Colin dragged himself back to the medical side of the MRU the next day. He hadn't thought the doctor would get his test results back so quickly, but apparently Dr. Russell thought this should be a priority. "If I'm right, and you're pregnant, then you're probably about eight weeks along based on your symptoms." Dr. Russell was a no-nonsense woman with dark skin, close-cropped hair, and a voice any ten starlets would kill for. "I did take a class in omega medicine, so I'm not operating completely blind here."

"That's…good?" Colin toyed with the hem of his fatigue jacket. "So the results?"

"Well," Russell told him, "I put a rush on the results both because if you're that far along, I wanted to give you advice about pre-natal care sooner rather than later. And given the way you've described your symptoms, and the way you've presented, I've got a lot of concerns about anemia." She held up a tablet. "And the answer is yes, to both. You're anemic, and you're pregnant. That's…well, to be honest, that's not a great combination."

Colin doubled over. "Is there any way the results could be wrong? Like maybe the sample got mixed up?"

"Mr. Church, there isn't another omega on this base. No, the sample did not get mixed up. I ran the test myself. These are your results. You are pregnant. You need to take better care of yourself, starting now, for the sake of yourself and the baby. That is an order." She narrowed her eyes at him. "I take it the news isn't exactly welcome."

"I hate kids." He let out a hysterical laugh and made himself sit back up. Getting the words out, taboo though they were, was like a weight lifting from his shoulders. "They set my teeth on edge like nothing else. Don't get me started on the smells, the sounds, or the fluids they spew—"

She held up a hand. "I get it. Trust me, I get it. I can't say I've heard many omegas express that opinion, but I suppose it's not exactly a socially acceptable opinion to share." She sighed. "Well, I can't give you an abortion. We're not equipped to help an omega in that way, and even if we had those facilities we're not allowed to do so on government property unless the carrier's life is medically endangered by the pregnancy. Which, assuming we can get the anemia under control, yours is not." She pulled up the little wheeled stool she'd ignored so far. "Do you want to talk about it? Maybe listen to the heartbeat?"

"Not really." He closed his eyes. "I've just never wanted kids. And I can't afford one. I'm a newspaper reporter. I don't make a lot of money, and the paper wouldn't exactly pay for me to drag the kid around the world anyway. The father's a SEAL, so that's not an option."

She grimaced. "No. Just—no. What about family?"

"My family's useless. He was raised by his grandfathers. They're too old to take on another newborn. And there's no way Ed would be willing to give the baby up, you know? He's Mr. Family." He rubbed at his face. "This is an unmitigated disaster." He looked at Russell through his fingers. "Ed would want to help. I know he would. But he's young too, and his base pay isn't great either."

"No, I don't suppose it is." She bit down on the inside of her cheek for a moment. "I'm not sure what to tell you, Colin. I want to help. I do. I just don't know what to do to help you. Do you have enough savings built up to wait it out while you recover, at least?"

"I don't even have a permanent address." He laughed, and then he cried. "I spend so much time flying around, going here and there, that I never bothered to get an apartment."

Russell handed him a box of tissues. "And the father?" She put a hand on his. "You mentioned he's Mr. Family, and you know a lot about him. I'm assuming there's a real relationship there, not just something that happened in the heat of battle."

Colin nodded. "I've loved him forever. I just—he couldn't want to be saddled with someone like me. Someone who's miscarried once, who didn't even want that one—"

She opened her mouth and looked down at her tablet. She closed it again. His cheeks burned with shame. She'd be seeing his entire history right about now. Everything was right there. She'd kick him right out of the exam room now.

"I see." She gave his hand a squeeze. "First of all, even coming back to Egypt must be incredibly traumatic for you."

"Well, I wasn't exactly thrilled." He spoke more to the floor than to her. Why was she still speaking to him, anyway? Where was the condemnation, and the horror?

