Page 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

Zack

I n retrospect, maybe I hadn’t reacted as well as I could have to the revelation that the man who had rescued me and taken me through heat in spectacular style was, in fact, a fish.

Alright, not technically a fish, but close enough to make me feel like I’d done something incredibly kinky by riding his cock like it was a seaside amusement park attraction. And yeah, it had been absolutely spectacular and I’d convinced myself I was deeply in love with Lucas and wanted to be his fated mate.

But one fish taco did not make for a lifetime of bonding-level commitment.

Or did it?

After spending the rest of the weekend stunned and in denial, and wondering if I could ever eat the fish sticks in my freezer after having eaten actual fish stick, I headed over to the VPAC on Monday and tried to pretend that everything was business as usual. Fortunately for me, it was pretty much balls to the wall as soon as I walked through the door.

“There you are, Zack,” Betty said, catching me about three steps into the building. “I’ve got a big job for you. The set painters were here over the weekend and not only did they leave the paint closet in complete disarray, they spilled half a can of Cerulean Blue in the hallway and Dion wants it cleaned up yesterday.”

“Oh. Right. Okay,” I said, letting her steer me off toward the side hall that would take us down to the workshop.

“Great,” Betty said, like she’d checked something off a long list. “I’m glad I can count on you. By the way, are you feeling alright? You look a bit piqued.”

I swallowed, eyes going round, and wondered if she could see right through me. A day and a half of raw heat sex with a merman aside, if she had even the smallest hint that Lucas and I were together, Lucas might be fired and whatever dreams of being a star of the musical stage that he had would be crushed.

If he even had dreams of being a star of the musical stage.

If we even were together.

Oh gods. I was in a relationship with a merman.

“No, no, I’m fine,” I said, acting like everything was perfectly okay in the most unconvincing voice possible. “I just didn’t get enough sleep this weekend. I was out exploring Valleywood, painting the town red and all. Alone!” I added in a shout, which echoed in the concrete and steel stairway we’d just started to descend. “I was out there alone. I wasn’t on a date or anything.”

“Okay, great, sure,” Betty said. When we came out in the workshop corridor at the bottom of the stairs, she pointed at the paint spill and said, “There you go. Dion offered to have the VPAC’s staff clean it up, but I told him that since we’re guests here in his house, I’d find one of ours to do it. You might have to get out some turpentine if the paint is already set in the concrete.”

“Sure, sure,” I said, staring at the huge swath of blue on the floor, utterly forlorn. “You can count on me.”

The paint had dried ages ago. Fortunately, it wasn’t the kind that needed masses of chemical solvents to clean up. It just needed good, old-fashioned elbow grease, which meant me on my hands and knees for most of the morning, scrubbing until my shoulders ached.

Ironically, it was one of the best things that could have happened to me. Cleaning up the paint, as much of a literal pain as it was, meant that I was downstairs all day, which meant I was nowhere near Lucas. I didn’t see him when one of the other stage crew came by to invite me to go out to lunch with them.

I didn’t talk to Lucas that afternoon, although I did spot him on stage, running lines at one point when I crossed through the auditorium with a couple of the other stagehands while bringing rehearsal props backstage.

Our eyes met, literally across a semi-crowded room, and my heart felt like it wanted to leap out of my chest and run to him. Lucas stared back at me as if I were the thick, juicy steak he wanted to devour but couldn’t eat because he was pescatarian.

Ohhh! He was pescatarian . He didn’t eat land meat . That whole thing made sense now. I wondered if it was a digestive thing or just a preference.

“Zack. Hey. Come on.”

I blinked and shook myself out of what had apparently been a moment of Lucas and I gazing longingly at each other with unrequited love and scrambled to catch up to Karl and Jen.

As we used the small stairs to sneak onto the stage with our boxes of props, I noticed that Eric was up on the stage, too. His eyes were narrowed as he looked back and forth between me and Lucas. That was an even better excuse to ignore Lucas entirely as I went about my stagehandly duties.

The rest of the afternoon was as busy as the morning, and the stage crew was asked to stay a little late to help clear away everything from our show so the crew in charge of the currently running production could set the stage for their performance. The perils of sharing a performance space with another company meant I didn’t see Lucas at all for the rest of the day.

