The door wasn't locked and the car had stopped, but the road next to the outlook descended at a very steep incline, and Alex was wearing heels. If Alex had accused Seth of holding her hostage right then, he wouldn't have denied it. In a wide open area, Alex would have been able to walk away before they'd had a chance for her reactions to play out, and for them to have the conversation. Alex could still walk away right now. Seth just wanted to make it inconvenient.
While Seth talked, he watched Alex's face. He expected the crash as soon as he got to the bird part. It wasn't as painful as the disconnect when Seth made eye contact, and Seth was almost relieved when that expression spiked with anger before each circuit in her brain fired with a different emotion suffocated in an overwhelming disbelief and incredulity. None of her reactions surprised Seth, but it was very different to know how someone would look at you when you told them something and to actually see someone's world start to unravel knowing that you pulled the string. Seth could see his reflection start to shatter in her eyes.
If it wasn't for the baby, that moment of silence after he finished talking was the point where Seth might have backtracked and claimed that he was joking, or speaking metaphorically.
Instead, when she finally said his name and spoke, Seth met her skepticism with insistence.
“It is everything, Alex.” Seth said. “That's the whole thing. I wouldn't believe it exists either, but I have it. I've been turning into a raven at least once a month since I was twelve. And before that, I grew up going to these parties where I watched other people turn into ravens.” Seth didn't have a lot of secrets. He didn't have much of a private life, and there wasn't really anything else about him that Alex didn't know or have access to. Seth just had this one thing. She could call it an eccentricity.
“My mother turns into a raven,” Seth continued. He'd turned in his seat to face her, and his tone was more hurried, like he was worried the opportunity to deliver words would be taken before he could say everything. “Abbie and Noah turn into ravens. My dad doesn't turn into a raven because he's human and neither does his side of the family, but almost all of the family on my mother's side turn into ravens when the moon is full, and we fly together. That's all we really do at those parties. We mingle for a bit, maybe make some boring small talk, and then turn into birds and fly around until the sun rises. I'm at those parties all night because I literally can't turn back until the night is over. That's why I'm tired the next day.”
“There's a fifty percent chance that this baby is going to be totally human. Who knows, it might be even higher because of my dad. I'm not a geneticist. But there's also a chance that he or she might be like me. We don't start turning into birds until around puberty most of the time, so it shouldn't affect the pregnancy much either way, but with the physiological differences there might be some things that might seem like abnormalities when they're really just a normal side effect of that condition.”