[Cassian’s POV]

The email arrives on day seven.

The afternoon is quiet, deceptively peaceful. Winter sunlight streams through the windows, casting pale rectangles on the hardwood floor. The apartment has that hushed quality that only exists when a baby is sleeping—a fragile stillness that feels borrowed, temporary, liable to shatter at any moment. Outside, the city continues its endless bustle, but in here, time seems suspended.

I’m the one who sees it first—checking my phone during Maggie’s afternoon nap, scrolling absently through messages while Adrian and Sophie catch up on sleep in the other room. The mundane act of checking email feels almost sacrilegious given what we’ve been waiting for, like tempting fate with casual indifference. Then I see it. The subject line is clinical: “Your DNA Test Results Are Ready.”

My heart stops. Then starts again, pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat.

The words on the screen blur, then sharpen, then blur again as my brain struggles to process what I’m seeing. Seven days of waiting, of anxiety, of carefully managed emotions—and now the answer is here, contained in pixels and code, waiting to be released. The phone suddenly feels impossibly heavy in my hand, as if it’s gained the physical weight of everything it contains.

I sit with the phone in my hand for a full minute, staring at the unopened email. The screen dims once, and I tap it back to life, unable to look away but equally unable to act. Inside that message is an answer that’s been hovering over our family since before Maggie was born. An answer that might change nothing—or might change everything, depending on how we handle it. The uncertainty we’ve been living with could end in seconds, replaced by a truth we can never un-know.

I should wake Adrian and Sophie. We agreed to open this together.

But I find I can’t move. The email sits there, glowing on my screen like a portal to another dimension, and I’m paralyzed by the magnitude of what it contains. My analytical mind—the part of me that thrives on data and certainty—screams to open it, to finally know. But something deeper holds me back, some instinct that understands there’s no going back once the seal is broken.

“Cassian?”

Adrian’s voice, rough with sleep, comes from the doorway. I didn’t hear him approach—my focus on the screen so complete that the world beyond it ceased to exist. He takes one look at my face and goes pale, the color draining from his cheeks as understanding dawns.

“Is that—?”

“The results. They’re here.”

The words fall between us like stones into still water, sending ripples through the air itself. I watch Adrian’s expression cycle through a dozen emotions in the span of a heartbeat—fear, hope, dread, longing—before settling into something that looks like terrified determination.

He crosses the room in three quick strides, sinking onto the couch beside me. The cushions shift under his weight, and I’m suddenly aware of every physical sensation—the texture of the fabric beneath my fingers, the slight chill of the afternoon air, the distant hum of the refrigerator. Adrian’s eyes fix on my phone screen with an intensity that’s almost frightening, as if he could divine the contents through sheer force of will.

“Have you opened it?”

“No. I was waiting. We said we’d do this together.”

“Sophie’s still sleeping.”

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