Kent sat up, pulling me along with him so that I set straddling his lap with my legs splayed out on either side of his hips. His hands moved to my stomach and began to lightly stroke the small hard bump that had begun to emerge within the past few weeks.

“Please, Kent,” I said softly, as I stroked, petted, and played with his short beard and rubbed my thumb along his mustache. “There are many other things that I’d like to talk about right now, such as how this soft beard may feel if you were to happen to have it pressed against my ass while you licked my hole.”

“Quit trying to distract me, Vegas. We obviously need to talk. How long have you known? It’s mine, right?” he asked softly. His hands were almost reverently stroking the small bump while he gazed into my eyes, wondrously.

“Here you go with insinuating that I’m fat again. And now you want to assume that I’m pregnant, too? Seriously, we could actually be finally having a moment here.”

“Pierre. Are you seriously not even willing to consider the fact that this hard bump doesn’t feel anything like belly fat?”

“No, because I’ve been taking the Previcare shot since right after Julian was born. As much as I love my son, I wasn’t going to take the chance of ever being caught off guard again by a surprise pregnancy.”

Kent’s eyes widened. “You might want to ask Tom about that. Are you aware that Previcare has been completely removed from the market here in the States? They’ve had several bad batches over the years, some of them even caused increased fertility instead of preventing pregnancy, that’s how Tom ended up with twins.” I gulped when I heard that.

“Are you making that up right now? You really wouldn’t fuck with me about something that serious, right? Because I’ve never heard anything about that, not at all.”

Kent shook his head. “Pierre, you were right to call me a bullheaded asshole. When I came over here tonight, I was originally planning to beg your forgiveness for how I’ve acted since you opened your shop, and see if I could buy you a drink. I mean, I’ve been a real self-righteous prick where you are concerned, and I apologize for that. But I would never fuck with you about something like this. Seriously, Pierre. I’m not fucking with you, it was all over the news a few years ago. Haven’t you seen any of those stories over there?”

“I’ve been busy for years. I was going to school full-time, working as an apprentice at a local bakery, and raising my son. I bought a case of the shots online a few years ago, and I self-inject twice a year. I’m not due for a refill supply until next year, I’ve had my birth control on set it and forget it mode ever since I discovered the shot.”

“Have you not had any symptoms of pregnancy?” Kent grinned as he continued. “You know, things like mood swings? Not to mention heartburn, nausea, and puking around the same time every day.”

“Well, yeah. But the mood swings, nausea, and heartburn are all easily explained by the stress I’ve been under. I didn’t just move to Hollydale, I moved from a whole other country. I moved halfway around the world to bring my son here, and open my dream bakery. That’s enough to stress anybody out, so I never thought about the fact that I was puking every night. Who wouldn’t be under that kind of anxiety and stress?”

I stopped and thought for a moment, my heart sinking as his words rang true. Not that I wouldn’t welcome another child as wonderful as Julian, I had more than enough love to give another child. But could I really manage to do it all over again, this time completely on my own? After my grandfather passed, I’d had no help with Julian outside of hired babysitters.

Now that I’d started to build my new circle of friends here, for the first time that I could remember I had good friends that I could call on in a crisis. I mentally ran through my circle, remembering that it was Valentine’s Day, and I remembered that Liam was home tonight. He and Christian had plans to celebrate on the coming weekend.

I flicked my gaze back to Kent, as the plan came together in my mind. “Tell you what, small town. Give your brother a text, Liam—not Christian. Ask him to smuggle me a pregnancy test over. I’ll piss on the stick and then we’ll find out once and for all which one of us is right. I mean, I’m the one that’s actually an omega. An omega, might I mention, that’s been pregnant once before. Shouldn’t I be the one who would know? Meanwhile, since I’m willing to let your family in on our dirty little secret about Vegas, your ass gets to help me clean up the mess we made.”

Kent leaned forward and touched his forehead to mine, rubbing our flour and egg-coated noses together. “You drive a hard bargain, especially when I was already going to stay and clean. But that’s fine, I’ll text Liam in just a minute. But you need to know one thing, Pierre. I mean this from the bottom of my heart. If you’re pregnant with my baby? You don’t get to do it alone. My dad ran off on me, and so did Christian’s. No child of mine will ever know what it feels like to be abandoned.”

I nodded shakily, unwilling—or, unready, to face the meaning behind his statement. I’d always said that I didn’t want or need an alpha, but secretly in my heart of hearts, I just never thought that I would find one who would want to embrace an omega that comes kit and caboodle with another alpha’s kid in tow.

Kent finished his statement with a soft, tender kiss. When he pulled away, I eased off his lap and reluctantly picked up my filthy pants and began to pull them on. I knew that what Kent had said was the absolute truth—he would never abandon me or our child.

And unless I had him pegged completely wrong, he was probably ready to happily embrace the idea of being a father to Julian as well. I shook my thoughts away for the moment, and pulled on my chef jacket as I stepped into my shoes before going after brooms.

After Kent had dressed and shot off a text to Liam, we both began the laborious job of cleaning my kitchen. We had the floor clean enough to walk on by the time that a light tapping was heard on the back door. I rushed over to let Liam in, apologizing profusely as I all but yanked the paper bag out of his hand and rushed off down the hallway that led from the kitchen to the bathroom, while he came in and closed the door behind him.

I knew from the laughter I heard in my wake that he wasn’t at all offended, which probably was a good thing. If I ended up being pregnant, he and I were about to become family whether or not Kent and I figured out a way to get together without killing each other.

I sat in the bathroom for a good fifteen minutes staring at the test stick in my hand, and trying to work up the courage to take it. If it was positive, my life was about to have another radical change.

If it was negative, then I probably had a stomach tumor or something like that. Either way, the results weren’t going to make my day. Probably. There was one small corner of my heart that was hoping against hope that it would be positive.

Finally, I heaved a sigh and stood to my feet as I pulled my zipper down and stepped over to the wall opposite the toilet. I pulled out my dick and began to piss into the wall-mounted urinal, making sure to stick the test strip under the flow midstream. After the stick was coated, I set it up on the top of the urinal while I gave myself a couple shakes before I tucked my dick away.

By the time I’d finished washing and drying my hands, and retrieved the test, there was still no reaction in the little window. Knowing full well that no news is good news, I burst out the bathroom and rushed back out to the kitchen. I’d worry about maybe-cancer later, right now, I’d enjoy a moment of I told you so instead.

Liam and Kent looked up curiously from where they were both busily scrubbing my work area. I waved the test over my head with my hand in the air as I all but crowed.

“It’s blank, see? That means I’m not—“

“Pregnant,” Kent finished as he plucked the test from my hand with a wide grin. He turned it to show me the large pink plus sign that now filled the window. I took one look at it, and my vision started to blur and fade to black. As I slowly fell to the floor, I felt Kent’s strong arms catch me around the middle. My last lucid thought was that he was always making a habit of catching me when I fell.