Chapter 37: Shifted Narrative

I wake up without that bone-deep exhaustion from yesterday.

The fever’s broken.

I can feel it in the way my body doesn’t ache anymore, the way my head is clear instead of foggy and distant.

Mrs. Wen appears sometime mid-morning with fresh clothes and that warm, grandmotherly smile she’s been wearing more often lately.

"How are you feeling, Young Master?" she asks, setting down a tray with tea and light breakfast.

"I think I’m better now. Much better."

"Thank goodness. Mr. Wuchen has arranged for both of you to go to the hospital this morning, just to make sure everything is alright."

Right.

The baby.

Dr. Xi said we needed a proper scan to confirm everything was fine, that checking without equipment wasn’t enough.

I eat the breakfast slowly... congee with preserved egg, exactly what my stomach needs, while Mrs. Wen fusses around the room, laying out clothes, making sure I have everything I need.

By the time I’m dressed and ready, Bael is waiting downstairs.

He looks tired. The shadows under his eyes are darker than yesterday, like he didn’t sleep at all last night.

"Ready?" he asks.

I nod.

The drive to the hospital is quiet, but not uncomfortably so. More like we’re both lost in our own thoughts, navigating around the unspoken tension that’s been there since the chandelier fell.

Bael’s hands are steady on the wheel, his focus on the road, but I catch him glancing at me every few minutes like he’s checking to make sure I’m still there.

The hospital is private, exclusive, the kind of place where discretion is guaranteed and photographers can’t get past the front desk.

Dr. Xi meets us in a consultation room on the third floor, already prepared with the ultrasound equipment.

"Young Master Wuchen," he greets me warmly. "I’m glad to see you looking better. How are you feeling?"

"Fine. The fever’s gone."

"Excellent." He gestures to the examination table. "Let’s take a look at the baby, shall we?"

I lie back on the table, lifting my shirt to expose my stomach. It’s still relatively flat... just the slightest curve that could be mistaken for weight gain if you weren’t looking for it.

Dr. Xi squirts cold gel on my skin and I flinch at the temperature.

"Sorry," he says. "This will just take a moment."

The ultrasound wand presses against my stomach and the screen flickers to life.

I don’t know what I’m looking at at first. Just grainy black and white shapes that don’t mean anything.

Then Dr. Xi adjusts something and points to a small, bean-shaped blob in the center of the screen.

"There," he says quietly. "That’s your baby."

My breath stutters.

It’s so small.

So impossibly small.

"And here..." Dr. Xi adjusts again and suddenly there’s movement on the screen. A rapid pulsing in the center of the blob. "That’s the heartbeat."

The sound fills the room a second later, fast and strong and steady, like a tiny drum echoing through speakers.

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.

I didn’t expect it to sound like that.

So real... so insistent.

Like this tiny thing is fighting to exist, to grow, to become a person.

I don’t realize I’ve gone completely still until my fingers curl slightly against the edge of the bed.

It’s strange.

I’ve been thinking about this baby in terms of consequences, timing, damage control... something to manage, something that complicated everything.

But this...

This doesn’t feel like a complication.

It feels like something separate from all of that. Something that exists on its own, regardless of what I think or what Bael thinks or what the world decides to say about us.

The sound doesn’t slow down. It keeps going, steady and stubborn.

Like it’s not asking for permission to exist.

My throat tightens and I have to blink rapidly to keep my vision clear.

All this time, the baby’s been abstract, a concept, a problem I was dealing with.

But hearing that heartbeat makes it undeniable.

There’s a person growing inside me.

A whole person who didn’t ask for any of this but is here anyway, depending on me to keep them safe.

"Everything looks perfectly healthy," Dr. Xi says, still moving the wand slowly across my stomach. "Good size for gestational age, strong heartbeat, no signs of distress. You were very lucky, Young Master."

I can’t speak, I can only nod.

From the corner of my eye, I see Bael step closer to the screen, his expression unreadable as he stares at that tiny pulsing shape.

"Can you..." I start, then have to clear my throat. "Can you tell what it is yet?"

Dr. Xi smiles. "Too early for that, I’m afraid. We’ll be able to determine gender around eighteen to twenty weeks if you’d like to know."

"Okay..."

He takes some measurements, prints out a few images of the ultrasound, and finally turns off the machine.

"You’re doing very well," he says as I sit up and clean the gel off my stomach. "Just continue to take it easy for the next few days. No strenuous activity, plenty of rest and fluids. And if you experience any cramping, bleeding, or severe pain, call me immediately."

"I will, thank you."

Dr. Xi hands me the printed ultrasound images...small black and white photos of that bean-shaped blob with the strong heartbeat.

My baby.

Still so abstract in some ways, but more real than it was an hour ago.

Bael and I leave the hospital through a private exit. The drive back is just as quiet as before, but I keep looking at the ultrasound photos in my lap, tracing the outline of that tiny shape with my finger.

We’re almost back to the estate when Bael breaks the silence.

"Have you seen the news?"

I look up. "What news?"

He pulls out his phone, unlocks it with one hand while keeping the other on the wheel, and hands it to me.

The screen shows a news article with a large photo of us from the wedding.

I recognize it immediately, the moment during our first dance when Bael’s hand was on my waist and we were looking at each other. The photographer caught it at the perfect angle, that practiced intimacy we were performing for the cameras.

Except looking at it now, it doesn’t look practiced at all.

It looks like two people completely absorbed in each other.

The headline reads: "Wuchen Wedding: A Love Story Revealed."

I scroll down.

More photos. Me walking down the aisle in my suit, Bael and me exchanging vows. The kiss, the dance, and then the ones from after the chandelier fell—Bael carrying me, his face tight with something that looks a lot like fear, holding me like I might disappear if he loosened his grip.

The article gushes about how beautiful the ceremony was, how perfect we looked together, how obvious it is that we’re in love.

I scroll to another article.

This one speculates that Bael had been secretly in love with me all along but couldn’t break off the engagement with Feifei without cause, so he got me pregnant deliberately to force the situation.

It’s completely wrong but somehow reads like the truth when you look at the photos they’ve chosen.

Another article focuses on the chandelier incident, praising Bael’s quick response, analyzing his expression in the photos and declaring that no one could fake that level of concern.

"A man doesn’t look like that unless he’s terrified of losing the person he loves," the article quotes some relationship expert.

I keep scrolling.

More of the same. Different publications, different angles, but the message is consistent: we’re in love. The scandal was overblown. We’re the real love story everyone should be paying attention to.

The homewrecker narrative has almost completely disappeared.

Buried under photos of us looking at each other like we’re the only two people in the world.

"This is..." I trail off, not sure how to finish.

I look at the images again.

We really do look like we’re in love.

Even I can see it.

Even knowing it was all performance, all carefully orchestrated for the cameras, the photos tell a different story.

"People believe what they want to believe," I say quietly. "And apparently they want to believe we’re a romance novel come to life."

Bael’s lips twitch into something that might be a smile. "Better than the alternative."

"Yes, significantly better."

I hand his phone back and stare out the window as we pull through the estate gates.

The homewrecker narrative is fading.

People are starting to see me differently.

Not as the scheming omega who destroyed his sister’s engagement, but as someone who might actually belong beside Bael.

I should feel relieved.

And I do.

But there’s something else too. Something complicated and uncomfortable about the way those photos make my chest tighten, about the fact that even I can’t tell if it was all just performance.

I push the thought away and focus on the ultrasound photos still in my lap.

The baby’s heartbeat echoing in my memory.

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.

That, at least, is real.

Everything else I can figure out later.