Little Paws

chapter 3

Theo left the clinic with a small print out of the ultrasound, the baby circled in red ink. He had no clue what to think, or what to do.

He was teenage boy living out of his truck. He didn't have a job or any other source of income. He had no place to raise a child. He had no clue if the child would even live.

"After the dread doctors were killed I looked through their lab. I found multiple journals on the experiments they've done. I was looking for an answer to why the male chimeras were carrying fetuses." Deaton led him to his office and picked a book off his shelf. "From what I can gather, they didn't care which gender the chimera was, they just wanted to produce more chimeras. They gave the males a type of uterus, and would plant a fertilized embryo inside. Each one died off when the chimera did." 

Theo knew some of this, he didn't know they tried with males. He only knew that one female came close but her body killed the baby when it started taking nutrients from her. Her healing thought it was a parasite. The dread doctors kept trying but the chimeras kept dying before they could produce a child.

"You were the only chimera to live. They started to experiment on you. From what I've read they gave you a uterus as well, around the time you were 16." Theo remembers them saying they were gonna give him the ability to full shift, like a werecoyote. They never told him about giving him a uterus. "They had tried multiple times over the next year to get an embryo to take. Your body kept killing them off. From the looks of it, they tried nearly 200 times." Theo felt sick. He had been used as a living breathing incubator. "It never worked."

Theo looked at the book to see that the dread doctors stopped putting embryos in him and that's when they came to Beacon Hills and started making chimeras again. "They never stopped trying to figure it out. One doctor had came up with a theory. He proposed that if you were to get pregnant naturally from a supernatural creature, the fetus would live. They never got the chance to try it." Theo felt sick, his stomach twisting.

"So you're saying since this was naturally done, this baby could live. I could be a father." Deaton nodded with a small smile.

"That's if you want to Theo. From everything I've read, I'm confident I could remove the fetus and your uterus." Deaton explained.

Theo growled at the doctor. "I will not take another life. Never again."

Deaton gave him some more information on his pregnancy. According to the dread doctors. His pregnancy would last just a bit longer than that of a normal dog's. Around 11 weeks. He was already at 3 weeks so he didn't have long. At five and a half weeks they would know if the baby would live. Until then he was on a strict diet he couldn't afford, he wasn't allowed to full shift, and he was told to avoid fighting.

Theo got in his truck and went to the store. He had very little money left but him and his child needed to eat. He grabbed what he could afford, which wasn't a lot. When he was done shopping he drove to the preserve. He could make a fire and cook some of the meat.

He had just gotten out of his truck when his phone rang. Scott was calling him. "What do yo want Scott?" Theo snapped when he answered.

"Pack meeting." Scott told him to meet at Lydia's house before hanging up. Theo got back in his truck and drove off, hunger pains pushed aside for the moment.

When the entire pack was gathered in Lydia's living room Scott stood up and started talking. "There's a group of hunters gathering just outside the city limits. Kelvera and I tracked them as far as we could but they have mountain ash around their base. We couldn't get close enough to know just where they are, or how many there are." Everyone quickly looked at Theo. He knew what they wanted but he would be putting himself at risk. His child at risk.