"Look. You're going to go back to the States eventually. You're going to get a doctor there, probably one who's got more experience with omegas. It's very important you tell him everything, okay? It's not going to be fun, but he needs to know this kind of history so he can make sure you deliver safely and without subjecting you to further trauma. I would recommend a scheduled C-section, as I would for my female patients under similar circumstances. Talk about it with your specialist, though, because he'll have more experience."

She squeezed again. "Colin, that wasn't your fault. You were tortured. You're lucky to be alive right now. Anyone who gives you a hard time about anything on this record can come and answer to me, okay?" She patted his arm. "And I've got a gun. I'll take care of that right quick."

He frowned. "But—I'm not sure I understand."

She chuckled and pushed the stool back. "Men. You have to break things down for them. You—survivor. Them—bad guys. Very simple, right?"

He blushed and managed a small grin. "Sure. Okay."

"You might want to try some counseling, of the civilian variety." She gave him a wink. "You could try Navy counselors, too, as the partner of a SEAL. I think you're probably more likely to click with a civilian, though. Now let's try and get that anemia under control. The diet in the mess hall here is fairly iron rich, but we're not exactly rolling in animal sources. I'm going to issue orders for eggs and dairy, if you don't have any objections. I'd like for you to consider adding more beef to your diet as well, but Navy beef isn't exactly prime." She made a face. "I'm going to prescribe iron tablets as well, simply because you shouldn't be having the problem you are given the diet you have. We'll check back in a couple of weeks and see where your levels are, okay?"

Colin pulled himself together and wiped the tears away from his eyes. "I'm sorry for breaking down like that. It's not like me."

"I'll bet. It's understandable under any circumstances, but there's also the hormonal factor to consider. A lot of people get more emotional during pregnancy. I'd say buckle up. It's a bumpy ride, but you've adapted. You've overcome. It's fine."

Colin took a deep breath. He had adapted, and he had overcome. He'd adapted and overcome a lot of things, to be honest. Pregnancy was just one more.

He thanked Dr. Russell for her time and advice. He took the pills she gave him and headed out into the sun. Maybe this would generate another lead for him. He'd written about the abysmal levels of care for omegas in some parts of the country, but even he knew little about life for omegas in other parts of the world. Did Egypt have specialty care for omegas? Birth was a dangerous time for an omega. What were the mortality rates for omega parents?

He ran into DeWitt while he walked back toward his bunk. "Church." DeWitt stopped in his tracks and turned to look at him. "Are you okay? You look like you've been—are those tear tracks?"

Damn it. "I'm fine. Just pregnant."

"Oh. That's fine then." He blinked as his brain caught up with his ears. "Wait. Pregnant? God damn it."

"That was more or less my reaction, sir." Colin kept his eyes straight ahead.

"This was what I was afraid of, when we let an omega get embedded with us." DeWitt glared. "The last time we had an omega around, he got pregnant too. You realize what a mess that created."

"I'll be sure to tell all future omegas having contact with your men to adjust their fertility accordingly." Colin refused to look at the officer. If he did, he'd get angry.

DeWitt scowled at him and opened his mouth, as though he was going to yell. Then he laughed. "Oh, my God, did I really just say that? I'm sorry. I sounded like a pompous buffoon. Does Adami know?"

"I told him it was a possibility." Colin made himself relax. He didn't want to get into a fight with Ed's commander. "I just got the test results back a few minutes ago. I haven't had a chance to tell him yet."

"He's patrolling. I'll have him come in, and you can tell him yourself." He shook his head and grinned ruefully. "I'm telling you, someone's putting something in the water supply back in Virginia Beach. First Chief's husband had a new baby, then Kelly got someone pregnant, then Fitzpatrick, now Adami. Well, congratulations. Kids are a logistical nightmare, but they seem to make people happy."

"If you say so, sir." Colin looked away again.

"Not the parental type? Yeah, Kelly's husband Mal was like that. You met him. Turns out he's pretty fantastic with kids. Maybe you can bond over it or something."

