The moment the pregnancy test showed two clear red lines, time seemed to freeze. I stood under the bathroom light, fingertips icy, barely able to hold the small plastic stick. A buzzing filled my ears, drowning out all sound. The world shrank to nothing but those two glaring lines—like a verdict, or… an absurd joke.
The first wave that struck was overwhelming fear, mixed with a surreal sense of dislocation. How could this be…?
That chaotic night in heat, the violence, and the strong suppressant I swallowed immediately afterward—all defenses now seemed like a pale joke in the face of this result.
At this moment? When my relationship with her was at its most fractured, when hatred was deepest, when I was driving her into desperation with every means, when we had just sealed that humiliating marriage?
This was no gift of life. It was fate's malicious trick. The embodiment of a night I could not bear to recall, the shameful scar carved into my body by that violent bond. A child carrying both her blood and mine—at the very moment I wished we could perish together.
The absurdity nearly made me laugh, but my lips were too heavy to move. Fear coiled like icy vines around my heart, my bones, my limbs. This child's arrival was not hope—it was a shackle dragging me into a deeper, more helpless abyss.
Yet within that cold terror, something entirely different stirred—an Omega instinct, faint but stubborn, like a fragile flame rising quietly. It was… life. A separate, independent life, now forming inside me.
No matter how sordid the beginning, no matter how twisted the parents' bond, the child itself was pure, innocent.
My hand moved on its own, gently covering my still-flat abdomen. Something seemed to be changing there. A strange, delicate connection was silently forming.
This instinctive tenderness and protective urge clashed violently with my rational fear and rejection, nearly tearing me apart.
What should I do?
Keep the child? That would mean carrying forever the most disgraceful link between Emma and me. It would mean I might never escape that wound, that I would bear alone the responsibility of raising this child—while their existence would constantly remind me of how they came to be. Worse, would this soften me? Would it create a foolish, unnecessary bond to the Alpha who caused all this?
Abandon the child? The thought barely surfaced before Omega instinct struck it down with sharp pain and deeper terror. No matter how much I hated the biological father who gave half the genes, the child was innocent. To extinguish a life already begun—I could not.
Hatred and the first stirrings of fatherhood waged a brutal war inside me. Each force carried the power to destroy, dragging me toward different abysses.
I don't know how long I stood in the bathroom, until my legs went numb and a faint warmth returned to my fingertips.
I lifted my head, staring at the pale face in the mirror, eyes growing cold and resolute. A decision, after the knife-twisting struggle, slowly settled.
The child is mine. Mine alone.
From the moment I knew of his existence, he belonged only to me. The Alpha who gave half the genes but no responsibility—he has nothing to do with this.
I will not use the child to mend anything, nor allow him to become a bargaining chip in our twisted bond. He is my child, the only pure thing I found amid ruins and hatred.
I will protect him—with everything I have.
As for Emma… she is unworthy to know, unworthy to have. I will build a wall of ice, keeping her forever outside this secret. This is my battlefield, my choice, my child.
When I walked out of the bathroom, burying shock, fear, struggle, and final resolve beneath a mask of calm, I knew something had changed irrevocably.
My hatred for Emma, because of this life, grew more complex—and more absolute. Hatred that made me more determined to guard this child, never letting him suffer a trace of harm from her.
This child is the thorned flower I found in the dark—the only bloom I can touch, painful yet real. He is my redemption, and my most silent, most steadfast retaliation against the past.
From now on, what I fight for is no longer only revenge. It is the instinct and resolve of a father, protecting his child.