The scent of bleach and old sweat clung to the metal lockers, a smell that usually grounded her. Now, it just made her nauseous. Nine weeks. The number hammered against her skull in time with her frantic heartbeat. Her palms were slick against the cool bench, vision tunneling until all she could see was the stark, negative-space horror of a plus sign on a plastic stick, hidden under her math textbook at home.

It wasn’t supposed to be possible. Werewolves and humans… the odds were astronomical. But the terror that night had been a living thing, a cold serpent coiling around the pack when they deciphered the ritual. Virgins. Sacrifices. Stiles’s face, pale and stricken in the strobe lights of the party, his usual witty commentary replaced by a silent, primal fear. Their frantic, desperate collision in a dark, borrowed bedroom wasn’t about love or even lust. It was a rebellion against the reaper, a frantic, sweating proof of life. I am not that. You are not that.

And now, she was this.

A sob ripped from her throat, raw and ugly. The air in the changing room grew thick, pressing down on her. Her control, usually as solid as Scott’s, shattered. A low growl vibrated in her chest, unbidden. Her fingers curled, claws unsheathing and digging into the wooden bench with a sickening splinter. The shift prickled under her skin, her eyes flashing a molten gold in the dim light. She was losing it, the panic and the secret and the sheer, overwhelming future of it all morphing into a wild, feral thing inside her.

The door banged open.

“Hey, are you okay in— whoa!”

Scott’s voice, laced with immediate concern, cut through the roaring in her ears. He and Isaac froze in the doorway, their own eyes flickering beta gold in response to her distress. They saw a packmate in crisis, a wolf on the verge of breaking.

“Hey, hey, breathe,” Scott said, hands up, approaching her like she was a spooked animal. Which she was. Isaac hovered behind him, his gaze sharp, scanning the empty room for a threat he couldn’t see.

She tried to choke out words, to pull the wolf back in, but another wave of dizzying terror silenced her. She hugged her arms around her stomach—a stomach that felt terrifyingly, secretly different.

Scott knelt in front of her, his Alpha presence a steady, calming pressure. “Just focus on my voice. You’re safe. Nothing’s in here with us. Whatever it is, we can fix it. The pack fixes it together.”

But they couldn’t. This wasn’t a monster to fight or a spell to break. This was a consequence. This was a tiny, impossible heartbeat that was hers, and Stiles’s, and a terrifying secret that, as she met Scott’s worried eyes, she realized she could no longer hold alone.