Colin tried to imagine bonding with the Irishman who'd broken into his hotel room to abduct him, with Chief. "We'll see, sir." He guessed he needed to learn from somewhere. Somehow Mal Kelly did not seem like a great teacher.

Maybe DeWitt was remembering that incident too, because he took off his hat and combed his fingers through his hair. "Anyway. I'll send Adami to you as soon as he gets in."

"Thank you, sir." Colin kept going.

He checked in with Bradley, his editor. He'd just hit the halfway mark on his assignment. In three months, he could go back to the States. No more Egypt. No more SEALs. No more fatigues. He could book a hotel room for a week and just sleep.

How would Bradley respond when Colin told him he'd gotten pregnant? Colin didn't tell him yet. In theory, they couldn't fire him for getting pregnant, or for causes related to his pregnancy. Colin wasn't in the States, and he didn't trust the paper to play by the rules where their employees were concerned. They'd left him to rot here once. They'd do it again. He'd tell them when he had to. He wouldn't do it one second before.

Instead, he buried himself in research. Part of what made him so valuable to the paper, in general and in this role specifically, was his facility with language. He had no trouble with Arabic at all. He could understand it with perfect fluency. He could dig into chat boards and informational websites to start the ball rolling.

If he had to stay local, where would he go for help? Were there midwives who only helped omegas? He couldn't find statistics on omega mortality, but he did find a chat group where people went to mourn their friends. He found locations of burying places, well outside of places where most Muslims or Christians would be buried, that buried newly parturient omegas.

Mansur found him huddled over his laptop, alternatively typing furious notes into a separate program or shuddering in horror. "They're throwing them out like trash," he whispered.

Mansur shook his head. "No," he said. It only took a few seconds for him to figure out what he was looking at. "I can give you some numbers to call, but you have to be discreet. No one wants to attract the attention of the religious extremists, and of course I can't afford for anyone to know where I am."

"Of course." Colin nodded. "I'll even see if the SEALs' hacker guy can prove you've fled the country and are happily living in Norway."

"I don't think I'd like Norway. Too cold." Mansur grinned. "Then again, Tora Prison is too hot. I can always put on a sweater. Anyway, you're putting Western values onto the burials. The omegas aren't being thrown out like trash. The omegas perform the burials and the funerals themselves. They claim the bodies, they clean them, they wrap them. It doesn't matter what their religion was in life. Even in times when the strife between Egyptians is greatest, the omegas always come together to bury their own."

Colin bit his lip. "Is it because they have to?"

Mansur considered. "Once it was. I think that was in the tenth century, when the Mad Caliph was doing his thing. He tried to ban omegas. He was one of the rare rulers who tried to force conversions, too. You did notice the whole ‘mad’ part? Anyway, omegas buried their own because they had to live in hiding. Alphas did too, of course, but we could more easily hide our natures and pretend to be betas. It's hard to pretend to be a beta when you've got a beard and a baby under your heart." He shrugged. "His successor was more reasonable and understood that perhaps reproduction isn't strictly binary, but the custom lived on. And here we are. Stillborn children of omegas are buried in the same place." He looked away and coughed, just a little.

Colin hadn't ever asked what had happened to the remains of the child he'd lost. He tried not to think about it, ever. "So it's more like a community act."

"Exactly." He grabbed a notepad from Colin's dresser and scrawled. "Like I said, you have to be very discreet here. People are scared. With all of the instability we've had here, fundamentalists are gaining traction. Our people are good and we're not generally out to hurt one another, but people tend to support anyone who promises order and safety once things start to get hairy."

Colin thought back to some of the recent events in his own country with a grimace. "Tell me about it. I'll be subtle and respectful. And I won't let anyone know where you are."

Mansur gave him a sweet smile. He looked like he wanted to say something, but the door flew open just then to admit Ed.

Ed's eyes were wild. "Colin? They pulled me off patrol. What's going on?"

