Chronos stared at the result indicator.

Then he rushed again and vomited. After he flushed, he rinsed his mouth at the sink and stared at his face in the mirror.

Pale. Eyes sunk a little too deep. Ringed shadows that couldn’t be hidden by a concealer.

His idol face is cracking; this won’t do.

Chronos turned on his light brain and turned on the music to calm down. Following the music were a bunch of notifications that came like a heartbeat.

But he didn’t look at it for now.

Instead, he reached for the home pregnancy detection kit and took the test again.

And just as quickly as the previous one, the results came in no time.

Still, positive.

Chronos took a step back, dizzy, until his back met the wall. His knees trembled and gave out before he realized. His legs splayed in front of him while his back was pressed flat against the wall.

He was really pregnant.

Really, really pregnant.

But—

"You absolute—" His voice cracked.

He pressed the back of his hand against his mouth and shut his eyes. The sting behind his lids was fury and terror and something unbearably tender, all tangled up in the same knot.

A baby.

Our baby.

Growing inside of him while the galaxy tore itself apart outside.

But the timing was, really—

Chronos couldn’t really bear to think about it. With the war secretly ongoing, any variable could be used.

For example, a family, a baby.

Without Grayson in the military, his chances of being deployed were low. But with Xavier as a General, it was unknown whether he would force everyone who had fought in the front line to fight again.

His concerns were just doubling as he listed them down.

He sat on the floor of a bathroom, staring at the positive pregnancy test.

Chronos let out a laugh.

It was the wrong kind—thin, brittle, edged with something manic and vulnerable at the same time. The kind of laugh that happened when the absurdity of a situation surpassed his rational emotions.

He pressed his palm flat against his still-flat stomach.

"You really couldn’t have picked a worse time," he murmured. His voice was low, meant only for the silence and the thing inside him that was too small to hear. "You know that, right?"

The test result blurred in his peripheral vision. He set it down on the tile beside him and leaned his head back against the wall.

The baby?

He wanted it, and that much wasn’t complicated.

But wanting didn’t make it safe.

Chronos was scentless ever since he came back from a kidnapping as a baby. His omega secondary gland was technically there and complete, but you just couldn’t smell the pheromones it excretes.

Not to mention that even when he got marked, his partner, Pete, couldn’t smell it either, but he could still feel their bond. They had been so careful in their lovemaking. Because while he was scentless, he didn’t have heats either, making early pregnancy signs thrown off the bus.

He thought that was the best function that he had ever had as an advantage to most omegas in this world. He was proud to escape those excruciating days of longing and needing my alpha.

But now, he felt that he had been wrong.

Searching for the need to properly develop a baby in the womb of an omega male, it needed both parents’ pheromones.

Without them—

Chronos closed his eyes tightly and bit his lips hard until they bled.

He had done his research. He had done so obsessively. In fact, he had done it during the long years he had spent hunting for a cure to his own condition.

The studies were sparse and clinical, but the conclusion was consistent: pheromone-deficient pregnancies carried a highly elevated risk. Developmental anomalies. Premature onset of susceptible periods. Sensory deficits. Neural development, pheromonal development.

Pheromones weren’t just a social signal; they were a developmental scaffold. The body of the mother would compensate, and if there was a father, it would definitely help a lot. But in the end, it was like building a house without a cornerstone.

The structure held, sometimes—but the cracks would eventually show.

Chronos slammed his clenched knuckles on the wall tile, making a huge bruise appear.

He had been so close, so goddamn close to finding someone who might hold the key to his cure.

A lead that had emerged from years of careful, painstaking investigation into rare genetic constitutions. There was a clue buried in old pheromone gene bank records and buried deeper still under layers of institutional secrecy.

Another few weeks—maybe a month—and he might have had it.

But this body wouldn’t be able to wait for it. Maybe this baby would even turn out to be a variable to the only cure he had.

Chronos dragged his hands down his face.

But if he really wanted to keep it, as a scentless omega—could someone with a scentless pheromone really provide pheromones to his child? Was it really possible?

"One month," he said to the empty room, his jaw was tight on the edges.

"After the pregnancy stabilizes. If you survive a month—" He choked over the word, "I’ll tell Pete, your father."

A month was long enough for the fetus—god knows how many weeks now—to safely say that it’s okay to keep. Long enough for him to figure out what the hell he was going to do.

It was also long enough to be cruel—to himself, to the baby, to Pete.

Cruel, but necessary.

Chronos had spent his whole life choosing necessary over kind.

One more month wouldn’t kill him.

Probably.

He pulled himself off the floor, splashed cold water on his face, and tucked the pregnancy test kit back to its original position. Then, walked back to the living room, settled onto the couch, and pulled the blanket from the armrest over his legs.

His hand rested, just for a moment, against his stomach.

Then Chronos turned on his light brain and opened a secondary display. He started reading about prenatal nutrition because if he was going to do this, he was going to do it right.

But the holographic display where the group chat was, as expected, a disaster zone filled with panic, speculation, and barely-controlled rage.

Bryan was requesting status reports everywhere

Thiago was demanding someone explain. It seemed that the military was using its power without a single early warning to places that weren’t even affected.

Julius had gone silent three messages back, which meant he was already moving.

Ciel was typing in fragments—furious, unfinished, half-coherent. Ranting about why he was becoming busier when the weekends were just around the corner.

Chronos scrolled past all of it.

He wasn’t looking for any of them.

He was looking for one name only.

Helena.

Helena Popova hadn’t posted a single message. Not even a check-in or a reaction.

Nothing.

Chronos stared at the group chat as it scrolled up, with new chats coming.

Unusual but nothing that surprising.

But still... we never know.