Grace stared at the pregnancy test in his hands. Positive. Three other tests and two ripped open boxes rested on the counter. His hands were shaking. It wasn’t bad news, in fact, they’d been trying for a baby. Grace carefully placed the test on the counter and pressed his face into his hands.
“I need to call Rocky,” he told himself aloud, the words muffled by his hands. “I need to call him now.” He got up from toilet quickly and dug into his pocket for his phone. He nearly dropped it but managed to navigate to the contacts list but he hesitated with his thumb over Rocky’s name.
He opened their text chat instead. Again, he hesitated. Maybe Rocky would prefer one of those fancy pregnancy reveals? With the printed out ultrasounds? Grace shook his head and shot off a quick text, telling Rocky to call him when he had a moment to talk.
His phone rang immediately.
“Hello starlight,” Rocky said, his voice smooth, warm, and downright sweet. “Is everything alright?”
“Oh, um, yeah. Now that you’re on the phone it’s kind of awkward. Just. There’s something I need to tell you and I thought that maybe if you could get off work early, you know. You could come home?”
“What’s wrong?” Rocky demanded, that good old possessive alpha raising in him. “You never ask me to come home early.”
Grace cleared his throat. Then cleared it again. “It’s not something I can tell you over the phone,” he said. “Really. If you need to finish work for the day, it can wait.” He said it as if he couldn’t hear Rocky grabbing his keys—he must not have been in the workshop today. Otherwise he might have had a harder time leaving the office.
“I’ll be home as soon as I can,” Rocky promised. “I love you, Grace, okay? Whatever it is, it’ll be fine.”
“I love you too, Rocky,” Grace said. He heard Rocky hang up, shouting something to his employees—Rocky had his own engineering firm, they were small, but mighty, and mostly worked on small movie projects.
He tried to keep himself busy for the next half hour that it took Rocky to drive home, praying that traffic wasn’t bad. He felt ready to burst with the information. It was a sacred knowledge and he didn’t dare speak it aloud in fear that it might break something. Rocky had to be the first one to hear it. Not even his own ears were fit.
There was nothing to clean, nothing to organize—it was summer, so there were no classes. Grace had no papers to grade. No parents to email or call, no parent-teacher conferences or training days. It was just him and their small, two-bedroom home in San Francisco. Rocky’s grandparents had bought it before his parents had been born and had directly willed it to him, bypassing his parents completely.
The door slammed as Rocky spilled into the house, tossing his jacket on the couch. He immediately crossed the living room to gather Grace into his arms. Grace let himself relax as his much shorter alpha began to scent him heavily. Rocky was so handsome, Grace took a moment to appreciate his luck in pulling him.
“What’s wrong?” Rocky demanded.
“You forgot to take your shoes off,” Grace murmured. He shut his eyes and took in the deep, rich scent that belonged to Rocky. He smelled like leather and something burnt and metallic.
“Is that important right now?” Rocky asked. He cupped Grace’s face and his thumbs brushed at tears that Grace didn’t know were rolling down his cheeks. “What is it? Did something happen?”
Grace choked out his answer, “I need you to see something,” he said. “But you need to take your shoes off.” He opened his eyes and smiled. He went to brush away his tears himself but Rocky refused to let go of his face. “It’s good. It’s really good news, Rocky.”
Rocky searched his face before removing his hands. “I’ll take off my shoes,” he said; he did a quick jog back to the front door and pulled off his shoes. Then he was back to Grace, who took his hand and led him into the kitchen.
“Notice anything?” Grace asked, pointedly looking at the kitchen table. Rocky followed his gaze and inhaled sharply. “It’s positive,” he whispered.
“That’s a pregnancy test,” Rocky said. “Grace, starlight, Ryland, that’s a pregnancy test. You’re telling me you’re pregnant?”
Grace nodded. “I’m pregnant. I went through four of them before calling. I know we’ll need to see a doctor to confirm and there are ultrasounds to do, but I’m pregnant, Rocky. There’s a pup in there.”
Rocky dragged Grace into a kiss, cupping his face once more. “We have so much to do.” He stood up straight. “I need to babyproof the house,” he said, as if that was the most important thing on the list. “We need to paint the nursery, buy a crib, a changing table, we need to—”
“Rocky, the baby isn’t even the size of my fingernail yet,” Grace teased, though seeing his alpha so excited about their pup had him giddy. “All of that can wait. I’ll call my OBYGN in the morning. I’ll try and get an appointment on your next day off.”
“I can’t believe you’re pregnant,” Rocky said.
“Are you saying you don’t know how babies are made?” Grace asked with a cocked eyebrow. “All those nights together, planning on having a pup, and my alpha didn’t realize how we were going to do it?”
Rocky laughed and wrapped him into a hug. “Perhaps you could show me, once more, how pups are made?”
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