam literally had no other choice in the matter. It was either leave, or stay and get them both killed- or all three of them, rather...

But he'd been so shaken up by everything. So unready to face the future that stretched out before him. He'd needed to lash out at something. To make someone pay for what was happening to him. And if he couldn't do anything to hurt the man actually responsible, taking aim at Adam seemed like the next best thing in the heat of the moment.

“I'm sorry you feel that way,” he'd said, and the broken, defeated glow of his emerald eyes still lingered fresh in his mind, even after so much time had passed.

He'd apologized.

They'd kissed.

Adam had promised they'd be together again. Somehow. Some way. Once the baby had been delivered, and it was safe for Kyle to return to the outside world.

He wasn't sure he believed any of this, though, and it was the first part of the conversation that lingered with him- the bitterness of what might have been the last time the two of them would ever speak to one another. The last time he would ever look into those brilliant eyes of his...

Back in the present moment, he felt Derric's hand being cupped down on his shoulder, reclaiming his attention.

“I know this must be hard for you,” he said. “If it's any consolation, I can tell you for a fact that man loves you. In case you had any doubts about that.”

The omega smiled feebly, and nodded.

“Thanks,” he said.

“I mean it,” Derric continued. “Ever since we were kids, he's always been passionate about things. Emotional, I guess you could say, but in a good way. He pours his whole heart into whatever he does, and it's pretty easy to tell when something is important to him. Or someone... I don't think I've ever seen him look at anyone the way he looked at you the night you two came here.”

This was reassuring, in some ways. It made Kyle believe that Adam was as dedicated to him, and to reassembling the pieces of their life together, as he'd led him to believe.

At the same time, though, being told these things only drove the spike of his alpha's absence deeper into his heart. To think that a man who cared so much about him might not be able to turn his care into any sort of meaningful action, or even worse, that he might end up getting killed in his attempt to do so, was very little consolation to him in his present state.

“I know he loves me,” he said finally, because what else could he say to all of this?

Derric smiled at him, and nodded.

“Things are going to be okay,” he said, and as reassuring as that deep, rich voice was to him, he didn't know whether he could believe the words it spoke.

“I know they will,” he said anyway. He felt it strangely important that he make Derric believe he was doing him some good. That he was living up to the wishes of his friend, and looking after Kyle the best that he possibly could.

He really was doing his best, after all. But Kyle didn't think things could ever be okay again, no matter how many people did their best to change the situation.

“Now,” said Derric, lifting up a tray of food. “I think you'd better eat something. You look so pale...”

Kyle looked at the food laid out in front of him. All of it was mashed, or tattered, or else covered in viscous fluid that he took to be gravy. Whatever it was, it made him absolutely sick to his stomach, and shoving it into his mouth was about the last thing he wanted to do in that moment...

“I'm not really that hungry,” he said.

Derric sighed.

“You've been eating next to nothing for days, Kyle. I know you're upset about Adam, but you can't keep starving yourself like this. Don't forget you're eating for two now... Don't you want your baby to be healthy?”

Kyle frowned. He felt his womb. Felt the movement of life inside him, possibly turning itself around.

“Of course I do,” he said defeatedly, and reached out to take the tray from Derric's hands.

And so time went on in this way.

The days blending together.

Everything staying mostly the same, except for Kyle's belly getting bigger and bigger, and the rest of his body getting weaker and weaker.

It seemed strange to him, he thought- feeling as weak as he did all the time.

He knew that pregnancy took its toll on women, but he'd never thought it would be quite like this...

Maybe it just affected men worse than it did women, he thought. Or maybe women were just inherently stronger, and better equipped to handle it- this seemed just as likely when he considered it.

He tried to look for some escape from his physical frailty, and from the torture of thinking about Adam, nearly all the time.

But there was very little escape to be found...

Nearly everyone around him in the pack treated him with contempt. They shot him the evil eye whenever they passed, acted like he was some vile monster who had no place whatsoever dwelling among their ranks.

He got it to some degree, as far as that was concerned.

He was an outsider after all, and a former member of a race that had, undeniably, done their people a lot of harm over the years.

Cutting down the forests. Taking away their homes.

Driving them deeper and deeper into hiding, and killing them out of fear and contempt if ever their paths happened to cross.

Derric had told him a few of the more infamous stories in an effort to make him understand why the members of the pack held him and his presence there in such low regard, and he could fully appreciate the temptation to think of this total outsider as being no different from the rest of them.

