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Dr. North started sending interns out, until we were down to three. That left enough room for Micah and Richard to stand near the head of the bed on the opposite side of the ultrasound stuff. I had only one hand to offer, and Micah got that. Richard ended up gripping my shoulder, but bless him, he didn’t argue about it. Maybe grown-up reality had finally hit us all, and the squabbling would stop. We could hope.

I’d had to take my jacket off, which showed the gun and its shoulder holster. I was using the extra belt I’d kept at Jean-Claude’s, but I was down two, so I’d have to send Nathaniel shopping for more leather belts soon. The lone female intern kept looking at the gun, with quick flashes of her eyes, as if she’d never seen one before.

I had to slide the belt off, and unhook the bottom part of the shoulder rig, so the doctor could snake my jeans down around my hips. The gun didn’t stay put when I lay back on the bed, and I had to use both hands to pull it down. I suppose I could have taken it off and let Micah hold it, but I wanted the gun touching me. It was the only security blanket I had with me, except for Micah and Richard. And since both of them were a little responsible for my being in this mess, well, I was having mixed feelings about clinging to anyone who could even remotely have gotten me pregnant. For the first time, I wondered if a vasectomy on a lycanthrope was an absolutely sure thing.

“This is going to be cold,” Dr. North said, before he squirted clear gel all over my stomach. It was cold, but it gave me something else to occupy my mind, and I was taking it.

“Micah had a vasectomy about three years ago. We’d discounted him as the possible father, but he is a lycanthrope, I mean…”

Dr. North looked at Micah. “Did he just burn the ends or did you put in silver clips?”

“Both, and I was tested about six months ago and came up clean.”

“I’ve heard about using silver clips; are you aware that there’ve been two cases of silver poisoning from vasectomies like yours?”

Micah shook his head. “No, I wasn’t aware.”

“You might let your doctor run a blood test for silver levels, just to be safe.” Dr. North looked down at me, and his face was all soft. Good bedside manner. He held up a chunky piece of plastic. “I’m going to run this over your skin. It doesn’t hurt.”

I nodded. “You explained how it works, doc, just do it.”

He started running the chunky wand over my stomach, spreading the clear gel around as he worked. I watched the little TV screen behind him. He was glancing at it, too. It was gray, white, and black, and fuzzy. If it had been my television at home I’d have been calling the cable company and raising hell. The images seemed to make more sense to him than to me, because he’d glance and move the wand. Then he just started moving the wand without looking at it, looking only at the screen.

The tallest intern said, “Well, damn.” He sounded terribly disappointed.

North didn’t even glance at him. He just said, “Get out.”

“But…”

“Now,” and my kindly doctor sounded as mean and serious as I’d ever heard him. He might have good patient manners, but I was beginning to get the idea that his bedside manner ended by the bedside. Fine with me.

“What’s wrong?” Richard said. He was leaning over me, trying to decipher the images.

I asked. “What are you seeing that I’m not?”

“Nothing’s wrong, Mr. Zeeman,” Dr. North said without looking at him. “And what am I seeing? Nothing.”

“What does that mean, nothing?” Micah asked, and for the first time I heard a thread of tension in his voice. That iron control, cracking just a little.

North turned back to me with a smile. “You are not pregnant.”

I blinked up at him. “But the test…”

He shrugged. “A rare, very rare, false positive. Anita, you’re outside normal parameters on every other test we’ve run, why should we be surprised if a home pregnancy test gets a little confused with your internal chemistry?”

I stared up at him, not willing to believe it yet. “You’re sure. I’m not pregnant.”

He shook his head. He put the wand back on my stomach. He