Chapter 7: First Heartbeat
The sterile scent hit John first, sharp and chemical, cutting through the lingering haze of old books and fire-smoke that seemed permanently stuck in his senses now. Derek guided him into the glass-walled room, a hand firm at the small of his back.
“This is unnecessary,” John muttered, eyeing the sleek examination table, the banks of monitors dark and ominous. He’d spent the morning trying to read the clinical text, the words swimming before his eyes. He’d mostly stared at the diagram, his mind blank.
“It’s the opposite of unnecessary,” Derek replied, his voice leaving no room for argument. “Dr. Vance needs a baseline. We need to know everything is progressing.”
As if on cue, a door slid open with a soft hiss. A woman in a crisp lab coat entered, pushing a cart bearing a machine with a familiar-looking screen and wand. She had short, steel-grey hair and sharp, intelligent eyes that took in the room, settling on John with a clinical but not unkind assessment.
“Mr. Peterson. Derek.” Dr. Eleanor Vance nodded to each. Her voice was calm, professional. “Let’s get you situated. Please, hop up on the table.”
John hesitated. Derek’s hand pressed more insistently. He moved, the paper covering the examination table crinkling loudly under his weight as he sat. He felt exposed in the sweatpants and t-shirt, under the bright, cool lights.
“This will be a standard transabdominal ultrasound,” Dr. Vance explained, powering on the machine. A low hum filled the room. “Given the accelerated timeline, we should be able to get a clear visual and auditory confirmation. My research suggests lycanthropic gestation compresses the early developmental stages significantly.”
“Auditory?” John’s throat went dry.
“The heartbeat,” Derek said from beside the table. He hadn’t taken a seat. He stood like a sentinel, arms crossed, his gaze fixed on the screen.
“Right.” John lay back, the paper rustling violently. The ceiling was mirrored panels. He saw himself, small and pale, and Derek, a dark, broad-shouldered pillar beside him. He looked away.
“Just relax,” Dr. Vance said, though her tone was more instructional than soothing. She lifted John’s shirt, exposing his abdomen. He flinched at the cool air. Her hands were efficient, impersonal as she squeezed a clear, cold gel onto his skin. He jerked again.
A low sound, almost below the threshold of hearing, vibrated from Derek’s direction. A warning. Or reassurance. John couldn’t tell.
“The coupling of your unique biologies is unprecedented in modern study,” Dr. Vance continued, as if discussing a fascinating breakthrough in a petri dish. She picked up the transducer wand. “The project was designed to isolate compatible gene sequences, but the fated mate variable… well. It turned my controlled experiment into a rather spectacular natural one.”
“Lucky me,” John breathed out, staring at a fixed point on the ceiling.
“In many ways, yes.” Dr. Vance didn’t look up as she pressed the wand firmly against the gel on his lower abdomen. “The survival rates for non-fated pairings under these conditions are statistically grim. Your biology recognized his on a cellular level. It’s what kept you stable during the first transformation.”
On the screen, greys and blacks swirled, amorphous and meaningless to John. Dr. Vance moved the wand, her eyes narrowed in concentration. The room was silent except for the hum of the machine and the soft, slick sounds of the wand moving.
Then she stopped. Her fingers adjusted a dial. A rhythmic, swift whooshing noise erupted from the machine’s speakers.
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.
It was impossibly fast. A tiny, frantic drumbeat echoing in the sterile room.
John’s breath caught. A sharp, involuntary sound escaped him—a whimper, choked and raw. His hand flew to his mouth. That sound. That was inside him. That was real.
A large, warm hand enveloped his own, pulling it away from his face and gripping it tightly. Derek’s fingers laced through his, squeezing hard enough to border on pain. John turned his head. Derek was staring at the screen, his face a mask of stark, stunned intensity. His blue eyes were wide, pupils dilated, fixed on the pulsing grey smudge Dr. Vance was now circling with a cursor.
“There we are,” Dr. Vance said, a thread of genuine awe in her professional veneer. “Fetal pole and yolk sac are clearly visible. And the cardiac activity is… remarkably strong. The rate is consistent with a lycanthropic fetus at approximately eight weeks of human-equivalent development.”
“Eight weeks?” John’s voice was a scrape. “But it’s only been…”
“Accelerated,” Derek finished, his voice a deep rumble. He didn’t let go of John’s hand. His thumb was stroking the back of it, a relentless, automatic motion. His gaze hadn’t left the screen. The possessive growl wasn’t a loud one; it was a subcutaneous vibration John felt where their bodies were close, a primal noise of recognition that rolled through Derek’s chest and into John’s arm. He leaned in, his breath hot against John’s neck. “Do you hear it?”
John could only nod, transfixed by the whooshing rhythm. It was terrifying. It was the most incredible thing he’d ever heard. A crazy, desperate laugh bubbled up in his throat, mingling with a sob. He was crying again. He hated it.
Dr. Vance took measurements, the click of the trackball loud in the room. “All metrics are within predicted parameters for a healthy Alpha-line gestation. No visible anomalies.” She finally looked at John, her expression softening a fraction. “This is a good sign, John. A very good sign.”
“What does it mean?” he asked, wiping his cheek with his free shoulder. Derek still held his other hand captive.
“It means the pregnancy is viable and progressing. It means your body is accepting the fetus, despite the shock to your system.” She turned back to the machine, printing a grainy image. “It also means you need to start thinking practically. Nutrition. Prenatal supplements formulated for our kind. Your caloric intake will need to increase by roughly thirty percent almost immediately.”
The practicalities swarmed in, mundane and overwhelming. Food. Vitamins. His tiny, dingy apartment with its empty fridge. The whooshing sound continued, a soundtrack to his paralysis.
Derek answered for him. “Send the specifics to me. I’ll have it handled.”
“Of course.” Dr. Vance cleaned the gel from John’s stomach with a clean towel. The sudden absence of the cold and the sound felt like a loss. She handed the printed image to Derek, not John.
Derek took it, finally releasing John’s hand to stare at the small, blurry oval. His expression was unreadable. Then, he held it out for John to see.
John took the still-warm paper. A little grey bean. A blurry universe. That frantic heartbeat belonged to that.
“Congratulations,” Dr. Vance said, beginning to power down the machine. The sudden silence was profound and heavy. “You’re definitely pregnant.”
The words, so blunt, so final, landed in the quiet. John looked from the image to Derek, who was watching him again, that intense, all-consuming focus back in place.
“Now what?” John whispered.
Derek plucked the ultrasound image gently from John’s numb fingers. “Now,” he said, his voice low and certain, “you come home.”