Chapter 7: The Physio's Challenge
The confrontation began not with a shout, but with a silence so sharp it cut the air.
Julius stood in the doorway of the master bedroom, still in his tailored evening clothes from some unseen meeting. The scent of night air and cold caffeine clung to him. His eyes, that calm steel, were now fractured, scanning the room. They found Alaina sitting on the edge of the stability ball, her hands pressed to her lower abdomen, her face pale. Leo was kneeling in front of her, his back to the door, one hand outstretched, not touching her, but close. “Just breathe through it, Alaina. It’s okay. It’s just a muscle spasm, it’ll pass.”
“Get away from her.”
Julius’s voice was low. It was not a request. It was a command that vibrated in the floorboards.
Leo flinched, turning his head. “Doctor Vance. She’s fine. It’s a cramp.”
“I said.” Julius moved into the room, his presence expanding to fill every corner, pressing out the oxygen. “Get. Away. From her.”
The primal edge in his tone unlocked something in Alaina’s spine. She straightened, the cramp momentarily forgotten under a wave of protective fury. “He’s doing his job. Back off.”
Julius’s gaze snapped to hers. The control he wore like a second skin was peeling away, revealing something raw and terrifying beneath. “His job is to oversee physical therapy. Not to act as your sole support during a medical event.”
“It was a cramp!” she shot back, pushing herself to her feet. A wave of dizziness followed, but she locked her knees. “What is your problem? You hired him!”
“My problem,” Julius said, each word a measured bullet, “is that your well-being is not a democracy. You are experiencing sequelae from a traumatic injury while in an unprecedented gestational state. Every variable must be controlled.” His eyes cut back to Leo. “You will not touch her without my express authorization. Do you understand?”
Leo stood slowly, his usual cheer gone, replaced by a wary respect for the danger in the room. “I understand the chain of command, Doc. But she’s my patient. If she’s in distress—”
“Her distress is not for you to mitigate.” The possessive fury in Julius’s voice was now unmistakable. It wasn’t about protocol. It was about touch. It was about another man’s hands, even a beta’s, on her skin.
Alaina saw it then—the fear beneath his anger. The desperate, clawing need to manage every heartbeat, every breath, because he had already lost her once. It should have softened her. It didn’t. It lit a fuse.
“Get out,” she said, her voice quiet.
Julius stared at her. “What?”
“You heard me. Get out of this room. Now.” She took a step toward him, her body trembling with the effort. “You don’t get to storm in here and snarl at the one person in this city who treats me like a human being and not a... a porcelain incubator. You don’t get to use my ‘gestational state’ as a leash. So leave.”
A terrible stillness settled over him. The anger drained from his face, leaving behind a hollowed-out starkness. He looked from her defiant glare to Leo’s neutral stance. The scent of his distress—sharp ozone and bitter herbs—flooded the space.
Leo cleared his throat. “Maybe I should just…”
“No,” Alaina said, never breaking eye contact with Julius. “You stay. He goes.”
For a long moment, Julius said nothing. The city’ heartbeat glowed behind him. Then, he gave a single, stiff nod. It was the motion of a general ceding a battle, not the war. “The dizziness is a concern. You will sit down. Immediately after I leave.”
He turned and walked out, closing the door with a soft, definitive click.
The breath left Alaina in a rush. She swayed. Leo was there in an instant, his hand under her elbow, guiding her back to the edge of the bed. “Easy. Whoa. Okay. That was… intense.”
She let him help her sit, the fight evaporating, leaving her cold and shaky. “Sorry,” she muttered.
“Don’t be. Guy’s wound tighter than a Swiss watch. But he’s not wrong about you needing to be careful.” Leo sat in the chair, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. “He said ‘gestational state.’ That’s a very specific, non-sexy medical term. You wanna tell me what’s really going on? Because treating you for post-coma weakness is one thing. Treating a pregnant princess is a whole other ball game, and I’d like to know which rulebook I’m using.”
She looked down at her hands. The truth was a cold, hard stone in her gut. No more heat. The constant, humiliating throb had been absent for three days, replaced by a different kind of ache, a deep, settled fullness. Julius had confirmed it with a blood test two mornings ago, his face unreadable as he’d told her. She’d felt nothing. No joy, no fear. Just a vast, echoing blankness.
“I’m pregnant,” she said, the words foreign on her tongue.