The next day proceeded in much the same way, except I happened to run into Lucas while sweeping out one of the smaller rehearsal rooms after lunch. Lucas was already in the room, going over his lines.

“Hey,” he said, glancing up at me with surprise and hope as I marched into the room with my big push broom.

“Hey,” I replied, like I was some sort of smitten schoolboy instead of the most confused omega on the planet. “I was told to sweep in here.”

“Yeah,” Lucas said, glancing to the side. “Someone must have eaten their lunch in here and sat on a bag of potato chips or something.”

Sure enough, one corner of the room was littered with smashed potato chips. I sighed.

“Are you okay?” Lucas asked stepping closer to me.

I wanted to drop my broom and run into his arms. That felt like the only right thing to do under the circumstances. Every cell in my body, including a particular cluster of cells deep inside me that were growing larger by the minute, wanted to fling myself at him and have Lucas wrap his big, fishy body around me forever.

I shrugged. “I dunno. I’m still processing.”

Lucas lowered his head slightly, looking sheepish and confused. “I don’t want to push or rush you in any way,” he said.

I felt what his words meant in my soul. It was totally a fledgling bond. I knew that he wanted me, that he cared for me, but that he also wanted to respect my boundaries. I also knew that he was as clueless about what was happening between us as I was.

Bonding was weird.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’m just really confused right now. This is not what I expected to happen when I left home for the big city.”

“I though you lived in Philadelphia,” Lucas said. “That’s a much bigger city than Valleywood.”

“I know, it was a metaphor,” I said. And then, like an idiot, I added, “Do they not have metaphors under the sea? How do you guys even talk to each other if you’re underwater?”

I felt a pinch from Lucas that was totally a bond thing. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I should have told you sooner.” He paused, mostly because I didn’t have anything to say, then added, “We do have metaphors. I get what you mean now. And telepathy. Sort of.”

He shoved a hand through his hair nervously.

“Telepathy, eh?” I asked, taking a step closer to him.

“Sort of,” Lucas replied. “There are different sorts of places in and around Blue Haven City, some completely water and some contained within a magic bubble, where people breathe air and speak like they do up here.”

“Blue Haven City?” I wanted to know more. I knew an opening when I saw it, and I wanted to grab hold of it and use that little exchange of knowledge to create a whole new understanding between us.

But it was just my luck that Lindsey came bouncing into the room with a cheerful, “Hey! Sorry I’m late. Are we still running our scenes in here?” before I could take things further.

Lucas and I turned to her in eerie unison.

Lindsey stopped where she was and said, “Oh. Am I interrupting something?” Her eyes sparkled and a smile spread across her face.

“No, no, you’re not interrupting anything,” I insisted, gripping my broom tighter and heading over to the potato chip corner. “I was asked to clean up in here.”

Lucas gazed longingly at me as I left him. I mean, I had my back to him so I couldn’t actually see it, but I could totally feel it.

“Okay, as long as I’m not getting in the way,” Lindsey said. There was a pause and then she added, “You know I wouldn’t rat you out to Ben if the two of you were, you know.” She whispered the last two words.

“Thanks,” Lucas said. “Let’s run lines.”

I noted that he didn’t deny that the two of us had something going on. That made me smile and relax as I went to work cleaning up the mess. The two of us might have been in a really weird situation, but I still felt good knowing he wasn’t the type of alpha to pretend he didn’t even know the omega who he’d knocked up.

By the end of the week, I was a hundred percent certain I was very, very knocked up.

“You say your heat ended after a day and a half?” the doctor at the free clinic I went to on Friday morning to have an official pregnancy test done asked as I sat on his exam table.

I squirmed in my ill-fitting hospital gown and scrunched my hands on the waxy paper covering the faded vinyl of the table. “Um, yeah. And I’m usually three days, regular as clockwork.”

“And you say you were on birth control?”

“That’s the weird thing,” I said, throwing my arms out with the intensity of my confusion. “I’ve been taking them for years, just in case. There’s no way this should have happened.”

“Birth control isn’t a hundred percent effective,” the doctor said. “Especially during heat with a fated mate.”

