LOCKE - Part One

LOCKE - PART ONE

This scene and the ones that follow are what's going on back at the club while Ranger and Viktor are on Satsuma Island. I've had SO MANY questions about this. Trigger warning: fragile pregnancy

I thought I'd have more time to ease Orla into the possibility that she might be pregnant, but this life…it was fuckin' hard. Every moment I took to catch a breath, something else happened to snatch it away.

Willow breezed into the garage and swiped Orla's bag from the workbench.

I glanced up from the tyre I was fitting to a hog, trying to make myself useful while Orla was in her regular business meeting with brothers cleverer than me. "Where are you going with that?"

"The chapel." Willow stage-whispered the words, mindful of River and Mateo nearby, and shot me a shut up glare. "Orla got her period."

I dropped the tyre. It bounced on the floor as I surged upright and seized Willow's arm, propelling her to the relative privacy of the garage door. "What do you mean, she got her period?"

Willow frowned. "What do you think I mean? She messaged me that her stomach hurts and there's blood. Get with the program or just date men?—"

My feet didn't touch the floor. I grabbed the bag, left Willow hanging, and dashed across the yard, barging into the chapel without giving a fuck what I was interrupting.

But I found Orla alone, hunched in Cam's seat, rubbing her stomach.

She gave me a wan smile. "You brought my bag? You fucking star. I think I need the good drugs."

I abandoned the bag on the table and knelt in front of her, hands on her knees. "Queenie, I need to ask you something."

Orla's frown matched Willow's, but without the innocence of youth, already preparing for battle. "What is it? Are you okay?"

"When was your last period?"

"What?"

"Think about it."

Edged confusion sharpened Orla's dark gaze, but she humoured me, reaching for her phone to track the days she marked on the calendar when life wasn't so feral she forgot. "February, I think?"

"Is that normal for you? To have so many weeks between cycles?"

"Why are you so interested in my cycle?"

"Because I thought your endo made you bleed more , not less, and I can't remember the last time you had your period."

"Yes, but…" Orla's frown deepened, her keen mind working, taking a deeper look at something she hadn't stopped to think about while other people had been at the forefront of her mind all this time. "Sometimes I bleed every three weeks. I've just been too busy to notice I haven't. Fuck, that's weird. The doom womb usually rules my life. Oh, god , I'm probably in for the worst period I've ever had if it's been stacking up all this time."

"You're bleeding heavily now?"

"No, just spotting with some cramps—why are you looking at me like that?"

Urgency stole any hope I had of dropping this bomb with any tact. "Orls, you might be pregnant."

"Fuck off." Orla pushed me away before my words truly hit, already disregarding the possibility, blocking it out, protecting herself from the grief she'd spent years accepting was likely permanent.

And the thing was, she might've been right. Everything I'd seen from her in the past few weeks—that Folk had seen, Saint and Alexei, it might not've been real. But until I knew that for sure, I had to believe it could be something else. Something she'd wanted her whole life and deserved as much as Nash did.

"Orls." I tried again. "You've skipped a period, your tits are massive, and you've been puking every day this week for no good reason. I know you don't want to get your hopes up, but you need to consider it, if only for as long as it takes you to piss on a fuckin' stick."

"But…" Orla squeezed her eyes shut. Opened them again. "Locke, I'm bleeding."

"I know." I rose, taking her with me. "So we're going to go to A&E, okay? To get you checked out. They'll do a rapid test there and scan you if they need to. And then you'll know for sure."

"That even if I am, I'm already losing it?"

Orla spoke more softly than I had ever known her to do, even when Nash had been so battered in his hospital bed. But I heard every rasp of fear and pain in her voice, and it cut me deeper than Priest and his shitastic blade ever had.

"Don't think about that." I pulled her into a brief embrace. "Right now, you're a woman who's missed her period. That's it. Don't worry about anything else until it happens."

Wise words in theory. But completely fuckin' impractical as I hustled Orla into her car and away from the compound.

My brain imploded on the way to the hospital. The scent of phantom blood invaded my senses and every grimace and twitch from the passenger seat sent my worst fears into overdrive. I'd lost a baby. I knew how it felt, to love this tiny, grainy thing I'd only seen on a screen until?—

Stop.

Splitting my heart in two, I pushed all thoughts of Wren aside and focused on driving. On how I was going to get Nash to Orla's side without giving him a heart attack.

He's with Folk .

Thank fuck. If there was one brother I could convey this to without worrying about how they'd react, it was him.

The hospital was half an hour from the compound. We spoke little as I drove until I pulled into the car park and eased into a space.

Orla reached for me. "It's hurts more because I'm scared, right?"

"Yeah."

"And it's probably a shitty period anyway…my cycle got fucked up because of Nash and Cam. Stress. We didn't eat that whole week Nash was in hospital. That could be it…"

She trailed off as a cramp twisted her belly, and I swear to god, I'd never seen her so fuckin' pale, even during the long hours we'd endured not knowing if Nash had survived one of the worst nights of our lives.

I waited for it to pass. Then I took her hands. "Come on. Let's get you inside."