Pregnant With Alpha’s Genius Twins

I smile at my sweet boy in the dark, turning to press a kiss to his hand.

“How did you get to be so sweet,” I murmur to him. “Is it all that chocolate I ate when I was pregnant?”

Quietly, I feel him nod his head on the pillow next to me. “Yes,” he says. “Which is good reason for you

to give me more chocolate. Like, a lot more. Or else I will turn nasty and cruel.”

I laugh a little, and I cherish the sound, the feeling. Then, I let out a big breath and let myself relax.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow, I would apologize to Victor, try to close that door.

Because he’s right – it doesn’t really matter. It can’t.

Tomorrow, we’ll be back to us.

And so I drift back to seep, feeling my son’s steady breathing next to me. Hearing Victor and Ian’s light

snores across the tent. It’s a lullaby I could sleep to every night, for the rest of my life, and never grow

sick of it.

As I drift off to sleep myself, I feel a low chill come over me. Starting at my feet and slowly rising over

me. But still, it’s not bad. I just snuggle deeper into my blankets.

My dreams that night are…odd.

I dream of us, in the tent. Which is strange because I hardly ever dream of myself in the present.

Usually I’m in my childhood home, or in the woods behind our house, or just somewhere else entirely.

But tonight – damn, but it’s a vivid dream. The dream world around me, for all purposes, looks precisely

like the tent which I had set up only a few hours before. Except, it’s light with a bright golden light, like

noon sun. And filled with fog, like we’re sitting in clouds.

Not a breath of me is frightened, though. Instead, I stand in the middle of the tent, turning slowly around

in the fog, the smoke of it turning and twisting as I run my fingers through it.

As I look around, I realize that I’m alone in here – no Victor, no boys. Just me in my dream tonight.

I turn to the open door of the tent, then, and step outside.

There’s no sky, at least none that I can see. Instead, the white trunks of the birch trees – had they been

birch yesterday? – stretch high into the air, disappearing into a blank whiteness when they get too high

to see the tops.

Over the ground and between the trees stretches more of that fog, looking for anything like a billowing

white sea. My eyes catch on a figure, then, standing a short distance away on a rock in the middle of

that foggy sea, laughing.

“Mama!” Alvin calls, waving his hands to me. I smile and head his way.

“Hello, boy,” I say, looking up at him on his rock. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” he asks, smiling down at me. “This is my dream, after all.”

“Lies,” I say, laughing and narrowing my eyes jokingly at him. “You are a figment of my imagination.

After all, you’re way cuter than my real son.”

“No,” he says simply, climbing down from the boulder and coming over to me, wading through the

chest-high fog. “I am precisely just as cute.”

“Okay,” I say, laughing and looking around, taking his hand. “What should we do?”

“Explore!” he says, eagerly pulling at my hand. I smile and follow him, listening to my little boy chatter

as we move through the woods. He tells me pretty much every thought that comes into his head, I

think, and I’m happy to listen along as he wonders about where this fog came from, and whether fog is

just clouds flying low, and whether it would start raining on his feet.

We go for hours, I think – but then, time I so hard to process in a dream. Hours, days, weeks, minutes

– I don’t really know what has passed.

I come to myself, though, when Alvin stops his talking mid-sentence and comes to a dead stop in front

of me.

“Mama,” he says quietly. “I think we’re here?”

“Where, baby?” I ask, smiling down at him.

“Here,” he says, pointing. I follow the direction of his finger and blink in surprise at a beautiful cottage

standing in front of us. It’s wooden, and brown, with lovely gingerbread trim painted white. Cheerful

paintings of flowers and birds grace the door, the lintel, the windowsills. It’s the sweetest house I think

I’ve ever seen.

“Wow,” I say, leaning down so that my face is level with my son’s, not taking my eyes off of the house.

“Who do you think lives here? A witch?”

“I’ll be Hansel,” he whispers, smiling up at me. “You be Gretel.”

I laugh, then, and I must laugh in real life too because I can hear it in my own ears. My body stirs, then,

and I feel myself jolt awake, as if from a nightmare.

I gasp, my eyes fluttering open, and am surprised to see that my hand is indeed in Alvin’s.

But…I wipe the sleep away, looking around.

And I realize that I’m standing on my feet. And that Alvin is standing next to me, blinking up at me as

well. We both stare at each other in wonder and then, as one, turn our heads in the direction of the

cottage.

It’s there.

But instead of the sweet, charming little house of our memory, it’s a dilapidated old ruin.

“See, mama?” Alvin says quietly, moving closer to me and squeezing my hand. “I told you it was my

dream.”

“Alvin,” I say, looking around and hoping, desperately, that I’ll see Victor and Ian standing there behind

us. But, as I knew it would be, the forest is empty. “Who brought us here.”

“Mama,” he says, shaking his head up at me. “You know the answer to that.”

And, inside of me, I do. I know who brought us here.

She did.

And she left Victor and Ian behind.