Simon knew exactly what was wrong with him. He hadn’t been lying about that just to get Nathan off his back. The awareness of his own dilemma seemed to spring up out of nowhere while he was bent over the toilet, trying to vomit up the nothingness he had eaten.

This sickness that came only in the morning.

The constant presence that showed itself along with the sickness.

Both of these things were hardly enough evidence upon which to base his assumptions, but he knew he was correct. He wouldn’t be feeling this way if it was an ordinary cold or anything like that.

He just needed to confirm it.

Except, he had no idea where to go to do that. Anywhere shapeshifters lived, there were going to be hidden places set aside by shifters, for shifters. Little stores where a shifter could buy necessities aimed at them, and things like that. Shifter-friendly doctors, shifter-friendly insurance agencies. This information was handed down by word of mouth, since someone couldn’t exactly declare aloud that they dealt with people who were half-animal.

Simon was aware of a few business that would deal with his own kind, but he didn’t know anything about this place in particular. Hell, he wasn’t even entirely sure this sort of thing existed. He had never had any need to know such things.

There was no one he could ask. His mother would freak out, his father would go along with whatever his mother did. He had no friends who could give him advice, and he didn’t want to go to the doctor until he was absolutely certain.

That left the question of whether or not a pregnancy test for humans would work with a male shifter. The hormone detection might not be the same. Hell, Simon wasn’t even sure if the same hormones were produced when a man was pregnant. He hadn’t needed to know.

The fact that he could feel a wolf pup growing inside him, its soul developing, wasn’t enough to convince him. He needed to see it for himself or the situation wouldn’t be quite real.

In any case, there was nothing he could do for the rest of the day. The nausea was too much. He mostly drank tea and dozed, on and off throughout the entire night until around 1 a.m. Hunger pangs woke him, and he ate an entire sleeve of crackers. Every single one stayed down, though a new bout of nausea several hours later almost got the best of him.

At least it seems better this morning.

Not enough for him to go to the school and act as if everything was fine, but good enough for a drive to the drugstore.

After showering and getting dressed, Simon felt almost like himself again. He still looked sick, his cheeks pale, bags gathering under his eyes like they were packing up to go on vacation, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that. At least he figured he would look right at home wandering aimlessly through the shelves in front of a pharmacy.

As it turned out, he was wrong.

A Walgreens was the nearest drugstore, so that was where he went. Immediately inside the front door were a handful of abandoned cash registers. At the very furthest counter were two cashiers who looked to be in their mid-twenties, chattering away as they ignored him. Hell, maybe they hadn’t even noticed him come in. They certainly seemed to be lost in their own world right about now.

Ducking his head down, while at the same time trying his hardest not to look suspicious, Simon headed off towards the food. His plan was to work his way around the entire store, gathering up a few odds-and-ends so it wouldn’t look like the only thing he came in here for was a pregnancy test. Then again, that was probably what everyone did when they were about to buy something embarrassing.

He grabbed a bag of chips without really looking at what kind it was. The rows of colorful bags all blurred together, and he was having a hard time focusing long enough to be able to read the labels.

Moving away from the chips, he worked his way slowly down the rest of the food aisles and somehow wound up holding a block of cheese and a lunchbox sandwich container clearly aimed towards children, if the monster faces covering it were anything to go by.

He switched over to the vitamins, and that was where he found the other customers. Three of them in total, all spaced-out staring at the bottles in the various rows. All three of them were young men who looked as if they could be brothers, or at least related in some way. Tanned skin, short, spiky hair, broad shoulders, stereotypically-handsome features; they had to be tourists, each one of them seeking a different elixir which they must believe would solve all their problems. It certainly couldn’t be that they needed to eat more, drink less, and sleep longer at night. No, vitamin supplements would fix all that.

Simon picked up a multivitamin, just in case. Stacking the deck.

“Gnarly choice, bro,” one of the clones said.

Whether this was a compliment or not, Simon had no idea. He walked away after flashing the young man a weak smile, wondering if vitamins were part of some new drug craze.

By now, he couldn’t gracefully carry everything he was holding onto. Tucking the block of cheese under one arm, freeing up his hand, Simon went finally made his way over to the pregnancy tests.

There were more of them than he would ever have imagined. It was a veritable wall of pink boxes, each one offering to let him know soonest and most accurately.

He reached for one.

“Hi, can I help you?”

Simon yelped and spun to face the speaker, dropping his cheese on the floor in the process. A woman about his age, wearing the Walgreens uniform, ducked down to retrieve the cheese, then held it out to him.

“Thanks,” he muttered. “But I’m fine. Just need one of these.”

