Pregnant With Alpha’s Genius Twins

#Chapter 210 – Rest and Restitution

Beta Stephen drives us for hours that day, long into the night. The charms of the RV even wear off for the boys after a few hours, and they sit quietly at the table, playing a board game on the table. As I look at it, I frown in confusion to see that they’re using pieces from chess, checkers, and parcheesi on a magnetic table.

Another game of their own devising, I guess. My frown turns into a smirk.

Victor and I sit across the room from them on the little lounge built there, with his back up against the padded wall and me leaning against his chest, his arms wrapped against me.

The day has been harder than I thought it would be.

Not hard in the way that it is for the boys – they struggle against the boredom. I’ve had years of learning how to do that. But physically, I am starting to feel the strain of whatever ceremony Victor and I started.

Yesterday, this morning, it had been easier to ignore. It had been a tiredness of the limbs, then, a shortness of breath that I could put behind me and focus on tasks. But now, I feel it dragging at me from inside.

Off and on, I feel Victor doze behind me, his breath falling into a steadier, slower rhythm, his head drifting down to rest on mine. It makes sense to me, really, that I’m still stronger than him, even though we share a life force now – whatever that is.

His body was ravaged by illness before we performed that ceremony. Mine was fresh, strong. I had more to work with from the beginning. So if I’m starting to feel dragged down, having given him half of my strength and taken on half his weakness…

Well. It does make me worried to wonder what happens if our mutual weakness continues at this pace. I can’t stop thinking about it as I stare out the window and watch the yellow and white lines of the highway flick by. Even as I carry hope, I carry my worry alongside it.

After a few hours, Stephen surprises me by slowing down and pulling off the highway. I blink, waking myself from a little daze – perhaps it was a sort of waking nap? – and turn towards him in the front seat. I feel Victor react to the change in pace as well, waking from his own slumber.

Stephen looks at us in the rearview mirror and gives us an apologetic grimace.

“I’m sorry,” he says to us. “It’s nearly midnight, and I’m starting to get bleary. I don’t want to keep driving if it’s dangerous.”

“Of course,” Victor says, sitting up straighter behind me. “You shouldn’t push yourself, Stephen.”

with him in the rearview mirror, I know he knows it too. Perhaps we should have brought a second Beta to drive when Stephen cannot. It feels, in so many ways, like there’s not a minute

boys, slumped against each other at the

kind of rest that doesn’t come

to cause the twins to shake out of their nap.

shoulder. Victor moves to the front of the RV to consult with him as the boys get up, Ian heading for the bathroom. Alvin just lays

packed us a lot of heat-and-eat food,

one missed call, but my stomach sinks to see

Bridgette.

is on my screen. I feel a great deal of guilt, then, realizing that I let the rest of my life – you know, my imminent death and the

Stephen pulls into the campground and parks our RV in our secluded little woodland spot, I step out

on the fourth or

my voice heavy with my guilt. “I’m so sorry – I owed you a call long before this

that her voice does not carry its usual carelessness. “No,

hair behind my ears. There’s so, so much more I want to ask

at Annabeth’s,” Bridgette says, her voice a little more cheerful now. “She’s so nice, actually.” She laughs a little. “She’s kind of like a mom – she’s really been fussing over me. And I can’t

a genuine smile forming itself on my

“I’m not…used to people

wasn’t true, Bridge,” I say, my heart in my throat. This poor girl, treated so roughly, when she has such a sweet

you already know,” Bridgette says in a rush. “I mean

my lip, wondering what the right response to that is.

fair for me to write my feelings onto my

thinks it over. “I’m just so…confused. And I feel so stupid. Because everyone – Rafe, and the doctor – they were just telling me in such certain terms how pregnant I was, and how it was going to be

the people you love, and the professionals you trust,