Leo whistled softly, long and low. “Okay. That… tracks. Explains the volatility. The dizziness. The fact your four live-in guardians look like they’re guarding the crown jewels during a heist.” He rubbed his neck. “Do you know…?”
“No. And I don’t want to.” The answer was too fast, too sharp. She didn’t want to think about paternity, about which of the men whose faces were ghosts in her mind had left this permanent, growing mark inside her. It was all just biology. A consequence of the life she couldn’t remember.
“Fair,” Leo said. His kindness was practical, unsentimental. It was exactly what she needed. “Well, medically, it changes some things. We go slower. We listen harder. And you eat more. Starting now. I’m commandeering the kitchen from the grumpy chef.”
A faint smile touched her lips. “Kael will declare war.”
“Let him. I make a mean smoothie.” He stood up, gathering his things. “Session’s over. You just did more emotional heavy lifting than physical. Rest. I’ll bring you food. And for what it’s worth… standing up to him like that? That was the best core exercise you’ve done all week.”
He left, and the silence he left behind was different. It wasn’t the heavy, watchful silence of the alphas. It was just quiet. Her hand drifted to her stomach, resting on the soft silk of her pajamas. There was no flutter, no sign. Just a fact. A condition.
She wouldn’t go into heat again. That chapter of her biology, at least, was closed. The relief was staggering, a physical unclenching of muscles she hadn’t known were tense. The need that had terrified and shamed her was gone.
But in its place was this. A future growing inside her, tied irrevocably to a past she couldn’t access and to men she couldn’t trust. She had won a small battle against Julius’s control. But the war had just shifted to a new, more complex terrain. She was no longer just a lost princess or a resistant omega.
She was a mother-to-be. And that, more than anything else, felt like a trap she had no idea how to escape.
The trap’s walls felt like they were breathing in, closer with every heartbeat she couldn’t control. She needed air that didn’t taste of velvet and anxiety. Pushing off from the bed, she aimed for the door to the terrace, for the sky. Her legs were pillars of sand. The room did a slow, sickening roll. A framed cityscape on the wall blurred into a smear of light.
The floor rushed up. A wave of sour nausea climbed her throat.
A strong arm hooked around her ribs, arresting her fall. She was pulled back against a solid chest. The scent of antiseptic and spiced leather filled her senses. Julius. He didn’t speak. He just held her upright, his other hand coming to her forehead. His palm was cool. “Kael!” His shout was clipped, urgent.
Footsteps pounded. Kael appeared from the hall, a travel manifest in his hand. His eyes widened. “What happened?”
“Vasovagal response. Possibly orthostatic hypotension. Get the monitor.” Julius’s voice was all clinical fire, but his arms around her were rigid. He guided her back to the bed, his touch firm. “Sit. Now.”
She complied, the fight utterly gone. The world was still tilting. Leo rushed in, his kit already open. Silas and Ronan appeared in the doorway, their focus absolute. The penthouse, so still moments before, was now a command center. Kael returned with the portable vitals monitor, wires snaking from his fists.
Leo clipped a sensor to her finger. The machine beeped to life. “Blood pressure’s dropping. Eighty over fifty. Heart rate’s climbing. One-ten.” He looked at Julius. “This isn’t just dizziness.”
Julius’s jaw was a hard line. He took the blood pressure cuff from Kael and wrapped it around her arm himself. His fingers were steady, but she felt the minute tremor in them. The squeeze was tight. He watched the gauge, his gray eyes icy. “We are not flying today,” he stated, the verdict final.
“The jet’s fueled. Her father’s security lands in four hours to rendezvous at Teterboro.” Silas’s voice was calm, but it held an edge. “Staying mobile is our primary security protocol, Julius. A static target is more vulnerable.”
“She is not a protocol. She is a patient in distress.” Julius tore the cuff off. “The stress of travel could induce a miscarriage. We delay.”
The word hung in the air. Miscarriage. It was a clinical term for a loss she hadn’t even begun to comprehend. A hollow ache, separate from the nausea, bloomed behind her ribs.
“I want to go.” Her voice was a rasp.
Everyone looked at her. She was sweating, pale, her body betraying her at every turn. But the thought of more days in this gilded room, with the tension a live wire between these men, was worse.
“I want it to be over. I want to be where we’re going.” She swallowed against another wave of nausea. “I just want my daughter with me, with us, and this baby to be safe. I want everything to just… stop moving.”
