Page 17 of A Hutch for Hoover (Omegas of Animals #15)

Hoover

My mate waddled into the kitchen, his hands resting on his huge belly.

The poor guy was two weeks past the midwife’s projected due date, and he was miserable.

He was done with carrying his baby inside and ready to carry him in his arms. I didn’t blame him.

I was desperate to meet our little one, too.

The midwife had insisted that they were going to be here any day, a week and a half ago.

So far, they’d been very wrong. But they still stopped by every other day to check on us, listening to the heartbeat, discussing the slowing movements…

slowing not because the baby was in distress but because they were all out of room.

“Looking good, mate.” I crossed over and kissed his cheek.

“You’re a liar.” He scrunched his face up.

“I’m not looking good. Clothes don’t fit.

I’ve got a zit on my cheek the size of a small country.

I’m not even sure if my shoes match because I can’t see my feet, and there are no socks because I can’t reach my feet.

Oh, and my bump enters the room three days before the rest of my body gets here.

So, if that all looks good, then I look amazing. ”

Ugg. What I wouldn’t do to be able to help him go into labor. But we’d tried everything I could think of or find online. We walked and walked and walked until even my feet were giving out. We’d had sex repeatedly—to induce labor, not because I was mated to the hottest omega on this planet.

Fine. It was because I was mated to the hottest omega on the planet and couldn’t get enough of him, but still it was supposed to help, and it didn’t.

And honestly, the further along he got, the sexier he was to me.

I didn’t know I had a thing for pregnant omegas, and I suppose I probably didn’t really, but I had a thing for my pregnant omega.

There was nothing hotter than seeing his body change to accommodate our growing child. Nothing.

“Do you want me to call the midwife?” I offered.

He looked at me like I had seven heads. It seemed like a logical offer, but I’d learned that logic and this stage of pregnancy weren’t friends.

“No, I want a quesadilla.”

“You want a quesadilla?” The day before, he’d told me he never wanted to see one again.

He nodded. Quesadilla it was.

That had been his recent craving. He’d had one for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the past six or seven days. Then he declared this craving over, but it sounded like it was back on.

It wasn’t the first time he had a food he ate nonstop since his pregnancy began.

From one meal to the next, I didn’t know if the craving would be over.

After the first one, I stopped stocking up on ingredients.

I’d been stuck eating cornflakes for two months after he deemed them disgusting one day after eating them for twenty-three meals in a row.

I’d never been more grateful for having cheese and tortillas in the fridge. My rabbit hadn’t been willing to leave his side for a few weeks, and food delivery took extra-long on Saturdays. He’d have been hangry for sure before they ever came.

“Did you want chicken in this one?”

He looked at me then rolled his eyes.

“Yeah…no chicken. Got it.”

“I just want—oh wait.” He scurried over to the refrigerator, opened it, and dug around until he found one of the steaks from last night’s dinner that I hadn’t finished.

It had originally been for him, but then he asked for quesadillas again only to grumble about them after they were in his belly. Pregnancy was wild.

“I’m having a steak quesadilla.” He slapped it down on the cutting board and pulled out a knife to slice it. I’d have done it, but when he got this way, he seemed to prefer I let him be, and so I did.

I made two and ate mine really slowly in case he needed more than the one I gave him. Only, he stopped a few bites in, and his face changed, giving me the telltale sign that either nausea or a stomachache of the nondescript version appeared.

“You want some Tums?”

He’d been eating them like candy for the past two weeks. The midwife said it was fine, so as gross as I thought they were, I didn’t judge.

“No, no Tums. But stay with me. And go get the midwife. But also stay with me.”

Those two things didn’t go together. He gave me the death glare when I started to tell him as much.

I opted to call the midwife and told my mate I’d be right back. The midwife didn’t answer my call. I texted them. Just as I was grabbing my keys to go get them, they called me back and promised they’d be right over.

“Where’d you go? I thought you left.” He was hugging himself, and I raced to his side.

I’d only been in the bedroom, but that had been too far for both my mate and my rabbit. I wasn’t leaving his side again until our baby was here.

“I’m here. And the midwife is on their way. Why don’t we get you out of these uncomfortable clothes?”

“You just want me to walk around naked, is that it?”

I couldn’t tell if he was teasing or not.

“Oh, I would never say no, but that’s not it. This baby is going to be here soon. And these clothes, they don’t fit you.”

He looked at me and growled. I deserved it. I truly meant he must be uncomfortable, but there was no talking my way out of the comment, so I didn’t even bother.

The midwife came maybe ten minutes later. After giving my mate a once-over, they asked him when his water broke.

“I didn’t know it had.”

“First-time fathers.” The midwife shook their head and went through a bunch of scenarios to see if they applied to Grant. One of them, he admitted he’d experienced. “That was it. The water broke eight hours ago, which means it’s almost go time.”

And it didn’t seem like it to me—if anything, he was acting slightly grumpy, nothing more. But I wasn’t going to argue with the expert. And good thing, too, because they were right.

The pains started to feel like actual contractions within a half an hour, my mate making sure I knew that.

The pain level grew strong enough he was no longer able to hold it in, and we didn’t try to stop him.

There was no shushing by me or the midwife.

He could be as loud as he needed to be to get through this.

If the neighbors had a problem with it, they could die mad about it.

I stayed by his side, holding his hand, doing whatever the midwife told me to, without telling him what to do. He’d been very sensitive about that, as he should be.

We did everything the midwife asked of us, including me giving him a shower with the hopes of the warm water to help relax his tense back muscles.

He drank a ton of water. He also sat on a huge bouncy ball the midwife had brought for him to sit on.

It seemed far too small, but I soon realized it only looked that way because my mate was so large. I was smart enough not to mention that.

Labor was in full swing. He tried different positions to get comfortable, unsuccessfully. When he started asking to go to the human hospital for a “freaking epidural already,” the midwife checked him and told him it was too late.

“Time to push.”

I held his hand, whispering words of encouragement in his ear, and the midwife directed him. And after the second contraction of pushing, the midwife could see our child.

“Push. You can do this.”

And my mate did. Our sweet baby girl was here. We’d never had an ultrasound and hadn’t known who was joining our family until that moment.

The midwife cleaned her up a little and brought her to his chest, saying something about delivering the placenta next.

I wasn’t sure if I caught it right, since she wasn’t looking at me.

I hadn’t even thought about what happened to the placenta, but it made sense that it had to come out.

Did that mean my mate’s contractions kept on coming?

“Why does this hurt as much as childbirth?” He handed me our daughter right before he let out another bloodcurdling scream. The midwife looked at him, worry on her face, but then pulled out the heartbeat-detector doohickey and rolled it across his belly like she had during our consultations.

“Huh,” she said. “That wasn’t what I was expecting.”

I had no idea what she heard—none of it coming through to me.

“Is that a good ‘huh’ or a bad ‘huh’?”

I was bracing myself for it being the latter. My mate needed me to be strong.

“Looks like there’s another one in there. We’re gonna have to start pushing again soon.”

Soon was relative. It was closer to an hour later when our son came into the world, kicking and screaming.

We were fathers.

I held our daughter while our son had his first meal.

“Do you have names picked out?” the midwife asked.

“We do. Daphne and Theodore,” I said. They weren’t meaningful in any way; we just had liked them and, looking down at our two perfect little bundles of joy, I could see why. They suited them to a T.