Chapter 174: I thought wrong

​"Listen to me very carefully," Vance said, his voice grave. "Standard morning-after pills for Omegas are packed with high-dose synthetic hormones. If you take one on a regular day, sure you’ll be fine. But right now after a forced heat, your body will react terribly. It works like the pills I gave you back then,"

My heart nearly stopped. He means that time where I had diarrhoea and threw up so many times just because I wanted to flush Reid out of my system? That badly?

"...but not as worse since you’re not trying to wash off an Alpha’s claim on you." Vance added and I let out an inward sigh of relief. "Just know you’ll be doubled over with severe cramping, nausea, and a massive drop in stamina for at least a week. You won’t be skating anywhere."

​Reid’s hands twitched on my shoulders, his jaw clenching tight.

​"So what do I do?" I demanded.

​"Because you were on my high-grade synthetic blockers right up until your cycle got overridden by his pheromones, your reproductive lining is already heavily thinned," Vance explained medically. "The chances of a conception taking root during a forced, sudden heat under those conditions are lower than normal, though not impossible. If you want to prevent a pregnancy without ruining your body for the game, I can synthesize a targeted, non-hormonal uterine flusher. It won’t give you the violent hormonal crash of a commercial emergency pill."

A cold sweat broke out across my back as Vance’s explanation echoed in my ears.

​Silence stretched over the line as my mind raced, a sudden, sickening drop hitting the pit of my stomach. Vance was operating on the assumption that my system was still loaded with his high-grade synthetic blockers—that my uterine lining was thinned out and primed to resist conception.

​He didn’t know the truth.

​The truth was, I had run out of those specific blockers two full weeks ago. Because Reid’s heavy, suffocating pine scent had been saturating my system—keeping my body placid, regulated, and deceptively in check—I hadn’t panicked and was in top shape. I thought I was safe. At best, I had only been taking my suppressants and heat inhibitors to stave off a full-blown cycle.

​In my head, it made complete sense: if I was blocking a heat, I was blocking something similar to ovulation. It was supposed to work like a female’s birth control, shutting down the entire cycle at the source.

​Well, it seems I thought wrong.

​The realization crashed over me like a tidal wave of ice water. The suppressants I was taking were designed to hide pheromones and suppress behavioral heat symptoms, not completely freeze reproductive function during a violent heat triggered by a bonded Alpha’s rut.

Reid had knotted me repeatedly over twenty-four hours, pouring his instincts into my body while my guard was completely down. Without Vance’s heavy blockers thinned-out safety net, my body hadn’t been protected at all.

​"Kain?" Vance’s lazy voice broke through my mounting panic over the speaker. "You still there?"

​My grip on the phone tightened until my knuckles turned white. My eyes flicked up to Reid, who was watching my expression change with a sudden, hawkish intensity, his brow furrowing as he felt the sudden spike of sharp, cold dread in my scent.

​"Vance..." I choked out, my raspy voice dropping into a tight, barely audible whisper as I turned slightly away from Reid. "What... What if the blockers weren’t in my system? What if I ran out two weeks ago, and only had the suppressants in my blood when the rut hit?"

​The silence on the other end of the line turned dead and suffocating.

​"Kain," Vance said, his voice instantly dropping all casualness, turning dead serious. "Tell me you’re joking."

​"I’m not," I breathed, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

​Vance let out a sharp, harsh curse over the line. "Fuck! The suppressants do nothing against an Alpha in rut, Kain! An Alpha’s rut pheromones completely flush out standard suppressants within minutes! If you didn’t have my high-grade blockers thinned-out baseline, your body reacted to his rut by immediately going into hyper-ovulation. Your system was wide open."

​My breath hitched violently in my chest.

​"Then the flusher—"

​"The non-hormonal flusher won’t be enough if fertilization already happened under those conditions," Vance interrupted grimly. "If your body went into hyper-ovulation during a forced heat, taking a mild flusher is a gamble. The only guaranteed way to stop a conception right now is the heavy commercial emergency pill—the hormonal bomb."

​I stared blankly at the wall, the world tilting beneath my feet.

​A heavy, commercial emergency pill meant violent cramping, a massive hormonal crash, severe fatigue, and being completely sidelined for a week. It meant missing Game 2. It meant giving up the ice right in the middle of the semifinals.

​Beside the couch, Reid shifted, his large hands clamping onto my knees with a firm, grounding pressure. He could hear Vance’s voice leaking through the speaker, and the sudden, fierce storm of territorial concern in his grey eyes was blinding.

​"Kain," Reid rasped, his voice low, protective, and dangerous. "What is he saying?"

My mind spun into a terrifying tailspin. The options laid out before me were a brutal, unforgiving crossroad, and both paths felt like a guaranteed execution of everything I had built.

​Take the heavy, commercial emergency pill, endure the violent hormonal crash, suffer through crippling cramps, and miss Game 2—essentially being absent from the game and potentially handing the Vipers our spot in the finals. And me missing the game could immediately raise red flags for Coach Devin.

And then there was the option to skip the pill, rely on Vance’s mild flusher, step onto the ice in four days, and gamble on the very real, terrifying possibility that I was carrying a child in the middle of a playoff run. A child that could potentially ruin my career.

​"Kain," Reid repeated, his voice dropping into a low, commanding register that vibrated against my knees.

He reached up, gently taking the phone from my trembling, paralyzed hand and holding it to his own ear. "Vance, right? This is Kain’s Alpha." He didn’t say his name or his affiliation as if to keep some sort of secrecy that wasn’t relevant to be exposed. "What are the exact risks if he doesn’t take the heavy pill?"