Chapter 5: The Doctor's Visit
The silence after Julian left for his offices was a different kind of pressure. It gave Emmett too much room to think. He managed a shower, the hot water sluicing over the bite mark, which he scrubbed until the skin was bright pink and stinging. It didn’t fade. It wouldn’t.
He found clothes in the walk-in closet that was larger than his old studio. They were his own, he realized with a jolt. Someone—Julian, or more likely a paid someone—had packed his things from the apartment. His soft cotton sweaters and faded jeans looked absurdly small and colorful hanging next than Julian’s sea of tailored black and charcoal. The efficiency of it was chilling.
He was poking at the voice-controlled kitchen system, trying to get it to make toast without issuing a corporate takeover, when a soft chime echoed through the penthouse. A calm, female voice announced, “Dr. Alistair Finch has arrived at the private elevator. Access granted.”
Emmett’s heart kicked against his ribs. He stayed frozen in the vast living area, a piece of toast half-lifted from the plate.
The elevator doors opened with a whisper. The man who stepped out was in his late fifties, with kind, tired eyes and a neat salt-and-pepper beard. He carried a sleek, professional medical bag. His scent was gentle, unthreatening: old books and chamomile. An omega. The deliberate choice was so obvious it felt like another calculated move.
“Emmett,” the doctor said, his voice as soothing as his scent. “I’m Alistair. Julian asked me to come. I know this is… a lot. My job is just to make sure you and the pup are healthy. Nothing more. Okay?”
Emmett nodded, unable to form words. He was led back to the bedroom, which had been straightened by unseen hands. The doctor set up a portable ultrasound machine on a rolling cart, his movements practiced and quiet.
“We’ll do a general physical first, then take a look,” Alistair said, snapping on gloves. The exam was thorough, impersonal, and Emmett felt himself disassociating, floating outside his body as his blood pressure was taken, his reflexes tested. The doctor’s fingers probed the gland on his neck, where the bite was.
“A clean, deep claim,” Alistair murmured, more to himself. “It’s healing well. No sign of infection. Your body is accepting it.”
It doesn’t have a choice, Emmett thought.
“Now, let’s have a look,” the doctor said, gesturing for Emmett to lift his shirt. The gel was warm, but Emmett still flinched at its touch on his abdomen. Alistair moved the transducer with gentle pressure.
A shuffling at the door.
Julian stood there, having returned without a sound. He’d shed his suit jacket and tie. His sleeves were rolled up, his arms crossed. He didn’t enter, just occupied the threshold, his eyes fixed on the monitor Alistair was watching.
Emmett wanted to cover himself. He felt grotesquely exposed, pinned between the clinical gaze of the doctor and the burning, possessive stare of the alpha.
“Ah, there we are,” Alistair said, his tone shifting to one of professional warmth. He turned the screen slightly.
A chaotic, grainy swirl of black and white resolved into a shape. A little, blinking lima bean with a frantic, flickering light at its center.
Thu-thump. Thu-thump. Thu-thump.
The sound filled the room, a swift, rhythmic percussion that was entirely alien and overwhelmingly alive. It was the heartbeat. Not his. Theirs.
Emmett’s breath caught. All the fear, the anger, the surreal horror of the last few days condensed around that rapid, tiny drumming. It was real. It was in him.
He flicked his eyes to Julian.
The alpha’s mask had dissolved. His stern expression had gone slack, his lips slightly parted. All the calculated coldness, the boardroom ruthlessness, was gone. He looked… transfixed. Raw. His amber eyes were wide, reflecting the flickering light from the screen, and something in their depths had cracked open. He was staring at the image with a focus so absolute it was like the rest of the universe had ceased to exist.
Julian took a single, silent step into the room.
“Strong heartbeat,” Alistair said softly, clicking a button to capture an image. “Measuring right on schedule. Everything looks perfectly healthy, Emmett.”
The doctor finished up, wiping the gel from Emmett’s skin with a soft towel. He printed a few images, handed them to Emmett without looking at Julian, and began packing his gear. “I’ll be back in a month. Call the direct number I’ll leave if you have any concerns. Nausea, fatigue, mood swings—all normal. Try ginger. Rest.”
He offered Emmett a small, sympathetic smile, a silent communication between omegas that bypassed the alpha looming in the room, and then he was gone, the elevator swallowing him back into the normal world.
The sound of the heartbeat was gone, replaced by the humming silence. The printed images, grainy and profound, sat on the bed beside Emmett. He couldn’t bring himself to touch them.
Julian moved then. He crossed the room in three long strides and sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped under his weight. He didn’t look at Emmett’s face. His gaze was locked on Emmett’s bare abdomen.
Slowly, as if handling something infinitely fragile, Julian reached out. His hand, so large and capable of crushing, hovered for a second. Then his palm settled flat against Emmett’s stomach. The touch was warm, shockingly so. It wasn’t a sexual claim. It was something else, deeper, more territorial.
His hand was perfectly still, absorbing the warmth of skin, the reality of the life beneath. Emmett could feel the slight calluses on Julian’s palms, the latent strength in his fingers.
Julian’s thumb stroked once, a slow, deliberate sweep. He finally lifted his eyes to Emmett’s. The raw, unguarded awe was still there, but it had been fused back with that fierce, undeniable possession. His voice, when it came, was a low, visceral rasp that vibrated through the point of contact.
“Mine,” he whispered, the word final and absolute. “Both of you.”
A tremor ran through Emmett, starting where Julian’s hand met his skin and radiating outward until his very bones felt like tuning forks. The tears that welled up were hot and instantaneous, blurring the sharp lines of Julian’s face. They were tears of pure, undiluted terror—of being reduced to a vessel, a belonging. But coiled beneath the fear, a treacherous, biological wire hummed in response to the touch, to the certainty in that voice. It was a deep, atavistic recognition of protection, of security for the pup.
The two feelings, terror and that unwelcome, primal comfort, twisted together inside him, inseparable and devastating. He couldn’t speak. He could only sit there, trembling under Julian’s hand, crying silently as the alpha stared at his stomach, seeing an empire’s heir where Emmett still saw only a catastrophic, beautiful accident.