[Cassian’s POV]

The waiting is its own kind of torture.

I’ve counted the ceiling tiles three times. I’ve memorized the pattern of cracks in the linoleum floor. I’ve watched Adrian pace the same ten feet over and over until I thought he might wear a groove into the ground.

Sophie is somewhere behind those doors, and I can’t reach her.

When the doctor finally appears, clipboard in hand, expression carefully neutral, both Adrian and I are on our feet before he finishes saying her name.

“Family?” the doctor asks, looking between the three of us. “Anyone who can make decisions or receive medical information?”

“I’m her partner,” Adrian says at the exact same moment I say, “I’m with her.”

Our voices collide, overlap, cancel each other out.

“No,” Cleo cuts in sharply. “I’m her emergency contact.”

The doctor’s eyebrows lift slightly, but to his credit, he doesn’t ask for clarification.

“Okay,” he says carefully. “Why don’t all of you step over here.”

We move as a fractured unit, following him toward a quieter corner of the hallway. I can feel Adrian’s tension radiating off him in waves.

“What’s going on?” Adrian demands. “Is she conscious?”

“She’s stable,” the doctor says, raising a placating palm. “She lost consciousness due to a combination of dehydration, malnutrition, and acute stress. We’ve stabilized her vitals and she’s responding.”

“You said stable,” I repeat, measuring each syllable. “That implies there’s more.”

The doctor meets my gaze. I see the careful consideration of someone about to deliver information that will change everything.

“There is,” he confirms. “Before I continue, I need to understand the dynamic here.”

Cleo lets out a humorless laugh. “Good luck with that.”

I step forward half a pace. “We’re not trying to fight. We just need to know what she needs.”

The doctor nods. “All right. Here’s what we know.”

The hallway seems to shrink. Even the ambient noise fades.

“She’s approximately six weeks pregnant.”

The words hit like a physical blow.

For a moment, I don’t process them. They hang in the air, abstract and impossible. Then they land, all at once, and the ground shifts beneath my feet.

Pregnant.

Adrian’s breath leaves him in a sharp, broken sound. “Pregnant,” he repeats, like the word is foreign.

I don’t speak. I can’t. A thousand thoughts collide—dates, timelines, possibilities—and none of them know how to come out first.

Cleo closes her eyes for a moment, like she’s been punched through the chest. When she opens them again, they’re blazing. “I told you this would happen,” she says—not to the doctor, not to us, but to the universe itself.

She knew. The realization hits me with nauseating clarity. She’s known this whole time.

The doctor continues, calm and clinical. “She’s severely dehydrated and malnourished. Her stress markers are dangerously high. Cortisol levels like this can pose serious risks, both to her and the pregnancy.”

Adrian takes a step back. “She didn’t say anything.”

Cleo presses her lips together, then lets the truth spill. “She doesn’t know which one of you is the father. She’s been carrying that alone for weeks, terrified that telling you would tear you apart. She thought disappearing was the only way to protect everyone.”

Silence.

Complete, devastating silence.

The doctor watches us, his professional detachment thinning. “That level of stress aligns with what we’re seeing clinically. Fear, isolation, prolonged anxiety—these are not minor contributors.”

Adrian drags a hand down his face, fingers shaking. “She was alone. She was carrying this alone.”

I nod once, anchoring myself in the only certainty I have left. “And she shouldn’t have been.”

The doctor steps back. “We’ll update you as she wakes. For now, she’s alive. She’s stable. But she’s been pushed too far.”

Pushed too far. By circumstances. By fear. By us.

I lower myself into one of the chairs. Adrian takes a spot beside me.

Cleo watches us both, her expression unreadable.

“If you hurt her again,” she says quietly, “I will destroy you. Both of you.”

I don’t argue. I just nod, accepting the threat as the promise it is.

Because right now, Sophie is alive. Sophie is pregnant. And Sophie was willing to disappear rather than trust us with the truth.

Whatever happens next, that’s on us to fix.