It felt like he’d punched me in the gut. “How do you know we’re fated mates? I didn’t say anything about fated mates.”

“Well, that’s the most likely explanation for why pregnancies happen when an omega is on the pill.” The doctor hummed and nodded as he tapped on his tablet. “Have you shared your suspicions about pregnancy with your alpha?” He glanced up at me over the top of his glasses.

“He’s not exactly my alpha,” I said.

The doctor frowned in confusion. “Was it a hired heat?”

“No!” I sat straighter, causing the paper to crunch. “We’re friends. We’re definitely friends. Maybe more than friends. Definitely more than friends.”

“But he’s not your alpha?”

I winced and hunched again. “Maybe he is. It’s just that there are…extenuating circumstances.”

The doctor smiled knowingly, tucking his tablet under his arm. “I noticed that you’re new to Valleywood.”

“I am,” I said suspiciously, wondering where he was going with that.

His smile widened to a knowing look. “He’s a shifter, isn’t he. Or maybe a demigod? Something you weren’t expecting, surely.”

I sat suddenly straight. “How did you know?”

“I get a lot of new arrivals who are surprised they’ve mated with a shifter,” he said with a chuckle. “And to answer the question you’re about to ask me, yes, it’s highly likely that mongrels will develop the ability to shift like their parent who is a shifter, but not until they’re older.”

“Mongrel?” I asked, my voice going high with offense as I put a protective hand over my stomach. “Don’t call my baby a mongrel . That’s my baby you’re talking about.” My guppy , my brain filled in.

“Sorry. I meant no offense,” the doctor said, growing serious again. “But yes, I can confirm that you are pregnant. Congratulations, Mr. deMuse. You’re going to be a papa.”

I might have groaned a little. When I left the doctor’s office, I might have cried. What was Grandma going to say? What was Lucas going to say, for that matter?

“Oh gods, he’ll think I’m trapping him,” I said as I walked, dazed, back to the VPAC to finish out my work day. “Oh gods!” I said, louder. “He’ll think I’ve hooked him with a slippery little worm for bait!”

By the time I made it to one of the backstage entrances of the VPAC, I didn’t know whether I was laughing or crying. My emotions were all over the place as the surrealness of the situation fully hit me. What were the little tadpole and I going to do if Lucas didn’t want us?

No, tadpoles were amphibians. I was carrying something entirely different inside me.

It was just my luck that Lucas was only a few yards away from the stage door, leaning against the wall in the quiet corridor, holding some sheet music and singing under his breath as I entered the building. As soon as I stepped into his view, before he turned his head to look at me, he snapped straight, like he knew I was there.

“Hey,” he said, smiling at me, music forgotten. As soon as he saw the state I was in, his hopeful expression dropped. “Oh, no. Is something wrong?”

I didn’t care how weird everything was or how suddenly things had happened. It didn’t matter that I was still so confused that I barely knew my own name anymore. I broke down into tears all over again and walked toward him, slamming myself against his body.

“I’m pregnant,” I wailed into his broad, delicious-smelling chest. I recognized his scent now. He smelled like the ocean, and I loved it.

“Aww, guppy,” Lucas said, closing me in his embrace and kissing the top of my head. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to be okay.”

“No, we’re not,” I wept, way over-dramatic. I couldn’t help myself. It had to be the pregnancy hormones scrambling my brain. Or maybe the completely bizarre situation I found myself in. “I’m not ready to have a baby.”

“I’m sorry,” Lucas said, rubbing my back. “If there was any way I could have stopped it, I would have.”

I gasped and pulled back. “Are you saying you don’t want the baby?” My voice rose to a screech.

“No!” Lucas blurted. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. Of course I want the baby.”

I nearly burst into tears again. “I’m pregnant with a fish!”

Lucas laughed. It wasn’t funny…but it sort of was. He pulled me into his arms again and rested his cheek against my head. “It’s going to be okay,” he said, hugging me. “I’ll take care of you. And you’re not pregnant with a fish. You’re pregnant with a merperson.”

That only made me wail more.

But I also wanted to laugh. I had a sudden flash of me swimming around in the waves with an adorable baby boy who had reddish hair and a blue-green tail, like his daddy.

