A baby. I’m gonna be a dad. Dad to a baby who was going to be far away, and I needed to figure out how to man up without losing everything.

It had been almost a day since Miles stormed out of here and all I could think about was my future role as a father. Which made me a selfish jerk, given the huge fight we had over the baby. Although it wasn’t really the baby we were fighting over, was it? Miles wanted to be an attorney. He was made for it, fighting for the little man, making a difference. But now… now what?

He was pregnant. Pregnant with my child. A baby. We did that. We made a baby. When he first told me, I hadn't been able to keep the shock from my face. He mistook it as anger or frustration or I don’t even know what, but the next thing I knew, there was a wall between us, one I hadn't yet figured out how to break down, so when he told me tonight that he wanted to transfer to a better law school, I freaked out.

I knew it was coming, unlike the pregnancy. They told us in sex ed all about being able to get pregnant the first time and all that crap, but not once had I ever heard of someone becoming pregnant before their first heat.

We'd talked about transfer I before. It made sense. He needed a better school and we could… would make it work. Now that the tension of the fight was easing off of me, I knew what I needed to do. I needed to apologize and find a school near him. And a job. I needed a good job to support our child.

My brain was buzzing with too much, none of which could I make head nor tails of. I needed Miles. I needed him in my arms as we rationally discussed what came next. No matter what obstacles we faced, we were going to make it. We had to. He was mine. The baby was mine. All the rest was details.

Whipping out my phone, I dialed his number and was taken aback when a woman answered. “Hello.”

Shit, was she crying?

“Sorry, I must have misdialed. I was looking for Miles.” Glancing down at my phone, I made sure I'd dialed the right number. the nickname I'd given him, Atticus, was on the screen. It was his phone.

“Are you him?” the woman snapped, the venom spitting, even across the phone line. Miles and I had had fights before. Many of them. But never had he gone to someone else like this. Never had he put someone between us.

“Him?” I needed to get my grip before I angered her more. At least until I got to speak with him. To make it right.

“The father.”

I couldn't imagine who this woman could be, that Miles had told her about the baby without talking to me about it first. It was clear I'd messed up worse than I had thought. But I could fix this. “Yes. May I speak to him?” The phone echoed in my ear, the reception bad. No, not the reception, the loudspeaker. He was someplace with a loudspeaker. My brain raked through all the places that would have a loudspeaker on a Sunday morning. It was too early for any sports.

“No,” was all she said. Damn, she was mad. What right did she have to be so mad? This was between Miles and I.

And then the words on the loudspeaker called a code something or other just before she hung up.

Double shit. Was that the hospital? Before I knew what was happening, I was exiting a cab at the city hospital.

I raced in, asking anyone and everyone where he was, where my pregnant omega was, not one nurse, doctor, or even custodian able to or willing to help me. I was being threatened with security, tears running down my face when a nurse came out and without meeting my eyes, said the words that changed the course of my life, “Mr. Schofield has forbidden your entry. You are to leave now or else the security team,” she pointed to three guards behind me who had come up without my notice, “will be asked to remove you and press charges.”

My jaw fell. No. No. No. He wouldn’t shut me out of my child’s life, his life, like that. At least I knew he was okay. You can’t give orders while you’re dead. That was when it hit me like a punch in the gut. Only one thing would make him hate me this much. The baby.

“The baby?”

“There is no baby. I’m sorry.”

From the moment her words hit my ear, rationality fled, and true to their words, security did escort me and charges were pressed, and then dropped. Not that I cared about any of that. I found out the next day, from the news, that he'd been in a car accident. I tried calling, but the answer remained the same: Miles wanted nothing to do with me. I threw myself into school, trying to wear myself out so that at the end of the day, thoughts of Miles wouldn't torment me. In a moment, I had lost everything. Nothing else mattered.