Colin took a deep breath. "I. Ah. The test results came back."

Mansur swiveled his head to look between Ed and Colin. Ed widened his eyes. "And?"

"I'm pregnant."

* * *

Ed heard the words, but he couldn't be sure about them. Maybe he'd heard them wrong. Maybe he'd misunderstood. Maybe he'd slipped into a parallel universe where all of his dreams had somehow come true. Sure, Colin had prepared him for the possibility, but SEALs prepared for a lot of possibilities that never materialized.

"Excuse me?" he said, and stared.

"Pregnant. As in baby." Colin's face twisted in misery. "Two months or so. I heard the—" Here he stopped and closed his eyes, like he was collecting himself. "I heard the heartbeat. At the doctor's office. It was loud and kind of strong. I mean if you're into that kind of thing, I guess."

Mansur sucked his cheeks in. "I'll talk with you both later. This is a private moment." He slipped out of the room somehow, avoiding contact with Ed. He did not congratulate the couple, and the slight wasn't lost on Ed.

"What the hell is his problem?" Ed slipped fully into the space and closed the door behind him. "Is he pissed that it's not his?"

"God damn it, Ed, would you chill with the jealousy shit? It's not a good look on you, okay?" Colin slammed his hand into the wall with a loud crack. "It's not about that. Mansur doesn't want kids any more than I do, okay?"

"Then why can't he be happy for us?" Ed crossed his arms over his chest. "And if you don't want kids why are we having one right now?"

"Because we had sex without protection. Because condoms can be hard to come by in Egypt depending on which pharmacy you can get to and who the pharmacist is. Because no one's managed to find a way to give omegas control over their own fertility yet. Because I must have done something truly shitty in a past life." Colin pulled back and closed his laptop. His bunk had a drawer underneath it, and he locked the laptop inside. "Pick one. Pick them all."

Ed took a deep breath and held his hands out. He didn't want to fight. Not right now. "Look. I know you've got some issues about having kids. I get that. But you also know that I've always wanted kids. I love you, I've always wanted a family, and the idea of a baby you and I made together is every happy fantasy I've ever had that we can take out in public. So maybe you can stop acting like this is the worst thing to ever happen in the history of time?"

Colin gaped at him for a long moment. "Okay, hotshot. Sure. You love the idea of having me as your incubator."

"That's not what I said." The hair on Ed's arms rose, just a little bit, as he got increasingly tense. "I said I'm ecstatic that we're starting a family together."

"A family I don't fucking want!" Colin yelled. "I have fought for this career. I've suffered for this career. I've come close to dying for it, and you will never, ever know just how much I've sacrificed. Don't even ask. And here you stand telling me how goddamn happy you are that I'm about to lose it!"

Ed bit his tongue. "Can we maybe not fight about this today? Can't we just be happy about this for maybe twenty-four hours?"

"You can go out and be happy about it, sure. You're not the one about to lose his livelihood. I know for a fact that a SEAL at your rank does not make enough to support two adults, never mind two adults and one child. That's ignoring any possibility that this baby has any health problems, because you only think your health insurance is all that. Hell, you probably can't even afford the premium increase of adding both me and the kid to your insurance."

Colin's face was bright red now. He slipped out of bed and stood up. "Where, exactly, do you think we're going to get the money to pay for this child to even be born in the first place? It's going to have to be a C-section. That costs more than the other way. You got that kind of green sitting around? Because I don't."

Ed stepped forward, putting his hands out. "Colin, come on. We'll find a way. We're both bright, resourceful guys. And yeah, it sucks that you'll have to stop working, okay? But maybe you'll like staying at home. Everyone falls in love with their kid. Even people who don't like kids change their minds when they put the kid in their arms. You'll be fine."

"I'll be fine starving and alone while you go traipsing off around the world without a care in the world!" Colin snarled as he spoke. "If you think sitting around the house with a screaming brat is such great shakes, how about if you retire and stay home with it, and I'll go back to work."

