Faction before blood?

Chapter 3

I didn't know what I was doing or even where I was going. I was vaguely aware of the nurses ushering around me, but I felt like walking through honey.

Nothing could have ever prepared me to feel such panic, that all-consuming anxiety that threatened to burn me from the inside out. Not even the second stage of initiation or my father managed to do that to me, because I knew I'd get out of there. But I couldn't get out of this one.

I had somehow picked up the damn folder and communicated to someone that I'd be home for the rest of the day.

So now I was walking towards my flat, still feeling like I'd been paralyzed, when I ran into someone, successfully dropping the folder.

I hurried to pick it up, but that someone beat me to it.

"A? Hey, Amie? Are you alright?" a familiar voice called me, making me snap up my head. James, my Ex-boyfriend stood beside my still crouching frame, offering me a hand to help me up.

"Huh? Yeah, yeah. Everything is alright." I stood up and went to grab the folder to turned around and walk away, but he grabbed my hand, stopping me.

"I mean it. Did something happen to you? Should I call someone?" he continued asking.

I pulled my hand away from him. I still haven't forgotten how he treated me, when we broke up. Just because I was a forgiving person and I didn't hold a grudge over it, meant that I wanted to be anywhere near him.

"I am fine. Not that it's any of your concern." I brushed him off, before walking the short way that was left to the apartment, slamming the door behind me and sinking to the floor.

I thought about the possibility of me being pregnant. I mean what are the odds?

That one time I actually sleep with someone, my otherwise perfect safety net was practically non-existent. Except if the flu vaccination was somehow able to prevent fertilization.

I snorted. Would certainly seem like Erudite to invent something unnecessary like that.

But I couldn't be pregnant. I just couldn't.

I would have to tell everyone who the father was...

Damn. Not only would my brother disown me, he would kill Eric. Simply as that. And I didn't want to go see my brother in the factionless area or crying at his execution, just because I made a mistake.

Belle would be supportive. Without a question. Maybe she would even be happy about it.

But the rest of them?

Zeke shared my brother's feelings regarding Eric. Tris despised him on a deep level, but Christina hated him with all her heart. When he hung her above the chasm, just to prove a point, he signed a life-long treatment of utter hatred served to him by the former candor.

Uriah and Will didn't like him much either, but they could work with him, without it ending in threats or a shouting match. Not that Eric would ever do something as profane as that. Instead he would just glare and hiss.

Thinking about him had me wondering if he'd even want a family, ever. Maybe, one day... with a beautiful wife who was the epitome of dauntless, being the perfect, ruthless warrior and the loving, protective mother in one. She would be nothing like me.

She'd be rough, where I'm soft, feisty where I'm timid and above all beautiful, where I am average.

He'd never love me. If he's even capable of loving.

And he would never want a child with the woman he only knows as stiff or the sister of his biggest nemesis.

And that's the point when I cracked. I started crying my eyes out, leaning against my apartment door for what felt like hours.