“I’m not really hungry, actually.” She said as she took a step back from him, but then she reached out and ran her fingers along his arm. “Do I feel weird?” She wondered if he could sense anything about her that felt off, the animal in them often knew more than the human.
“Is that an invitation?” He teased with a smirk as he pulled her in closer and ran his hands up her arms. “No weirder than usual.”
“No?” She was obviously distracted, though, and she sighed as she looked down at herself. “I just feel weird. Not to mention my boobs look big in this shirt. Do you think I’ve gained weight?” It was hard for them to gain weight as wolves because the shifting caused them to burn calories so fast, but it wasn’t impossible, certainly.
“You mean in the two weeks I’ve been back, or the ten years since I was last checking you out every ten minutes?” Ziem was unabashedly checking her out at the mention of her boobs, since he was clearly a fan.
Aura laughed and shook her head. “You have not been checking me out every ten minutes. But thanks for saying that, since I clearly think I’m approaching a bigger size.”
“You’re eating about as much as my girl Casey does, but that’s nothing new.” Casey was one of his more brash friends that he’d brought back with him from Ireland. He referred to her more often by one of her many nicknames than by her actual name, so she was normally Ball-breaker, Man-eater or simply ‘The red-headed horror’ rather than just Casey. “Course, Casey also went and got herself knocked up a couple months back, so she’s eatin’ for the whole litter right about now, I guess.”
Aura felt like she was soaked with a whole tub full of ice water as he said that, and she stilled. She thought for a moment before her stomach twisted in all sorts of knots and the nausea was back in full force. “Shit.”
He didn’t miss a beat as he nodded at the other corner of the kitchen. “Bathroom’s that way.”
She ran to throw up what little was left in her stomach, but for a whole new reason. After she finished heaving and washing out her mouth with the mouthwash that was a permanent fixture in her bathroom, she sat on the floor and rested her head back against a wall. She had been so concerned with being basically ignored by everyone, then so focused on Ziem that she hadn’t even remembered that she had skipped her cycle completely. Nothing at all came, and it was almost the next Fulness. Aura pounded her head several times against the wall behind her as her body trembled.
The previous month had obviously been quite an eventful Fulness for her, and now she…there was no way to know…
“I can’t fucking believe this…” She whispered to nothing, as though the air would tell her she was imagining this version of reality.
“What are we not fucking believing?” Ziem asked from the kitchen, where she could hear him getting a glass of water for her from the sink, since it sounded like she was gonna need it.
When he came in with the glass and offered it to her, she just looked up at it once before she looked up at him and met his eyes. “I’m pregnant.”
Ziem’s eyebrow quirked in surprise as he handed her the glass, then he slowly leaned against the door frame and looked down at her. “Ummmm…yeah. I guess shit would be about the right kind of swearing for that situation.”
Aura sighed and hit her head against the wall a few more times. “I don’t even know who the father is. It could be either of them.” She closed her eyes as she took a long drink of water. “And I don’t know what to do. Orlando…” Orlando had clearly moved on as fast as he could. “And Nick…” Nick had yet to even acknowledge her presence since the last time they’d spoken. They had both left her behind, and she couldn’t blame either of them.
“Don’t worry about that right now.” Ziem slid down to sit in the doorway to the bathroom, arms over his knees. “Screw both of them.” He said and then looked as though he thought better of it. “Okay, bad choice of words, you can beat me up for that later. But seriously, screw both of them. It’s not like you’ve gotta be worried about providing for the kids.” Gold came easily to Ironborn, which was the only reason why the entire encampment was able to support all its newcomers at the moment. “You’re the strongest Ironborn here. Everybody knows that. You’ll be fine.”
“It’s not that.” She was terrified of doing it alone, but she knew it was much more likely that she would survive here, surrounded by her element, than anywhere else. “I’ve fucked up their lives enough. I don’t…I don’t want them to know that it could be theirs.”
“Well, do they both know you were with both of them last Fulness?” He asked the question just to try to help her through her mental process. It was more of a verification of facts than anything, and there was no judgment whatsoever in his tone.
Aura nodded and kept her eyes on the floor, ashamed. “I can’t mess anything up for Nick, he already hates me enough. And Orlando has his own problems to deal with. Maybe I should just leave. Go somewhere and deal with this on my own.”
“Running off on your own isn’t gonna help either of them. Plus, you really don’t wanna start that kind of movie. In the end, the dads always find out they’ve got kids and it never ends well. You did see Star Wars, right?”
She looked up at Ziem again after a while
