“Two cat-puppies,”my dog chimed into my thoughts again.“Everyone keeps saying puppies. They’re not all puppies!”
Sure, I probably would opt not to have litters as often as my parents but five were still a lot of kids to raise and love. Kids tooktime and effort and needed room to grow. Up north the world was vaster and more open and maybe even safer to explore. After all, I’d never seen the corpse of someone murdered by a ghost until I moved here. Then I saw three straight away.
A small crowd gathered on Bernard and Nashen’s porch, awaiting the news of the safe delivery of the baby. We joined them and Eran introduced me to people whose names felt like it would take me years to learn and remember. Inside, Nashen hissed and the sound sank into my pores. Cats, dogs, bears. It didn’t matter. Labor noises always cut me to the bone. I’d seen enough births to know nature usually works itself out alright but it makes the laboring carrier fight for their life before it turns out that way. If I knew Nashen better I would’ve charged into the house to help. After all, I’d helped deliver babies back home. Almost every omega had.
Through my mating link with Eran I vaguely understood all the hissing. Nashen was going to disembowel everyone and everything in the house. He was going to floss his teeth with Ferrick’s insides and summon his sister to scratch her eyes out. He was going to---
“Vatten?” Eran asked.
“Huh?” I said sheepishly. I hadn’t been paying attention to what everyone else was talking about. “Sorry was thinking.”
“Zee was asking if you wanted something to drink,” Eran said.
“No thanks. I don’t imbibe while I’m pregnant,” I said automatically.
“You don’t drink tea or lemonade while you’re pregnant?” the harpy’s eyebrows shot up high on his head.
“Oh. Sorry. Thought you were breaking out the hard stuff. That’s what alphas do back home. Gotta sedate the inner beasts to survive the roars of labor. Alphas aren’t made for it. Their nerves are flimsy when it comes to childbirth,” I said and everyone stared at me. For a second, I thought I really messed up. Sometimes I didn’t know when I should keep the thoughts inside my head to myself. Then someone laughed.
“Yeah. If they had to squeeze something the size of a melon out, they’d all faint as soon as they found out that’s what was going to happen,” someone said.
“Well not all of them,” Evie said, walking up the steps. “Women alphas do exist.”
“Some of them might faint too,” the other person said.
What was their name? I was about to apologize and ask it again, but the door swung open.
“It’s a boy!” The healer announced and Zee picked him up and swung him around in a circle before kissing him. I glanced away when the harpy’s tongue dashed into his mate’s mouth. I wasn’t shy but if too many people started kissing, I was going to drag Eran back to the truck for some fun of our own. He took my hand and pulled me over to give me a quick kiss.
Eran went inside to congratulate Bernard, but I stayed outside, not wanting to intrude. Plus, it gave me a chance to talk to Evie. I wanted to set up an afternoon to talk through my birthing plan. Not many of my dog relatives ended up needing c-sections but if I did, it would be up to her to get me and thebabies through it. Most likely, I wouldn’t need her help with anything but if she was going to be on standby, I figured she should know what the plan was. We set up a time to meet the following week and barely had time to decide that we’d meet at the apartment before Eran was back out.
“Nashen doesn’t want any more visitors,” he said.
“What did you do to him?” I asked.
“Nothing. He said he’s done with people for now. It’s a cat thing,” he shrugged. “They named the baby Brazzen.”
“Very harpy! I like it!” Zee announced before I could say anything.
The crowd dispersed quicker than I thought possible as people headed back to the construction zone or to their own lives. I considered walking over to the construction area but if I did, I’d want to help. It was so hard to let someone do something nice for me. Especially when I possessed the technical knowledge to do it myself. Instead, we walked over to Jade’s house to make sure he and Jondi had settled back in before we headed back to the apartment. As we padded across the grass, I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if we weren’t moved before I hit the dog mode part of my pregnancy.
Chapter 36
Eran
Guardians of Glitter Bomb Territory
Life was in an odd limbo spot as the days passed and we prepared to meet our children. We were living at the apartment and planning for the house too. Though, there was still nowhere else I’d rather be. We still spent all of our time together talking about the future and our lives as they were before we met. It was strange to think that most of my life I hadn’t known Vatten because now we revolved around each other, never really out of reach unless I had a business-related meeting or he had a session with Gooseberry. I wondered if it was annoying for my friends, but if it was, no one said anything. Older true-mates looked at us with that knowing look and said soon enough we’d find equilibrium, but secretly I thought this was our balance. I’d always needed someone around – more or less a body double that reminded me that things existed outside of the world of cats and crafts. This was different. I wanted to be around Vatten. I even let him into the space where I crafted – that was a space I held holy and didn’t let old roommates or my siblings into. It was organized chaos, but most people would never understand that. Vatten got it, though.
He read or scrolled on his phone while I crafted. Sometimes we chatted while I sewed and stuffed and fluffed turning objects into hours of entertainment. I spent a lot of time feeling everymaterial known to catkind to find the best ones for kitten and puppy toys. Sure eventually they’d develop separately and the puppies would want chew toys but in the beginning there wouldn’t be much difference. Something soft to nuzzle or play with. When I finished with that I made Vatten a feeding pillow. It was sort of a semi-circle that he could rest his head on that wrapped around him. It was patterned with snowflakes and little dancing polar bears. It fit him perfectly. He shifted and rolled all over it, marking it with his scent so that our incoming tiny ones would know it was safe.
It was looking more and more like he might go into dog mode before we had the chance to move to the new house. Normally, I hated playing things by ear, but for Vatten I did it without complaint. He was the one growing five little lives inside his body. The weight of our unborn children was beginning to drag his center of gravity lower and lower. Now he couldn’t zoomie around like he did before, but he did canter up and down the apartment building’s corridor waddling in the most adorable fashion. Though, I was biased. For me, everything Vatten did was perfect.
Evie came once during that limbo time before the first time we saw the shell of our new home to do an ultrasound. This time she asked Vatten to shift into his dog form. She’d brought her clippers in case the fur got in the way but the day before I’d treated him to a nice wash and condition over at Franny’s Fur Salon. They had a nice set up for pregnant shifters that didn’t involve jumping up onto grooming tables. The service ended with a full furry body massage. Just watching Vatten melt into a puddle of delighted goo made me purr.
Fortunately for Vatten’s thick, gorgeous fur, Evie didn’t end up needing the clippers to see our babies. All five of them werestill there but were no longer little jellybeans. As the weeks passed they each grew into miniature versions of who they’d be outside of Vatten’s body. Most of them were curled up in ways that made it hard to see who they might be – even the puppies which should’ve been easier to see than the kittens. Though, Evie swore she saw the evidence that one of the puppies was a boy. Neither Vatten nor I could make it out. Still, the odds were with three puppies at least one of them would be a boy.
***