It was the first time she’d acknowledged the pregnancy as anything other than a condition. It was the first time she acknowledged she’s going to be a mother to a baby she’s growing. It was the first time she said “us”. The words felt both true and alien.
Julius stared at her, conflict raging behind his eyes. Leo studied the vitals monitor, which gave another soft chime. “Heart rate’s stabilizing, but her BP is still in the basement. She’s dehydrated, exhausted. We can manage this in transit, but it’s a risk.”
“How?” Kael demanded, crossing his arms.
“We treat it like a mobile ICU. She travels on a stretcher. IV fluids for the dehydration and blood pressure. Continuous vital monitoring. Oxygen on standby.” Leo looked from Julius to Silas. “We proceed, but she’s a passenger in every sense. No arguments, no getting up. She rests.”
“And if her vitals spike? If she becomes more distressed?” Julius’s question was a challenge.
Leo met his gaze. “Then we sedate. Lightly. Just enough to calm the system. It’s protocol for unstable patients during necessary transport. My call.”
“No.” Alaina tried to sound firm, but it came out thin.
“Your vote’s been revoked, Princess,” Leo said, not unkindly. He put a hand on the monitor. “This is the deal. You stay hooked up to the pretty lights and the magic drip. You close your eyes. We get you there. You argue, we delay. And from the look on Doc’s face, delaying means bed rest for a month. Your choice.”
It was no choice at all. She was so tired. Tired of the fighting, the fear, the constant chemical ache of a body that felt like a stranger’s. She wanted the solid ground of a destination, even one she couldn’t remember. She nodded, the motion making the room sway again.
Julius watched the surrender in her posture. His own shoulders slumped slightly, a concession to a deeper fear. “Prepare the stretcher. I’ll place the IV. Leo, you manage the monitors en route. Silas, coordinate with the flight crew and security. We move in ninety minutes.”
The room erupted into coordinated motion. Kael and Ronan disappeared to secure the perimeter and the private elevator. Silas began speaking in low tones into his phone. Leo prepped the IV bag.
Julius approached the bed with a tray. He took her hand, his touch deliberate. “This will pinch.”
She looked away as the needle slid in. The sharp sting was a clean pain, nothing compared to the chaos inside. He taped the line down with meticulous care. The cold flush of saline traveled up her vein. “It’s just fluids,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. “It will help.”
They transferred her to a padded stretcher. They buckled straps across her hips and chest, not tight, but inescapable. Wires trailed from her fingers and chest to the beeping machine beside her. She was a node in a nervous system of their making. The ceiling of the penthouse became a blur as they wheeled her out.
In the elevator, surrounded by their tense, towering forms, she closed her eyes. The machine beeped a steady, reassuring rhythm next to her ear. The fluid from the IV bag felt like a chill thread sewing her back together. She didn’t fight the straps. For the first time since waking, she let go. The momentum was theirs now. She was cargo, a patient, a princess. And a mother. The wheels rolled forward, carrying all of those fragile, fractured things toward the waiting jet.
The wheels hit a seam in the pavement, a jolt that traveled up the stretcher’s frame and into her bones. City air, cold and diesel-tinged, replaced the penthouse’s lavender stillness. It was a shock, and she breathed it in greedily, even as the wind tugged at the thin hospital blanket. The beeping monitor accelerated for three sharp pulses before settling.
“Easy,” Julius murmured from somewhere behind her head. His hand rested on the stretcher’s rail, his knuckles white.
They moved through a service corridor, then into the vast, echoing throat of a private hangar. The jet waited, a sleek silver bullet under the harsh fluorescent lights. The sense of scale made her feel infinitesimal, a speck being loaded into a machine.
“Welcome to Air Vance. Complimentary nuts and crippling existential dread,” Kael said, his voice close to her ear as he helped guide the stretcher up the ramp. His attempt at levity fell flat, absorbed by the metal walls.
Inside, the cabin was all muted grays and soft leather. It smelled of new money and filtered air. They locked the stretcher into built-in mounts near a plush seat. Leo busied himself checking connections, his face lit by the glow of the monitor. “Vitals are holding. You’re a champ.”
“Where’s everyone else?” Her voice sounded small against the low hum of the idling engines.
Silas slid into a seat across the aisle, tapping on a tablet. “Ronan is with the pilots finalizing the flight path. Kael will secure the cabin. Julius and I are here.” He didn’t look up. “All other personnel have been cleared from the hangar.”
