The Wild Charge (Dartmoor Book 9)

Twelve

Headed back, Fox's text read.

Ride safe, she texted back, and hit send before she could do something incredibly stupid and type anything else.

The low growl of a strong engine out in the driveway heralded Axelle's arrival. A moment later, the back door opened, and slammed shut, and wooden bootheels clicked down the hallway toward the office. Eden heard the crackle of a plastic bag as she spun her desk chair around.

"Do you know they keep these things under lock and key now?" she asked, pushing her shades up into her hair with one hand, and tossing the bag with the other. Eden's hands went nerveless, and she nearly dropped it.

"I had to ask for it." Axelle made a face and shuddered dramatically. "The pharmacist had to get out his little key, and he gave me this look, like, 'sorry you're such a slut,' and I wanted to die. Thank God I ditched Albie before I went in. He was all pouty about it, too. Gave me the puppy eyes." She demonstrated – or tried to; she wasn't capable of looking as pitiful as her boyfriend when he got moony over her.

At another time, Eden would have laughed. Now, she tightened her fingers until the bag crinkled, and managed a tense, "Thanks. I owe you one."

Axelle's eyes widened. "Shit. You're serious, aren't you? You really think you are?"

Eden swallowed around what was fast becoming a permanent lump in her throat. "Do you think I'd have asked you to pick these up if I didn't think I was?"

Axelle blinked at her a moment. "Shit."

"Yeah."

"Are you not on–"

"Obviously."

"Then, how–"

"I ran out," Eden admitted. "I'm due for my annual, but with moving over here, and everything that's happened. I...I forgot."

It wasn't possible for Axelle's eyes to get any wider. "You ran out?"

Eden squeezed her own eyes shut to block out her friend's judgmental, shocked stare. "I know, I know, I'm an idiot."

Doubly so, considering how long it had taken her to figure out what was going on. The fatigue, the queasiness, the spontaneous urge to cry over work: none of it was normal. She'd known she was out of pills, technically, but she just hadn't thought that this could be the reason.

The epiphany had broken last night, when she curled up beneath the covers, surprised to realize that sleeping alone was an unusual state these days; that Charlie slept over more often than he didn't. She'd missed him, a quiet pang in her chest...one that had quickly turned to a full-blown nauseous stomachache, and then the thoughts had started clicking together, rushing against one another like dominoes. A cascade of sudden understanding that had led her to spend most of the night on the bathroom floor between bouts of retching.

Or maybe that was just the morning sickness.

When she opened her eyes, Axelle was giving her a sympathetic look in a role reversal that left her stomach doing cartwheels.

She stood, bag clenched tight in a shaking fist. "Well. Guess there's only one way to know for sure."

Twenty minutes later, she cracked open the bathroom door, but could only invite Axelle to take a look with a flick of her fingers, voice caught in her throat.

"Oh," Axelle said, when she gazed down at the sticks lined up on the edge of the counter. Only one syllable, but it had been uttered with the air of someone who'd just received terrible news. "All of them, huh?"