Page 35

Othoni

We didn’t want to take our grief back to the Nightshade Bear Territory. Xenos and Barry were happily preparing for their next kid and didn’t need to know how much had changed for Mori. I also didn’t want them to feel pressured to host a mating feast for me and Teddy. If we were there with them, he would. So, we packed our suitcases and moved into Dern’s house. He had left it to Mori after all.

We settled into the guest rooms and slowly made it our home but even after a week of living there it still felt as if Dern would come home at any moment and tell us off for plundering through his stuff and using his good pans. Only, he wasn’t going to do that. Dern loved babies. So, if he wasn’t going to come back from the dead it would’ve been the first Sunday morning we were there. That was when we discovered that there was definitely an unseen baby living in his house.

I swallowed hard still half asleep.

Uck! Uck!

What was in my throat? I hadn’t groomed nearly enough for a fur ball but there I was with an itchy throat and my stomach making that urk-urk sound my jaguar made whenever he was about to uck up any fur that wouldn’t stay down. I scrambled over Teddy, shifting as I fell to the floor and made my way toward the nearest exit: A window.

“Mate?”

Teddy’s sleepy voice called out. “Mate?”

No time to talk.

Shit in a tree!

Shit in a tree!

Shit in a tree!

My jaguar hissed as the contents of my stomach hit the grass. There wasn’t much dinner left from the night before, but acid came out hot and ucky.

“Othoni,”

Teddy said his voice gentle while climbing out of the window.

“Hold on!”

I snapped over our mating link. “I’m sick! It’s probably a fur ball! Who the hell am I licking in my sleep?”

Only we both knew it wasn’t a fur ball. Even if I had groomed someone in my sleep the only other person around was Teddy and we’d both know if he shifted in his sleep. He’d break the bed and maybe the room too.

My weird mate was undeterred by the acidy fur ball I was coughing up. He squatted down next to me and rubbed my back until the world held still and let my stomach stop doing the tango. When we were both sure it was done with its performance, he lifted me gently and carried me back into the house. Mori was up. His feet pattered around his room. If I had woken him up, he wasn’t complaining.

“Probably giving us some time on our own,”

Teddy said, picking up my thoughts over our mating link.

I called out anyway and winced as my stomach flipflopped but settled down before it found anything else to toss out.

“I’m okay!”

Mori called back and I let out a long sigh of relief. At least he wasn’t laying prone and empty while some mysterious group known only as the ‘postcard men’ interrogated him or whatever.

“Thanks, Mori!”

Teddy said and I winced at how close his voice originated to my ears.

“Need any help?”

Mori called back.

“We’re okay,”

Teddy called out, softer this time. “Just going to hit the shower and then I’ll hit the pharmacy. I don’t want to call Leem until we know for sure.”

“Isn’t that his job to find out?”

Mori asked.

“Things are still weird with us, and I don’t know why,”

Teddy said.

“Because you screwed,”

Mori stuck his head out of the door. “Seriously, it doesn’t bother you but you’re an outlier. It bothers him, though.”

“So, should we not call him? I’m sure there are other doctors,”

Teddy frowned.

“You have to call him because if you don’t everyone will point out that you didn’t call him because you screwed back then,”

Mori said.

“What the actual fuck?”

Teddy sighed.

“I don’t get it either,”

Mori shrugged.

A few minutes later Teddy had washed me up and we lay under the lukewarm water together. He was stretched out on his back, and I rested on top of him while he massaged my ears in that way I’d always loved. His fingers were perfect for it. We’d jokingly started calling the exchange an ‘ear job,’ because I was sure one day he’d do it long enough that I might actually orgasm from it.

“Does it bother you that I hooked up with the doctor?”

Teddy asked.

“No more than it bothers me you once hooked up with Selt or Sunny,”

I said over our mating link. “You’re not hooking up with him now. I think it’s weird for him because you don’t give him special privileges or do things because he asked you to. I think that comes along with exes that ended okay.”

“That’s fucking weird, though,”

Teddy sighed, and he was right. It was strange but most of society was.

“We can use whatever doctor you like,”

I told him.

“That’s what I’m supposed to say to you,”

he pointed out. “You’re the one pregnant.”

“With Zinnia,” I nodded.

“I think you’re the only one who believes me about my dream,”

he sighed.

“Why wouldn’t I? I love that name! And I think everyone believes you had that dream. They just don’t believe it means anything.”

“Do you believe it means something?”

“I do. We don’t always know where visions or prophetic dreams come from. Maybe it was Lotus. Maybe it was someone masquerading as her. Maybe she left it as a voicemail for you, and it played when the time was right. They’ll all shut up and start believing in you when we find out our baby is a girl.”

That afternoon, Doctor Leem confirmed via ultrasound that I was indeed pregnant. I didn’t carry a dragon egg in my belly but a little jellybean. After doing some math, I figured we had right around three months left before Zinnia came into the world. When I mailed off copies of the sonogram to my parents on the back I scribbled ‘our little seed.’