Ed shook his head and ground his teeth. This was going to be a long pregnancy. "First of all, I make more money than you do. We need my income. Second, alphas don't do that. Alphas don't take care of kids."

"Your responsibility doesn't end with a few thrusts and a few dollars." Colin walked toward the door.

Ed stopped him. "Colin, stop. You're being irrational. And you're lashing out at me because you're pissed off. I've never met anyone as pissed off at good news as you are, but that's how you feel."

"That's because this is not good news!" Colin screamed the words. He put his hands on Ed's shoulders and shook. "This is the opposite of good news. It's bad, very bad. I wish I'd died three years ago." Colin broke free and dashed out into the courtyard, completely ignoring the three or four SEALs who'd shown up with balloons and a cake.

"So." Kelly cleared his throat. "Um. Congratulations?"

Ed sat down on the ground, closed the door behind him, and laughed. He laughed so hard his sides hurt. Kulkarni gave him a funny look, stuck the cake into his hand, and ran off after Colin.

Hopper frowned and sat down next to Ed. "Should we call a corpsman for you, bro? Cause that laugh, man, it don't sound great." He flung an arm around Ed's shoulder.

"What's to sound bad? It should be the happiest day in my life, but Colin just went and shat all over it." Ed threw his head back and screamed.

"Yeah." Hopper rubbed at his ear. "We heard that. It sounded kind of ugly. But, ah, you know. There's two sides to everything, I guess. We didn't want to make assumptions."

"Also, Chief told us to go and get a cake." Kelly nodded. "He seems to think pregnant people have this pressing need to eat cake. He's done the dad thing a few times, and I've only done it once, so I'm not really sure. I'll take his word for it."

"He doesn't even want the kid! All he can think about is his stupid career." Ed grabbed at his hair and tugged. "I mean what the fuck? This is a baby. This is our baby. It's a hell of a lot more important than scribbling down a bunch of words that no one cares about anyway."

Kelly cleared his throat. "Pro tip, buddy. Take it from me. Don't refer to your partner's career as trivial."

"Your partner's career involved hunting down terrorists and killing them. That wasn't trivial. This newspaper crap—no one reads papers anymore." Ed shook his head. "And anyway, Mal still chose to stay home with his baby."

"That wasn't exactly a choice, Adami." Kelly sat down across from him. "He was going to be killed if he didn't come to America. And he might have given up the whole vigilante counter terror thing, but he's not exactly sitting around waving a rattle in Danny's face. He's a trauma nurse, for crying out loud."

Ed tapped his hand against the hot pavement. "Okay. But he still chose to go home, still chose to be with you. You're still building a family together and making it work. He didn't sit there and make a stink about how getting pregnant was his worst-case scenario."

"Actually he did, and it was." Kelly frowned at him. "I did mention how he was going to be killed, right? And at first he really was kind of all about the no-kids thing. But time went on, and I figured out that there were a lot of reasons behind that. We made it work, but it took a ton of effort. And one of the things I had to stop doing was making it all about me."

"I'm not doing that, though." Ed shook his head. "It's about the baby." He smacked his hand against the door. "It's about building a life for the baby and making a home for the baby."

"What are you willing to give up for the baby?" Hopper pulled his arms back. "I mean Mal had to give up his cause and everything he knew, right? Trent had to give up his freedom and his traditions. You're more than willing to ask Colin to give up his livelihood, his only source of income, everything he's worked for."

"That's not me asking him to give that stuff up, though." Ed shook his head. Why couldn't anyone understand this stuff? "It's just the way things are. We can't both be running around all over hell and gone. Someone needs to stay home with the kid. When the kid's a little older he can get a part time job or something."

"Wow. Have they discovered aspirin in 1807, there, Obadiah?" Kelly rolled his eyes.

"We don't all have a hacker on staff who can just magic up a gazillion dollars, Kelly. Daycare costs more than he makes." Ed glared. "Sure, it sucks, he liked his job, but we can't afford for him to work, and that's just it."

