Chapter 58: A Growing Seed
The smell of fermenting barley, usually as comforting as a worn blanket, turned Taichi’s stomach. He leaned over the mashing tub in the brewhouse behind the tavern, gripping the wooden rim until his knuckles turned white. A cold sweat prickled along his hairline. He’d chalked the last few mornings up to bad sausage or stress, but this was different. It was a deep, rolling revulsion that seemed to rise from his very core.
He straightened slowly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His chest felt strangely tender, a dull ache that made the rough fabric of his tunic feel like sandpaper. Brushing it off as fatigue, he headed upstairs to his quarters to change before opening.
In the small mirror above his washbasin, his reflection was pale, shadows under his eyes. He splashed water on his face. As he toweled off, his gaze caught on his own torso. He leaned closer.
His nipples were darker. Not a little. A pronounced, dusky brown against his skin. A weird, cold jolt shot down his spine. He pressed a hand to his lower belly. It wasn’t rounded, not yet, but it felt… different. Fuller. Sensitive in a deep, internal way that had nothing to do with sore muscles.
“No,” he muttered to the empty room. “It’s just… it’s stress. The new cask shipment. The accounts.” The excuses sounded hollow even to him. He thought of the storm, the firelight, Yamato’s hand hot and possessive on his stomach. I want to see this round with my pups. The memory was a physical punch. His body had felt different since that day on the lake. He’d ignored it, buried it under work and barbed retorts whenever Yamato swaggered into the tavern. But some changes couldn’t be talked away.
He yanked a fresh shirt on and clomped back downstairs, determined to drown the suspicion in work.
Sora was in the kitchen, sharpening her knives with a rhythmic shink-shink-shink. She took one look at him and stopped. “You look like death walked over your grave.”
“Good morning to you too,” Taichi grumbled, moving to check the tap on the new ale keg.
“I’m serious. You’re green.” She stood, wiping her hands on her apron. Her red hair was a bright shock in the dim room, her alpha focus sharp and unnerving. “Is it your heat? It’s not due for weeks.”
“It’s not my heat,” Taichi snapped, more forcefully than intended. The mere mention of it made his skin prickle with a phantom slickness. His cycles had always been clockwork, but the last one… had it come? He mentally counted back, his blood running colder with each week. The lake had been just over a month ago. He’d been so preoccupied with the tavern, with Yamato’s relentless, charming presence…
“Taichi.” Sora was in front of him now, her voice low. “When was your last cycle?”
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. The silence was answer enough.
Her expression shifted from concern to a stark, protective alarm. “Okay. We’re going. Now.”
“I have a tavern to open in two hours.”
“It can wait. Old Man Haggerty will survive if his lunch ale is ten minutes late.” She already had her cloak off the hook and was thrusting his at him. “The apothecary on Cypress Lane. She has the tincture. We’re going.”
He wanted to argue, to dig his heels in with the stubbornness Yamato found so enticing. But the ground felt unsteady under his feet. A terrifying, secret hope warred with the panic. He let Sora steer him out the back door.
The apothecary’s shop was cramped, smelling of dried herbs, chalk, and a sharp, chemical tang. The elderly beta woman measured a drop of clear liquid from a glass vial into a cup of murky tea. “Drink this. If it turns blue within the minute…” She left the sentence hanging, her eyes gentle.
Taichi’s hand trembled as he took the cup. He looked at Sora, who gave a tight, encouraging nod. He drank. It tasted bitter, of iron and rue.
He set the cup on the polished counter. They stared at it. The liquid remained murky brown. Taichi’s heart, which had been hammering against his ribs, began a slow, sickening slide. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe it was just—
A tendril of brilliant, cobalt blue bloomed from the center of the cup, swirling and spreading like ink in water until the entire drink was a vivid, unmistakable azure.
Time stopped. The sound of the street outside faded. Taichi could only hear the whoosh of his own blood in his ears.