“You’ll probably be wanting this one, then.” She pointed to a box next to the one she’d been reaching for. “This one is made for people like yourself.”

“You know what I am, then.” He felt stupid having to confirm it when she’d literally just said that, but he needed to make sure she wasn’t talking about something else.

The employee smiled. Her name tag was obscured by a long, curling tendril of red-brown hair draped over one shoulder. “I do.”

It was normally people in positions of authority who were the gatekeepers between the world of humans and the existence of shifters, not just regular employees. Simon felt mistrust start to curdle inside him then shoved the feeling away. She must have found out somehow or been told by someone. He couldn’t say for sure whether this stranger was trustworthy or not, so he would just have to trust the judgment of whoever had informed her.

“You said this one is made for people like me. How is that possible? It wouldn’t ever sell if it was just for us.”

“Made for humans, with shifters kept in mind. It detects the proper hormones, accounting for variables. Someone must have designed it like that to make it easier on you. I’m not sure exactly who or how they did it. But it works. Trust me.”

I don’t.

But he would have to. He had no other choice.

“All right then,” he muttered. “I’ll take it. Thanks for your help.”

She smiled at him and then drifted away. Simon looked after her for a moment, a little puzzled. The implications of this were almost unimaginable. Regular humans not only knowing about shifters, but being capable of recognizing them on sight? Human products adapted to account for shifter use?

When had this started to happen? The future it hinted at, would it bring peace or war?

The questions he had were too damn philosophical for a sick person, so he just grabbed the right pregnancy test and made his way back up towards the cash register. He was just slow enough to have to stand behind all three of the surfer clones; each one moved as if this was their first time ever buying anything for themselves. Maybe it was.

The two cashiers didn’t seem to mind the lethargic atmosphere. One of them did the checking-out, while the other one bagged; it didn’t seem to Simon like it was necessary for them to tag-team such a small amount of customers and items. A manager would have scolded them, especially when it came to the way they flirted with the three surfers. Everything they said was laced with innuendo, and some of it wasn’t even subtle.

The surfers just smiled back vaguely, responding with general statements as if they literally had no idea what was going on.

As soon as the three of them were taken care of and had found their way out the door, Simon stepped up to the cash register and set down all of his purchases. One of the girls looked at him sideways before stepping away, having decided that she had no interest in flirting with him. The other cashier got him through the line without saying anything other than his total.

As it turned out, pregnancy tests were expensive.

Simon accepted his receipt and then gathered up his bag as it was practically shoved at him.

I guess I’m not their type, he thought. He immediately felt bad about making assumptions about the girls, even if the implications were clear. The baby must be making him snippy.

The stress from the fact that he was probably pregnant was making him snippy.

Driving home again, Simon took his bag inside and dumped everything out on the kitchen table. He grabbed the slender pink box from the mix, like a child eager to play with his new toy, and went to the couch to read the instructions.

The damn thing wanted him to wait until morning for best results.

Simon buried his head in his hands. The corner of the box pressed uncomfortably against his temple. All that and he still had to endure further agony until tomorrow? He didn’t even have it confirmed for him that he was pregnant yet, and already this baby was making it difficult on him.

Morning seemed as if it would never come, each second ticking by like it was an hour all on its own. Sleep was difficult to come by until he collapsed from exhaustion sometime in the small hours of the morning.

His alarm woke him, though he had no idea if he planned to go to work today. It all depended on what answer the test gave him.

Getting out of bed was easy. Getting the pregnancy test was easy. Walking into the bathroom was easy. Hell, Simon didn’t even feel all that terrible today. Maybe this was all a fluke, an idea that had somehow made its way into his subconscious and had been influencing him ever since. These symptoms he’d been having were all the product of a deranged mind. Now that he was aware of that, surely all of this would go away.

But, the easiness stopped as soon as he actually started to take the test. The reality of this entire stupid situation came crashing down around him, crashing on him, stealing his breath. He couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but momentarily give in to the pressure and the panic. If the result was going to be what he feared it would be, he didn’t know what he was going to do. Everything was on the line here.

On the outside, he was calmly performing the test as if this was just another thing he did every day, like brushing his teeth or putting on fresh clothes. The motions were automatic, some other part of his brain guiding his body to perform them.

He took the test and carried it over to the bed to wait for the result to show itself. The stick was supposed to show him the result in ten minutes. That seemed like a hell of a long time, but he supposed there were chemical reactions that had to take place. If what the sales clerk had said was true, the test also had to account for the fact that he was a shifter, and that would undoubtedly add to the time.