After all, wasn't that how human beings treated people who were different from they were? Those of a different skin color, or with a differently shaped skull, or simply belonging to another tribe that was separate from their own- and not necessarily even that different, in any discernible way.

Still, though. He insisted he'd never had anything to do with any of that. He'd never even known about it, and even if he had, he would have been one hundred percent against it, totally and completely.

Derric said he knew that. And that a lot of people in his pack knew that. That's why he'd been allowed to stay at all, and why he'd agreed to look after him.

But that did little to change the prevailing sentiment, and the prejudices that had been built up over centuries of human-wolfshifter interactions.

And so now Kyle found himself, trapped in isolation, cut off from the world in every way imaginable, his hope and his health seeming to fade dimmer and dimmer with every day that passed.

And then one afternoon, when he didn't think he could stand another minute of being confined to his room, he decided to go out for a walk. He wasn't necessarily feeling healthy enough for it per se, but he thought the fresh air would do him good. And so he embarked despite Derric's forceful insistence that he bundle up, the cool breeze of the open air felt as good on his burning skin as he'd imagined it would.

He walked among the gently blowing grasses, letting the long blades tickle his open palm as he strode along, breathing in the cold, fresh atmosphere. Derric walked behind him at a respectful distance as he went- he seemed not to want to interrupt what was clearly a period of private contemplation for him, but must have been far too worried about his health and well-being to let him go off on his own.

Kyle didn't mind, though. He was used enough to Derric's constant monitoring to be able to let him simply fade into the background of his thoughts, almost like he wasn't even there.

He let his mind wander as he went along. First to that night he'd spent with Adam out on top of the mountain, and of the wild ride atop his back that had immediately preceded it.

Then his thoughts turned to the child growing inside him, and the prospect of having to deliver him soon. He didn't actually know how long a wolf shifter’s gestation period typically lasted, but his belly was so huge now that he couldn't even see his feet, and he couldn't imagine it getting much bigger than it already was.

He then began to think about baby names, aware that the time for making such decisions might be rapidly dwindling.

Liam... Aiden... Joshua... he thought- he assumed it would be a baby boy since, as Adam had told him the birthrate for girls among shifters was apparently quite low.

Zeke... David... Daniel... Adam Jr...

For some reason, this last name struck something in him.

It seemed unaccountably funny somehow- Adam Jr...

He thought it was because all the other shifters seemed to have such serious sounding names- Raymus, Farrar, Rannulf...

Somehow a grown man with a Jr. after his name was hard to take quite as soberly.

He started laughing at this, harder than it really warranted being laughed at. It wasn't really that uproarious, but it was just one of those things that got to you sometimes, and sent you into hysterics, without any kind of warning.

He didn't try to stop himself, thinking that he was in need of a good laugh after such a long, somber period without any.

He laughed and laughed, tears welling up in the corners of his eyes, wrapping his hand around his stomach and cradling it as his gut began to hurt from the bliss of it.

“Kyle?” he heard Derric calling up to him, clearly confused by this sudden outburst.

But Kyle couldn't stop.

He just kept giggling, and chuckling-

And then he began to cough.

He hacked, and wheezed, and suddenly found that he couldn't breathe...

“Kyle!” Derric shouted, racing forward, and quickly bridging the gap between the two of them. “Are you alright?”

Kyle couldn't answer.

He coughed, and choked, and held an arm to his mouth to try and stifle himself. It didn't do any good, and when he pulled it away again to try and breathe, the crook of his arm was red and dripping with blood.

Even then, he couldn't seem to stop himself.

Out of control, he hacked so hard it made his bones ache, and felt his body tilting forward, toppling toward the ground like a fallen tree. His knees buckled out from under him, and he was about to land on his stomach when he felt the grip of Derric's fingers digging into him, pulling him back in the opposite direction. He dragged him back and spread him across the grass on his spine, easing him down so that he was looking up at an intense blue sky, fluffy white clouds of cotton sweeping by overhead. He continued to cough, and blood spilled from between his open lips.

“Kyle! Kyle are you alright? Do you think you're about to give birth?”

Kyle couldn't speak, but shook his head as he coughed, certain that he wasn't.

He didn't really know how he would know when the moment of his delivery came, and he had no idea what it was that had suddenly overtaken him.

He had a strong feeling, however, that whatever it was had absolutely nothing to do with the baby...