I pulled myself together enough to stand on my own two feet. I had so many questions for Lucas, but before I could ask any of them, Eric’s waspish voice snapped, “What’s going on here?”

Lucas and I jumped away from each other.

“Hey, Eric,” Lucas said with a long-suffering sigh. “Does Ben want us on stage?”

Eric didn’t answer his question. Instead, he stalked his way forward, eyes narrowed. “It looked like the two of you were hugging.”

I was all set to deny everything in order to save Lucas, but Lucas shrugged and said, “Yeah, we were.” Before Eric could look too victorious, Lucas said, “Zack here has just had some, er, startling news. I was comforting him.”

I swallowed hard. “Yeah, he was comforting me,” I said. “That’s what friends do.”

“Oh really,” Eric said, stopping and crossing his arms when he was close to us. He jerked his chin at me and said, “What happened? What startling news?”

Lucas and I exchanged a worried look. I could almost hear him speaking to me through whatever merman bond we’d started to form, but it was like he was at the end of a long, foggy corridor.

“Um, my grandma is sick,” I blurted out the first thing I could think of that would make me cry.

“Who’s your grandma?” Eric fired at me.

“Thalia deMuse,” I said.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She has, um, Sowers Syndrome.”

“Never heard of it,” Eric said.

Neither had I. I’d just made it up. “It’s very serious,” I said, standing a little taller and putting on a brave face. “She needs special treatment.”

“Oh yeah? Where?”

“In Philly, where we’re from.”

Eric looked suddenly delighted. “Does this mean you’re leaving the production?”

“Come on, Eric,” Lucas sighed. “There’s no reason to give him the splash down.”

“The what?” Eric and I asked at the same time.

Lucas colored a little. “You know, the fifth degree?”

“Oh,” I said, then smiled at what must have been a merman term.

Eric still looked highly suspicious. “You know what’ll happen if Ben finds out the two of you are dating.”

“Who says we’re dating?” I fired back. Technically, we were doing so much more than dating at this point.

“Greg is waiting in the wings to take over the part of King Triton at any second,” Eric said with a seriously gloaty face. “Granted, they’ll probably have to go back to the original script if he takes over the part because, gods love him, Greg isn’t up to the role the way they bastardized it for you.”

Lucas stood straighter and crossed his arms, daring Eric to say more.

Eric was intimidated enough to take a step back. “I’ll be watching you,” he said, then did the thing where he pointed his fingers at his eyes then at the two of us before turning and marching away.

I let out a breath once he was gone, but I wasn’t relieved.

“We can’t let anyone find out about any of this,” I said.

“Zack, I really don’t care about a part in some play,” Lucas said.

“Well I do,” I said, turning to him. “Whatever happens after the show closes, this is your chance to shine. You came up to land to be in this play, and I don’t want you to miss out on that.”

“I think I came up onto land to find you,” he said with the soppiest smile I’d ever seen.

It almost made me cry yet again.

I shook my head. “No. I would hate myself if anything happened to get in the way of you being a smashing success in this show. I don’t want us to let on to anybody that anything is going on between us until after the show closes. It’ll be our little secret.” I put my hand on my stomach, like the tadpole was a part of that secret.

Lucas rubbed the back of his neck. “If that’s what you want. I’m a little uncomfortable pretending nothing is going on, though. Especially seeing as you’re pregnant with a fish.”

There was a beat of silence, then Lucas smiled.

I was so in love with him that it hurt.

“Stop it!” I hissed, then laughed, grabbing him and turning him toward the stage, then pushing. “Go rehearse or something. Stop making me fall head over heels in love with you!”

Lucas laughed. “Okay, okay. I’ll go. But promise me you’ll call on me if you need anything. And once the show is over, I don’t care what happens, I’m claiming you as my mate.”

Those words sent a serious shiver through me. They were everything I wanted to hear and more, but they were also the most dangerous words anyone had ever said to me.

What did it mean to be claimed by a merman? How were the two of us supposed to have this baby together if he was a water person and I was a land guy? What would Grandma think? And how were we supposed to keep everything a secret until the end of the show?