It was the longest, most unbearable ten minutes he had ever experienced in his life. There was nothing else he’d ever experienced that could even compare to this. Even when he was in school awaiting test results, or when a tight game was down to the last few minutes, he had never experienced such terrified anticipation. Each second that ticked past was like another needle being shoved under his skin. There were hundreds of them, pushing against his nerves on all the wrong spots, like some hellish version of acupuncture. He was almost in physical agony, all the muscles in his body drawn so tense and tight that he was one gigantic cramp.

Then the alarm he had set ten minutes ago went off, the sound jangling and explosive in the silence of his bedroom. He couldn’t have been more panicked than if he was floating in the vacuum of space and saw the universe around him start to collapse. And everything was collapsing, falling around him, a building decimated by burning. The foundation of the life he had built was tumbling down and he was going to be left with nothing but the shirt on his back, and this damned test to keep him company.

Because the fucking thing was positive. He knew it would be even before he looked at it, but he had to look at it to know it was true. The word “pregnant” mocked him from the low resolution screen.

The test snapped in half in his hand, and he threw it across the room, where it struck against the wall and fell to the floor. The inner workings of the device were exposed, wires and plastic and nondescript pieces that trailed across the carpeting. Such an innocuous damn thing to ruin his life.

There was a child growing inside him, getting bigger by the day.

Nathan’s child.

I have to go see Nathan, Simon thought. I have to go see him right now.

He couldn’t do this alone. He shouldn’t do this alone, because this wasn’t only his burden to bear. This child would never have formed itself into existence without Nathan’s contribution, and the alpha needed to know. He deserved to know.

And Simon deserved some fucking help while his life was falling to pieces.

The proper thing to do would be to get through the morning like he normally did, so he could competently present himself when speaking to his boss. Doing all that would certainly take up time, though it would certainly be helpful in other ways. At a time like this, everyone involved was going to need normalcy to be able to hang on to themselves. Routines, like Nathan had said. A man needed his routines, his rest, and his procedures, if he was to be able to take what came his way. A wolf needed to know his limits, to see what had to be done, so he could endure the hardships.

Simon threw all that advice out the window, grabbed his car keys, and drove to the school. He didn’t feel much like a wolf right now, even though it was because of his wolf nature that this was able to happen in the first place.

He didn’t feel much like a man, either.

He felt like a frightened little boy who had finally understood just how much trouble he was in.

There didn’t seem to be all that many police on the streets of Portsmouth today, which was just about the only good thing that had happened to Simon in days. He drove distracted, breaking all sorts of laws. The speed limit was a mere suggestion. Stop signs, well, he was sure that he missed most of those. He couldn’t focus on the road, couldn’t focus on anything but all the words that he wanted to say to Nathan.

Simon parked crookedly in the front row of the school lot, common courtesy be damned. Shoving open the driver’s side door, he leaped out to the ground and slammed the door behind him again. He marched across the thoroughfare that led past the front of the school, pushed his way through the series of two front doors, and went right into the main office.

Elaine lifted her head to smile at him as he went by. “Simon! Are you…” Her cheerful tone said she was going to ask if he felt any better, but the sight of him must have changed her mind. She swallowed her words, then tried again. “Are you okay?”

Simon placed his hands on top of her desk. “Is Nathan in his office?”

“Yes, but he’s in a meeting right now. If you want to see him, I can…”

He didn’t wait for her to finish speaking. He shoved away from her desk and jogged in the direction of Nathan’s office, hidden behind his brand-new door.

“Simon! You can’t just go barging in on him!”

Simon did exactly that. Nathan hadn’t locked the door, so Simon yanked it open and forced himself inside.

The principal himself sat in his usual place, bent over a piece of paper with one of the other teachers.

“Please make an appointment with Elaine up at the front desk,” Nathan murmured absently. Then, his posture stiffened. He lifted his head. “Simon?”

“I’m saying we’ve got an appointment right now,” Simon said. His voice rasped in his throat. “I need to speak with you. Immediately.”

The other teacher shot him a fierce glare, though they couldn’t seem to get much in the way of actual emotion behind their expression. Even they could sense that something was dreadfully wrong.

Nathan held up one hand to silence a protest that hadn’t been voiced. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Popov. I need to take care of this.”

“I can see that,” the teacher replied sourly. Rising to her feet, she snatched up her purse and stormed out of the office. Simon slammed the door behind her and then whirled around to face Nathan.

Nathan stood up as well and approached him, lifting his hands up as if this gesture could actually do anything worthwhile. “I can see that you’re upset about something. Let’s sit down and talk.”

“Fuck that,” Simon snapped. “Yes, I’m upset about something. I’m pregnant. With your pup.”