JL OS

Rut Leave (Final)

Three Weeks Later...

Lisa Manoban didn't do mornings—at least, not without the assistance of some horrifically strong coffee.

And yet, for the fourth time in a row, she found herself staring down at the mug her mate had brought her and fighting the urge to vomit.

"Babe?"

Her brow furrowed. She couldn't understand it. The first couple of times, she'd thought the cream must have gone bad, but she'd picked up a fresh carton at the market on the way home yesterday.

It was possible Jennie had brewed it a little too strong, although she wouldn't bet on it. There was a reason they had two coffeemakers in the apartment, one for Lisa and one for, as Jennie put it, "normal humans who don't like drinking tar every morning."

"Lisa?"

Lisa gazed down into the murky liquid, stomach burbling riotously, threatening to vent itself at any moment.

This particular weirdness, coupled with a few other things - the odd tenderness of her breasts, the light spots of blood she'd noticed in her underwear the other day, the bizarre fluctuations in her body temperature - had inspired her to pick up something else along with the cream.

It was still sitting at the bottom of her purse, wrapped up in its plastic bag, the receipt curled around the little pink and blue box to conceal the tell-tale lettering on the side...

"Lisa!"

The sharp, sour note of concern in Jennie's scent made Lisa's head jerk up.

That was the fifth thing. While Lisa had always had a relatively sharp nose, this was ridiculous.

Somehow it seemed that overnight, she'd lost the ability to filter out useless olfactory information, and was now forced to smell all of New York, whether she liked it or not.

She was always hyper-attuned to her mate's scent, but now it almost seemed like she could tell what Jennie was feeling before the alpha even knew herself.

The alpha in question was setting the coffee mug down on the nightstand, large brown eyes currently muddied with worry. She looked like she was struggling to figure out what to say, but eventually she went with, "Something wrong with the coffee?"

Lisa huffed out a shaky sound that might have been a laugh in another life. "No, I...actually, I think there might be something wrong with me."

The concern in Jennie's scent thickened, and Lisa's guilt rose. She knew she couldn't conceal this from Jennie for long, and she didn't want to, but...well, she didn't want to get Jennie's hopes up if there wasn't anything to conceal.

Lisa sighed. Better to get it over with sooner rather than later.

"Can you go get me my purse?"

Jennie's mouth opened and closed a couple of times as though she'd like to argue, or maybe ask a dozen more questions, but in the end she did as Lisa asked.

There was a tightness to her jaw when she returned with the purse, and the lines around her eyes had deepened, but Lisa forced herself to stay as calm as she could.

"What's going on, Lisa?" Jennie asked as she began digging in the purse.

Lisa swallowed another surge of nausea that might have been more anxiety-related than anything before answering.

"Maybe nothing, but I've been feeling some symptoms lately and I wanted to check just in case...there."

Lisa withdrew the pharmacy bag from the depths of her purse, pulled the little blue and pink package from it, and waved it at Jennie. She took the opportunity of her mate's dropped jaw to hustle past her into the bathroom.