"Can you begin to see why this might not be the happiest thing for him?" Hopper leaned against the door. "There aren't a lot of choices for him, and the ones that exist all suck. He can give the kid up for adoption—"

"Like hell!" Ed shot to his feet. "That's my baby! Our baby!"

"It's his right to do that, since he has to go through the risk of giving birth and all that." Kelly's voice was inexorable and chilling. "If you don't want that to happen, well, you come up with a solution that involves someone who isn't him taking care of the kid he doesn't want. So. He can give the kid up for adoption, or he can essentially become a slave."

"Oh, come on now." Hopper glowered at Kelly. "It's hardly slavery."

"That's not how I see it. I'm pretty sure that's not how Adami here sees it, since he might not be showing us his best side, but he's not that kind of guy either. But what he is, is the kind of guy who's willing to demand the man he loves drop everything he loves and just—exist solely for the baby he doesn't want. And based on what I heard from Church, he's not looking at it as voluntary service."

Ed turned away. "Look. It's not that I want him to be unhappy. I just want him to see that this is a good thing."

"Well, he's definitely not seeing anything good for him in this. You get what you want. And you've always wanted it, haven't you?" Hopper lifted his eyebrows. "You've always wanted him to stay home and raise a family. And he always resisted. You've mentioned that."

Ed opened his mouth. He closed it again. "Okay. But if we love each other, that should make it okay."

"Would it be okay if the shoe was on the other foot, Adami?" Kelly stood up and handed him the balloons. "I'm going to go and see if I can talk to Mal. Maybe he can talk Colin off the ledge or something. If I were you, Adami, I'd think very carefully about how I approached this. I came close to losing Mal, and my kid, because I couldn't empathize. Try to remember that you love Colin." He patted Ed on the shoulder and headed off.

Hopper stayed for a minute. "Wow. A kid, huh?"

"I thought you were pissed at me." Ed glared at his friend.

"Meh." Hopper smirked. "I think you're being stupid, but last I checked that ain't a court-martial offense. I want you to be happy, and I think you're setting yourself up for the opposite. But I'm still excited for you. I know you've always wanted kids."

Ed folded his knees up to his chest. "He knows that too."

Hopper put a hand on his back. "I get that. I do. I think you need to accept the fact that he hasn't."

Ed rested his forehead on his knees. "Why wouldn't he? I mean it's us. It keeps us together, no matter what happens. There will always be that tie, that person we built between us. We'll have built a family. Why can't he love it the way I do?"

"You'd have to ask him, or someone who knows him better than I do. I'm sure there's a reason. Maybe he's not a family kind of guy."

"He bounced from relative to relative." Ed looked away. "You'd think he'd crave stability after that. The guy doesn't even have a permanent apartment. He just flies on to the next assignment. I'll be giving him a home. A place to be, all the time. A safe place."

"Did he ask for that?" Hopper chuckled. "Ask him what it is that he wants. Don't decide for him and then get all rage-y when he rejects it." Hopper got up and picked up the cake. "Come on. Let's hit the bunk."

"What about Kulkarni? What's he doing with Colin?" Ed squinted across the courtyard, but he couldn't see any hint of the pair.

"Hopefully talking to him about that comment he made right before he ran off." Hopper's face turned serious. "I'll be honest. It had me worried, bro. I didn't like the sound of it one bit. Now, I'm no expert, but I'd guess that we'll find that the source of a lot of Colin's issues has something to do with that statement."

Ed licked his lips. "You're probably not wrong. I mean the stuff about being stuck at home has always been true. But something did happen, before." He stood up and massaged his temples. "I'll see if I can find him."

Hopper put a hand on his arm. "The two of you need a chance to cool down. Come on, have some cake. Let Kulkarni talk him down. Get your head on straight, let Kulkarni help him with this, and we'll see how things go in the morning."