The apothecary patted his hand. “Congratulations, my dear. Early days, but definite.”
Sora’s grip on his shoulder was bone-crushing. Taichi didn’t feel it. He looked down at his own flat stomach, hidden beneath his tunic and cloak. Slowly, he brought a hand to it, pressing his fingers against the place Yamato had touched, had claimed, had filled. A life. Their life. Growing there.
A wild, dizzying cocktail of emotions hit him. Terror, so acute it stole his breath. The sheer logistical nightmare of it—running a tavern, being pregnant, the stares, the gossip. But under that, a current of fierce, awe-struck wonder. A secret part of him, the part that had warmed at Yamato’s whispered promises, uncurled and blossomed.
“I need to find Yamato,” he said, his voice strange to his own ears.
“The castle?” Sora asked, already pulling him toward the door. “Taichi, breathe. Think for a second.”
“No thinking.” He was moving now, purpose giving his legs strength. “I need to see his face.”
The royal training yard was a thunderous arena of grunting men, clashing wooden swords, and the smell of sweat and beaten earth. Taichi, with Sora a half-step behind him, ignored the curious glances from guards at the gate. He scanned the yard, his heart now a frantic drum.
He saw him. Yamato was shirtless, muscles corded and gleaming under the midday sun, parrying a blow from a burly fellow knight. He was laughing, taunting, utterly in his element. A golden warrior.
Taichi didn’t call out. He just started walking straight across the yard, heedless of the sparring pairs. Knights paused, stepping back to avoid him. The world narrowed to the tall, blond alpha ahead.
Yamato saw him. His smile shifted from playful battle-joy to a question. He lowered his practice sword, dismissing his opponent with a wave. “Taichi? What’s wrong?” He took in Taichi’s pale, determined face, Sora’s protective glare behind him. He took a step forward, concern wiping the ease from his features. “Are you hurt?”
Taichi stopped a foot away. All the clever, sharp words he’d practiced on the run over here vanished. The reality of the crowded yard, the staring men, hit him. But it was too late. The truth was a live thing in his throat, demanding release.
He blurted it out, the words too loud in the sudden quiet that had fallen around them. “I’m pregnant.”
The practice sword hit the packed dirt with a dull thud.
Yamato’s face went utterly, completely still. His piercing blue eyes widened, then dropped to Taichi’s stomach, then snapped back to his face. The shock lasted only a heartbeat. Then it shattered, transforming into something so raw and radiant it was almost painful to witness. A grin broke across his features, brilliant and unguarded, chasing away every shadow of the fierce knight.
He didn’t speak. He just closed the distance in one stride, his big hands cupping Taichi’s face, and kissed him hard and quick. Then, before Taichi could react, Yamato’s arms were around him, lifting him clear off the ground in a powerful, spinning embrace.
A whoop went up from one of the watching knights. Then another. Soon the yard was filled with rough cheers and laughter. Taichi, dizzy from the spin and the emotion, clutched at Yamato’s shoulders, his own laugh bubbling up, breathless and disbelieving. He was aware of Sora, her initial suspicion finally melting into a small, resigned smile.
Yamato set him down gently, but didn’t let go. He kept his forehead pressed to Taichi’s, his breath warm, his eyes shining with a ferocious joy. “You’re sure?” he whispered, the words just for them.
Taichi nodded, his throat tight. “The apothecary test. Blue.”
Yamato’s smile softened, his thumb brushing Taichi’s cheek. All his charm, all his wit, was stripped away. What remained was something terrifyingly simple and solid. “Mine,” he breathed, not as a claim of ownership, but as a wondrous, acknowledged fact.
Around them, the world of clashing swords and shouted orders began to resume, but it felt distant, muffled. Taichi, standing in the gritty training yard with the father of his child holding him, finally let the wonder drown out the terror. The path ahead was uncharted, fraught, unimaginable. But for this single, spinning moment, it was also dazzlingly, perfectly real.