Page 29 of Matched in Mayhem

“Tell me whose and I’ll bring it back for you,” I grinned and kissed his forehead.

“Hey, aren’t you a certified midwife?” I asked him. “Isn’t it against your oath to eat other midwives?”

“Nope. Only to eat the patients,” I teased him. “I almost offered to do the ultrasound but… It felt like overstepping. Plus my brain… It sort of felt like I was just a tiger once you started getting sick.”

“Hey, I’d much rather have you holding my hand than measuring my insides or talking about a mucus plug in a few months, okay? If I’m dying – help me, but otherwise, I’d rather you look at me as your sexy, chunky pregnant mate and not a clinical subject.”

“Okay,” I kissed his forehead again. “I might go to the temple and workout. I still feel like I should eat someone.”

“Take Raziel with you if you can,” Alby said.

“Why?” I blinked. “You know, he’s likely to roast them before I eat them.”

“Well, shit. You’re probably right,” Alby laughed and pressed his forehead against my chest.

Chapter 14

Alby

The Hemlock Wolf Pack, Star’s Territory

Midwife Wane was a wolf shifter two inches shorter than I was. He wore his hair tied back in a low ponytail that hung halfway down his star-patterned scrub top. The pheromone blocker spray he wore smelled like blueberry muffins and made me hungry despite all the flips my stomach had performed recently. I only knew he was a wolf because most healers wore little pins of their animal counterparts on their scrubs these days. It helped some patients remain calmer knowing who was helping them and in some cases made them more likely to be compliant.

He shook my hand and then Bennie’s. They eyed each other up and I elbowed my alpha in the side to make him stop the stare down. Midwife Wane was here by invitation.

“Grandpa Clyde speaks highly of you,” I told the midwife as we led him into the living room.

“Thank you,” he said to me and eyed Bennie. “Clyde warned me about you. If you bite me you should know, my carrier is a lioness, and she taught me to go for the scrotum of male cats who think they’re the biggest. The bigger the balls, the stretchier the scrotum under the claws, or so they say.”

“Yep. Grandpa warned him about the murder plate comment,” my wolf chimed into my thoughts. “It’s sort of romantic that Bennie wants to eat him, though, isn’t it?”

“Don’t you start too!” I scolded him but he was already nuzzling with Bennie’s tiger and didn’t hear me.

To his credit, Bennie laughed, but Midwife Wane smelled serious. Yep. I was gonna play referee by the time it was all said and done. Bennie sat quietly beside me while the midwife asked all the usual questions: When did I think I conceived, what had my symptoms and cravings been so far, had I done an at home test, etc. I’d heard all the questions before when family members and friends had been pregnant. I didn’t mind answering them, but I kept a hand on Bennie’s thigh just in case his tiger got any ideas.

When it was time for my ultrasound, I propped Bennie up against the sofa arm and took off my shirt. Then I used him to lean back against. That way if his tiger wanted to eat the midwife, he had to go through me first and I knew that big, loveable brute wouldn’t hurt me. He was my brute after all. My big brute. My big sexy…

“You two knock it off in there!” I thought at my wolf and Bennie’s tiger. “This isn’t the time to get horny.”

“Well, they seem to be already there,” Bennie said over the mating link, and I had to try not to blush while Midwife Wane got his portable ultrasound machine ready.

“They’re incorrigible!” I said, ignoring them. This wasn’t the first time they decided to romp without us but it was the first time they decided to do so while I was about to be scanned.

“It’s just foreplay. I think your wolf is trying to distract my tiger,” Bennie said.

“Well… Maybe it’s working but I don’t want to be distracted,” I said, trying not to laugh out loud.

“Ready?” Midwife Wane asked, holding up his wand.

“Yeah,” I nodded to my stomach. “Let’s see how many babies the brute put in me.”

“Probably not as many as you asked for,” Bennie teased and I laughed, because he was probably right.

“Let’s find out, shall we?” the midwife grinned.

A second later, his wand was pressed to my belly and Bennie held onto my side like he might try to steal me away. Still, it was better than trying to eat him. His grip only tightened when the first baby came onto the screen. They were just a little jellybean.

“I would guess that Clyde was right about them being tiger cubs,” the midwife said. “Wolf pups would be a little larger by now due to a slightly shorter gestation period. One. Two. Three. Three little tiger cubs.”