novelraw Chapter 581: A Box With All The Answers
Chapter 581: A Box With All The Answers
The first thing she noticed was the tiredness.
And since she wasn’t used to being tired, it took her by surprise. Tasks that were usually simple now required her to take a small pause between them. She found herself standing still in the middle of a room, trying to remember why she had gone there in the first place, her fingers curling and uncurling at her side as the thought slipped away.
The second thing was her stomach.
It never hurt in a clean, obvious way. There was no sharp pain, no nausea she could point to and name. Instead, it felt unsettled, as if there was a fairs wheel running constantly, demanding attention at odd times and for no clear reason.
Even her meals landed differently. Hunger arrived late, left early, and sometimes she just wasn’t hungry at all.
For the most part, all the changes were small, annoying... but nothing to cause concern.
But days stacked into weeks, and the feeling stayed.
Her focus dulled in short bursts, like fog drifting across a clear road and lifting again before she could slow down for it. She caught herself staring at the fire too long, at the wall too long, at nothing at all.
The moments embarrassed her. They felt careless, and she had never been careless with herself.
She knew her body. She tracked injuries by instinct and healed them by discipline. She could tell when something was wrong long before it announced itself, and this thing refused to announce anything.
It just lingered, quiet and persistent, making her feel slightly out of step with herself.
That unsettled her more than anything.
And then, her patience completely disappeared.
Aerenyx noticed the distraction before she said anything, which irritated her further. He watched her too closely when she paused mid-task, when she rubbed her palm absently against her ribs as if grounding herself.
He looked at her confused, but since she didn’t know what was going on, she simply ignored his concerned gaze.
The idea that something inside her had changed without permission sat wrong in her chest. It pressed against old instincts, the ones built on control and awareness and survival. Unknown variables got people killed. They got her killed once, long ago, and she had no intention of letting that happen again.
She needed information, and there was only one place where she knew to get it.
One morning, while everyone else was off doing their thing, and Ashkar had turned his back for a few minutes, she walked out the door and disappeared.
If the world still worked the way it once had, she would have gone to a pharmacy.
She wasn’t aware of where she was going, and by the time she looked up, the old, half destroyed building appeared before she realized she was looking for it.
Shopper’s Drug Mart.
Letting out a soft sigh and only a half formed wish, she pushed the door open.
The hinges protested, metal grinding against metal, the sound echoing into the hollow interior. Cold air rushed out to meet her, carrying the dry, stale scent of dust and old paper. The floor crunched beneath her boots as she stepped inside.
Shelves stood in uneven rows, many collapsed or stripped bare. Packaging littered the ground in brittle fragments. A counter leaned to one side near the back, its surface scattered with debris and a rusted cash drawer.
She moved through the space slowly.
Her eyes tracked labels out of habit, reading words but not finding the ones that she wanted. Pain relief. Cough suppressant. Supplements. The organization still existed in ghost form, categories lingering even when the contents were gone.
She passed beneath a hanging sign.
It swung slightly in the disturbed air, its chain stretched and rusted. One corner had torn free, leaving it angled toward the floor. The lettering was faded but legible.
Family Planning.
Her breath caught before she could stop it.
The words anchored the thought she had been circling for weeks without naming. They pulled it into focus, sharp and unavoidable. Her hand lifted without conscious direction, resting against her stomach as if expecting to feel something different there.
She moved toward the aisle beneath the sign.
The shelves there had been cleared with more intent than the others. Boxes lay torn open on the floor, their contents long gone. Instruction pamphlets littered one corner, paper curled and yellowed.
She crouched and picked one up.
The cover showed a smiling woman holding a small white stick between her fingers. The image felt surreal, disconnected from the cold and ruin pressing in around her. She flipped it open, scanning the steps quickly, her mind sorting information with ruthless efficiency.
Collect sample. Wait. Read result.
Her grip tightened on the pamphlet.
The simplicity of it made something twist in her chest. A month of uncertainty reduced to a few minutes and a pair of lines. The idea felt almost insulting, and yet her pulse picked up at the thought of finally getting an answer, one way or another.
She stood and scanned the aisle again.
Her gaze caught on a half-collapsed endcap near the back. Boxes had spilled from it, crushed beneath debris, their labels obscured by dust. She crossed the distance in a few long strides and dropped to one knee, pulling debris aside and finding one single white and blue box sitting there, pristine in a way that just wasn’t possible in this word.
Sending up a quick thanks, Sera took the box to the back room, finding a bathroom that had clearly seen better days.
Still, beggars can’t be choosers, and she needed to know.
Now.
She cleared a flat space on the counter, pushing aside broken tiles and old paperwork, then set the bright box down with care. Her hands moved steadily as she opened it, following the printed steps without hesitation.
The process felt unreal in its simplicity.
She waited.
Time stretched strangely in that room. Her focus drifted to the crack in the wall above the sink, to the way frost had crept along the edges of the mirror, to the sound of her own breathing. She pressed her fingers to the counter, grounding herself in the cold surface.
When she looked down again, the result had already appeared.
Two pink lines.
They were faint but clear, printed in the same ink as the examples on the box. No ambiguity. No room for interpretation. Her brain catalogued the information automatically, filing it under confirmed facts before her chest tightened enough to demand attention.
She stared at the test, blinking, wondering if it would change it’s response if she looked at it long enough.
But it didn’t.
Her stomach shifted, not in discomfort, but in awareness. The fog she had been moving through snapped into shape, every strange moment suddenly connected by a single, undeniable thread.
The need for blankets and candles, the tiredness, the drifting focus.
All of it was for a reason.
The guys weren’t lying when they laughed at her for nesting.
And now she knew why.
Her hand moved to her abdomen again.
This time, it stayed there.
The weight of it pressed in slowly, not as fear, not as joy, but as certainty. This was real. This was happening. Her body had made a decision alongside her without consulting her plans, her instincts, or her history.
She exhaled once, sharp and controlled.
Then she packed the test back into the box, tucked it into her coat, and left the building.
The walk back blurred around her.
Her feet carried her along familiar paths, but her attention stayed inward as a sense of wonder finally encroached on her panic.
She was going to have a family.
It might not be a conventional family; it might look different from what she had dreamed about when she was still a child... still believing that she was human.
But something deep down inside of her wanted this more than anything else.
She felt the tension in her shoulders vanish as she took in a deep breath, a smile playing on her lips as she almost started to skip through the jungle back to the cabin.
She pushed the door open, the smile still firmly on her face.
Ashkar reached her first. "You’re back," he said, relief threading his voice before concern edged in. "Where did you—"
She raised a hand.
The motion stopped him mid-step. The room quieted in response, the attention of the other three men snapping toward her without her asking for it. She stood there for a moment, wondering if they would be as happy as her.
As excited as her.
Her pulse thudded in her ears.
She had faced worse moments than this. Harder ones. Ones soaked in blood and fire and irreversible loss. This felt different, heavier in a way she couldn’t map yet.
She reached into her coat.
The box came out slowly, set on the table between them. Its shape drew their eyes before the label did. Recognition sparked in more than one face, confusion sharpening into focus as the meaning settled.
Silence stretched out as the men looked at her confused.
Sera rested her hands on the table’s edge, grounding herself again, then lifted her gaze to meet theirs.
"I’m pregnant."