The statement was too precise. It meant something. Before she could ask, a new sound cut through the mechanical murmur. A high, bright chirp of laughter, instantly smothered. Then the scuff of small shoes on concrete.
Alaina’s head turned toward the open cabin door. Her IV line tugged.
A little girl, maybe five, with a wild tumble of honey-blonde hair just like her own, stood haloed in the hangar’s light at the top of the ramp. She was clutching the hand of a man Alaina had never seen—tall, lean, with kind eyes and a weary smile. Behind them stood two stone-faced security agents.
The child’s hazel eyes, huge and familiar, locked onto Alaina strapped to the stretcher, onto the tubes and wires. Her bottom lip quivered.
“Mama?”
The word was a feather-light strike that shattered every internal wall Alaina didn’t know she’d built. It wasn’t a memory. It was a tectonic shift. A truth that bypassed the mind and rooted directly in the marrow. The air vanished from the cabin.
Julius was moving, kneeling in the aisle, his back to Alaina, a barrier between her and the door. “Elara, sweetheart. It’s okay. Mama’s just a little tired from her trip.”
“Why is she tied down?” The little girl—Elara—asked, her voice trembling. “Is she broken?”
Lysander, the man holding her hand, squeezed it gently. “She’s just resting, darling. Like when you sleep in your car seat.”
Alaina could only stare, her throat sealed shut. Her daughter. Her daughter. The fact had been a line in a file, a abstract concept. This was a living, breathing person with her eyes and a scared, wobbly voice. A piece of her life, walking.
Kael appeared in the doorway, his bulk blocking much of the view. He crouched, his demeanor shifting into something softer, goofier. “Hey, bug. You ready to fly? We got the good cookies on board.”
Elara peeked around him, her gaze still fixed on Alaina. “Is Mama coming with us now? For always?”
“For always,” Julius said, the words thick. He turned his head just slightly, his eyes meeting Alaina’s over his shoulder. They were a storm of apology and agony. “She’s coming home.”
The monitor emitted a sudden, rapid series of beeps. Alaina’s heart rate spiked, the numbers climbing on the screen. A sharp, slicing pain cramped deep in her abdomen, stealing her breath. She gasped.
Clinical calm evaporated. Julius was at her side in an instant, his fingers on her wrist, his eyes on the monitor. “Alaina. Look at me. Breathe.”
“It hurts,” she managed, the pain bright and terrifying.
“Leo. Now.” Julius’s command sent the physio scrambling for the medical kit. Silas was up, gently guiding a confused Lysander and a now-frightened Elara further into the cabin and into seats, his voice a low, steady murmur.
“Mama’s got a little tummy ache, sweet pea. The doctors are fixing it.”
Another cramp twisted, vicious and deep. Alaina saw black spots at the edges of her vision. The panic wasn’t just hers; it poured off Julius in waves, a sour, metallic scent. He snapped open a hypodermic, his movements swift. “This is for the pain. It will also make you sleepy. It’s okay.”
She didn’t have the will to protest. The needle pricked her arm through the IV port. A cool, gray wave began to wash up from her feet, dulling the sharp edge of the pain, muffling the sound of her daughter’s whispered questions.
“Is the baby okay?” The question slipped out, blurred at the edges.
Julius’s hand stilled on her arm. The look he gave her was utterly naked. It was the first time she’d asked. The first time she’d shown a flicker of regard for the unborn life inside her. “We’re going to make sure of it,” he whispered. “I promise you.”
The sedative pulled her under, not into darkness, but into a thick, cottony haze. The cabin sounds melted together. She felt the jet begin to move, a giant beast rumbling to life. Through heavy lids, she saw Elara’s small form buckled into a seat, her stuffed rabbit clutched to her chest, watching her with solemn, unblinking eyes.
She felt Julius’s hand, not taking hers, but simply covering it where it lay against the stretcher strap. His thumb stroked once, twice, over her knuckles. It was an anchor.
As the jet lifted into the sky, pressing her down into the padding, the last thing she heard was Elara’s voice, clear and sure, asking Lysander, “When she wakes up, will she remember my name?”
The wheels retracted. The city fell away. And Alaina, suspended between a past she’d lost and a future she’d just met, let the momentum carry her into the clouds, the warmth of that small, persistent hand a new and terrifying gravity.