Page 16 of Wrong Number, Right Grizzly (Dial M For Mates #7)

RONAN

A positive pregnancy test had been a shocker for me but a beautiful, amazing, magical one at that.

Also it explained so much about my perpetual exhaustion.

Not that there was a remedy for it, but at least now I wasn’t worried that I was coming down with something, or if it was ever going to end.

Now, instead of being concerned when I wanted to go to bed at six at night, I just went to sleep.

There was no more fighting it or trying to push through it.

If my baby needed sleep, they were getting sleep.

Once upon a time, I always thought of my future with a very distinct pattern.

One day I’d be dating someone, and then after a few fabulous dates and some wooing, I’d fall in love.

After a year or two, we’d get engaged with some grand proposal that would include being on bended knee, flowers, a ring, and probably champagne.

We’d spend another year or two planning the wedding.

And it would all culminate with a house and a baby or two.

My reality was so much better.

Meeting Nix, I knew right away that he was more than just a stranger passing on a rainy night. I didn’t understand it at the time, but pretty close to the surface, I understood that he was mine and I was his.

And now we had our first child growing inside me.

According to the internet, they weren’t even the size of a bean, yet.

It was mind-boggling how something that tiny could steal so much of my heart.

And not just mine. Nix was just as head over heels over the idea of us being fathers as I was.

He was going to be such a wonderful dad.

After hemming and hawing, I finally decided to tell my boss I was pregnant. All of the advice said that it wasn’t ideal as far as timing went. While employers couldn’t discriminate against you for being pregnant by law, that didn’t mean it didn’t happen in practice.

Maybe if I wasn’t planning on leaving, I might’ve held back a little bit, but I needed him to know that some days I was going to have to take a nap. That was not negotiable for me, and without a good reason, there was no way he was going to allow that.

Surprisingly, he understood, his own omega having had a baby within the past few years. He said as long as I got the work done, he was fine with a flexible schedule. I attempted to turn that into full-time telework, but he cited company policy and I dropped it right quick.

As great as it was to have him on my side, it added a level of guilt as I continued looking for other jobs.

It couldn’t be helped. He couldn’t offer me full-time telework, and our location was too far away from where I needed to be.

I wasn’t leaving because of who they were or how they treated me.

I was leaving them because the job didn’t suit my future. My future with my mate and our cub.

I was finishing up meeting number four when I got a call from the leasing agency asking me to come down to the office at my convenience.

And because I was in the meeting, all I had was a message with zero details.

I assumed they had some bites on subleasing, because when they wanted to give you bad news, they always left a detailed message.

I learned that the time they accidentally put my payment on somebody else’s account and called looking for rent.

On my way there, I called Nix to let him know where I was going to be. He was coming to the city, and I didn’t want our paths to cross and was unsure what time he was going to be able to get away.

When I walked into the office, not only had someone wanted to sublease, there were three different people vying for the chance, all with different start dates in mind. A quick phone call to Nix later, and I signed the one that had a date that aligned with the best time for me to move.

I didn’t have a ton of things to bring to my new place, but I had enough that it was going to take some finagling.

It felt amazing having that expense taken off my plate.

It was one step closer to the life that I wanted with Nix.

On top of that, I had three job interviews lined up for the week. Things were looking up.

Nix met me at the doctor’s office later that afternoon. We planned to get a midwife closer to home, but for now, I just wanted somebody else telling me everything looked great.

At first, I wondered if I had to go to a special doctor, one that dealt with shifters or at least knew of them. But Nix assured me that, at least in the early stages of pregnancy, it didn’t matter. It was later on where there were noticeable differences.

Nix was already there when I pulled in and greeted me with the biggest hug. “I missed you,” he said against my head and then gave it a kiss.

I rubbed my cheek against his shirt, wanting him to scent like me. He said that was a very shiftery thing to do, and maybe it was, but it was also a very me thing to do, based on how often I felt the urge.

“How many papers is this?” Nix asked as he flipped through the pile on the clipboard. “Seven,” he answered himself. “Didn’t you just do a bunch of forms on the tablet?”

“Yep, I did. They want both.”

At least I didn’t have to worry about what was going to happen at my visit for very long, because we were too busy filling out forms, both digital and paper, and some of them were asking almost the same identical information. It was ridiculous.

“Ronan,” the nurse called from the door.

I waved, and we walked in. It was a typical doctor’s appointment…

get on the scale, take your blood pressure, check your temperature.

They did add the peeing-in-a-cup thing, which was apparently pregnancy specific, but other than that, there was no difference than when I went in for an illness or an annual visit.

All of that completed, she asked us to wait for the doctor. Like we had a choice.

“Are you nervous?” Nix asked.

“Me? I’m excited.” I gave his hand a squeeze. “We’re gonna be dads.”

“We are.” He brought his head to my belly.

“You know that’s not even where the baby is yet?” Which I only knew because I’d read it on the Internet. It was scary how little I knew about pregnancy.

“Let me have my fun.” He kissed my belly and hugged me close, his ear still on my middle. Of course, that was the exact time the doctor came in.

“I’m gonna take a wild guess that you’re the alpha father?” he teased my mate.

“Yeah—yes,” Nix answered.

“I also see on your forms that you’ll probably be transferring practices and you’re just doing a preliminary check?”

I felt it was important to say all that up front, but now that he brought it up, I was wondering if maybe I’d made a mistake.

“You made the right choice, not waiting to be seen until after you moved.”

He then went on a ten-minute speech about prenatal visits and when we should go to them and why each one was important. I wasn’t somebody who planned to skip any, but based on the conversation we were having, that was not his norm.

“Do you have anybody in mind at your permanent address?” I’d already switched my contact information on the paperwork to my new home.

“Actually, I do know someone. I’ll make sure you get their information.”

The appointment wasn’t what I expected it to be.

It was more like a mini class. He talked to us about proper nutrition and what to expect along the way, ordered some tests to be done here or there, and then, because of how early we were in the pregnancy, gave us the sad news that we probably wouldn’t be able to hear the heartbeat but that he would try.

My nerves flared out of control as he rubbed the wand across my lower abdomen, even knowing that we probably couldn’t hear it. I was low-key panicked that not having this huge echoing baby sound in the room instantly meant something was wrong.

But then he stopped moving the wand, and I could hear it. Thump thump thump thump thump. It was so fast, much faster than my own heart. But the doctor called it perfect, and tears of joy started to well up in my eyes.

My mate squeezed my hand at my side. It was one thing to see the results on a plastic, over-the-counter pregnancy test. It was another to hear your child for the first time.

“We’re gonna be dads, Nix.”

“Yes.” He brought our joined hands to his lips and kissed mine. “We’re going to be dads. What a lucky baby to have a father like you.”

He was wrong. They were lucky to have a father like him.