After what happened at the steakhouse a week ago, Oathran had brought her to Lazuardi.

The checkup had passed quickly. Lazuardi had examined her and ran his tests, although with incredulous wide eyes after exclaiming his shock.

"There seems to be no problem with your health or the pregnancy. You just need a lot of supplements." Lazuardi had paused. "Especially for a dragon egg. Calcium, iron, prenatal vitamins formulated for oviparous gestation... you know what? I will write you a list. It’ll be quite long."

Then, he had added, "You can have sex occasionally. It’s perfectly safe during pregnancy, since you’re healthy and stable. Just don’t do acrobatic stuff."

Cecilia immediately blushed so hard she had tunnel vision. If not for Oathran’s heartbeat she was feeling through his wrist, which had soothed her a little, she might have been bursting into pink smoke.

Yes. The entire time of the examination, the questions, the supplements and the casual mention of acrobatic stuff, his hand had been in hers.

She had grasped it with both of her own, her fingers wrapped around his palm and his wrist, feeling the thunderous rhythm of his pulse beneath her fingertips.

It was fast. Too fast.

It made sense since he had received the equivalent of multiple heart attacks in the span of a single afternoon and was still processing all of them.

When they walked out of the clinic into the summer air, Oathran had hugged her. Tight. His arms wrapped around her desperately, as if he had almost lost something he had not known he wanted, and was now determined never to let it go.

The multiple heart attacks aside, he said—"This is the best, worst, greatest feeling in my entire life."

He told her, "I think... everything you have gone through... is on me. It’s all my fault. The fainting... The divorce. Your... husband’s treatment..."

"I wish it had happened differently."

"Everything... I wish I had been there. Through everything."

And best because—

"But you’re pregnant. With my baby... And you..." Oathran looked at her like she was his whole universe. "And you’re here."

He was trying to tell her that her, being there, with him, in this together now, was—

He had kissed her. Hard. The hardest, warmest kiss he had ever given her.

"Thank you." His voice was rough, tight. "I am sorry. I am so... so sorry..."

He had made her pregnant. He had been reckless. He had ripped away the condom after she said it was a safe day, and now she was carrying his egg. Her body was changing for his baby, and she had fainted, and not to mention every symptom she had to experience afterwards.

But he couldn’t be happier.

Because she let him be around. Because she—

Seeing him like that, on the verge of tears, overwhelmed with joy and guilt and the bone-deep terror of a future dad, Cecilia had fallen into a daze that lasted long after the clinic visit ended.

She knew. In the real world, he wouldn’t have this reaction.

This beautiful, perfect reaction.

In the real world, Oathran feared the Key.

He would hate himself. He would be terrified. He would look at her, haunted by the fact that he had just handed his own curse to an innocent life. Their child’s.

But Oathran in this world was just... happy.

He looked so happy. So uncomplicatedly, completely happy, coming from a place of pure, untainted joy, unburdened by ancient oaths or divine seals or the weight of a world that demanded his death.

How could he look like that? With a stranger, divorced woman he had slept with alongside his two roommates in a club? How could he be so happy when in the real world he would be spiraling into guilt and fear and the immediate certainty that he needed to die?

Was it truly because the Key didn’t exist here?

Because he was simply a man who cooks?

Because... he was free?

Then—what would that make her?

A selfish bitch who—

Fuck.

She just realized it now.

Cecilia stroked her belly in the fading afternoon light.

She was the selfish bitch who wanted to have his baby.

Yes. She just realized how badly she wanted this baby to be real, in the real world, right this very moment.

Not in this alternate world.

***

Di-ding!

Cecilia snatched her phone with the speed of light.

{Thalia (Dad’s Lwy): BGCheck-McKingManager.doc}

{Thalia (Dad’s Lwy): Madam, this is what you requested. Please feel free to tell me if you need anything else.}

"Good job, Thalia!" Cecilia sent the voice message. She took a deep breath, kicking her feet against the bed as she lay on her stomach to ground herself as the phone propped up in front of her.

She opened the document and began to read.

But then, she furrowed her eyebrows.

"Hmm..."

She had just finished cooking her own lunch and was about to eat it when she heard her phone ring. But apparently, this wasn’t a cut and dry case.

Beep-beep-beep-beep—

Huh?

It was the front door. Someone was punching in the access code.

But Oathran’s shift was not supposed to be over yet, and Eastiel and Arkai usually returned right before sunset. So—

Tap-tap-tap-tap—

Those footsteps. Cecilia would recognize them in any universe.

Arkai.

She rose from the bed. Somewhere in the apartment, a door slammed shut with enough force to rattle the walls. Then another sound. The familiar, distant rush of running water.

He was in one of the bathrooms.

Cecilia’s movements stuttered. Her mind, still half-full of the document Thalia had sent and the complicated feelings she had just unearthed, snapped into immediate focus.

She remembered Arkai’s unpredictable rampage periods. Then, she remembered how Sienna had existed in the school romance scenario. Could it be... in this world too—

The photograph. Rinne’s baby picture, cradled in Roarke’s arms, surrounded by her three husbands, flashed behind her eyes.

Knock, knock, knock, "Arkai?"

No answer.

Cecilia fell into a silent panic. She didn’t have her telekinesis or mana in this world. Not yet. She had not been bonded with any of her husbands here, had not unlocked the powers that made her something more than an ordinary woman.

Without it, she couldn’t use magic to unlock the door or protect herself if Arkai had lost control.

"Arkai? Please open the door..."

She pressed her body against the wood, her ear against the grain, trying desperately to hear anything over the sound of running water. That was when—

Click.

The door swung open.

Cecilia, who had been leaning her full weight against it, stumbled forward.

"Ah!"