“The only one I have ever truly loved left and took my heart with phem, all because of you. I thought with this at least I could reclaim some small comfort by protecting the chosen birthright for Geelahm and Ayyalhm, but no. You have even taken that from me. You have now cost me everything. If you were to drop dead right now in front of me, nothing would make me happier.”
Phey shoved back pheir chair and departed, leaving me sitting there stunned, shaken.
Growing up, I had always felt an affinity for Yyallohrn, had called phem rhalghen, what would be the equivalent to uncle or aunt in Standard.
I never knew I was so…despised.
I know I must share this information with Sy at some point, but not right now.
I will not sully this precious time with the righteous anger I know my adoring mate will no doubt feel on my behalf.
I have also arranged a surprise for Sy. Helleia and Kivia are coming for a visit in a few weeks whether we have succeeded or failed. I want them here to share in our success or to help us through our disappointment. I have not told them about this yet, only that I wish to surprise Sy with their visit.
I love that Kivia insists I call her Mom. I love that she says Prater would have welcomed me not only as Sy’s mate, but as an adopted child.
I love that Helleia refers to me as “brother,” even though Sy tries to scold her to refer to me as “sibling.”
They have adopted me—that is my second biggest blessing, next to loving Sy.
They want me.
For the first time in my life, I am surrounded by those who not only wish to be there, and to have me there with them, they are happy that it is me they are with.
I think I never understood love before now, before Sy. That previous lacking was what allowed me to desire to flee Pfahrn, that absence of an emotional anchor.
I never felt loved, or wanted.
Even with our bond I do not believe Simon understands exactly how deeply I envy his upbringing. He knew he was loved and wanted. He belonged. He had family who, from his very birth, desired his presence in their lives.
Such a blessing.
Such a blessing I wish to bestow upon our child.
I eventually doze, my sweet, slippery human comfortably snuggled in my arms. I never sleep as well as I do when our flesh touches and I can hear him breathing near my ear and feel it against me. At night, if we move away from each other in bed, I will awaken and follow him so we are touching once more.
My comfort.
My blessing.
At some point, I awaken when I hear the sound of his breathing change.
“Do not move, please,” I say. “Dr. H’looder said not to move.”
“You’re going to keep me bedridden, aren’t you?”
“What do you think?”
Simon sighs. “I think I’m in for a long however long this will be, if everything is successful.”
“Only until the egg emerges, if we are so blessed,” I say. “Then I will take over for you.”
It is a job that is shared with mates such as us. Contract matings, the parent who wanted the child is usually the one to carry it to completion, as long as there are no health issues to prevent phem from doing so. We simply wear a sling that holds it against our bellies, keeping it warm, safe, allowing it to feel our touch and hear our voice and the sound of our heart and breathing.
To know it is not alone.
I suspect I was not nurtured like that. I was, obviously, kept warm and safe, because I am here. But perhaps that is why I felt like I craved touch and yet feared to ask for it. Perhaps I was put in a warm, secure place and checked on occasionally.
Perhaps that is why my earliest memories are of not understanding where I was, not easily recognizing Dohrn, feeling…alone.
Perhaps that is why I cannot stop touching my mate when we are together, why I enjoy cuddling and even kissing him.
Simon never tires of me touching him, or of touching me.
This is another reason I wish to stay home with him during this time. Perhaps if I spend that time getting what I did not at that age, maybe it will help heal my soul.
It cannot hurt.
By that evening, Sy acts grumbly and anxious and tries to come up with excuses to leave the bunk. I would offer to suck his cock to help quiet him but I am not yet sure if that would be helpful or harmful to what we are attempting. I do not wish to do anything to dislodge the egg.
I am relieved when Dr. H’looder appears before dinner time.
Simon’s hand seeks mine and squeezes. “Well?” he asks the doctor.
“I am cautiously optimistic. It would seem both eggs have implanted securely and are fertilized.”
I want to throw back my head and howl in delight, except I am afraid to startle my mate or the doctor. I settle for squeezing Simon’s hand as I listen.
“I’m not walking again for a while, am I?” Simon snarks as he glances my way.
“While obviously you may stand for using the facilities or taking a shower,” the doctor says, “I am going to ask you refrain from standing or walking as much as possible for the next two weeks, yes. We’ll look at your progress then to see if it’s safe to send you home or not. We are working on a zero-G exercise tank for you to use while you’re here, and will hopefully have that online in a few days. That will allow you to move around without risking stress on the egg. At the very least, even if I do let you off bed rest, no carrying anything heavier than a pillow or a glass of water. No straining whatsoever, no stress.”
“How long until we know if we were successful?” I ask.
“That is hard to say. There is usually a thirty-week gestation internally, and then the external period of at least another twenty weeks. I think once we reach the external gestation period, if the baby makes it past the first few days, we should be safe. But we’ll want to monitor them very carefully from that point on, including wearable monitors on the eggs. I’m already working on special slings based on the traditional model that will be even safer and allow us monitoring capability.”
Simon wears that adorable smirk I love. “You’ll want to wear the baby all the time, won’t you?” he asks me.
“Please? At night we can share phem. You will have done the most difficult work.” The thought of lying in our bed with our egg nestled warm and safe between our bodies is such a powerful image I nearly want to weep from the beauty of it.
It is something I always believed unobtainable to me. It is the greatest blessing of all.
“We’ll be sending in techs throughout the night to give you medication and hormones and infusions,” H’looder says. “And they’ll take your IV port out, Mohrn.”
I nod, barely able to draw my focus from my mate. “Thank you, Doctor.”
“You can order food, beverages, anything you need from the com panel,” H’looder adds. “Please avail yourself of whatever you wish. It will be brought to you.”
“Thanks, Doc,” Simon says.
When we are alone again, I kiss Simon. “I love you so much right now, I cannot adequately tell you.”
He grins. “I think I know. I—”
We both hear a joyful howl from somewhere close by, and it makes Sy laugh. “I guess Olarte and Davies just got the news.”
“I believe so.”
“Are we still good for them staying with us?” he asks.
I nod. “If you are, yes.”
I extended the offer to Olarte this morning, that if we are all successful, they are welcomed to live with us. I believe it will be beneficial to Sy to have Davies there not just as a friend, but as someone sharing this experience with him. Also, I wish our children to grow up friends and adopted family. Phey will already be outsiders on Pfahrn, without a large blood clan to support them there.
Any additional adopted family I can gather around them is a blessing.
* * * *
By the next afternoon, Dr. H’looder holds cautious optimism that we will succeed. Both eggs still appear to be flouri
shing. I know that these initial days are usually the most critical ones.
Simon lies with his hands over mine on his tummy when he speaks. “I gotta say, never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I’d be lying here with my husband and talking about plans for a baby that’s growing inside me.”
“I am sorry.”
“Oh, no.” He laughs. “Nooo apology needed. I wouldn’t change a damn thing about any of this.” He tips his head back for a kiss. “It means I got you, you big, pink, beautiful bastard.”
“I really need a way to make you less slippery so I do not drop you while you are carrying our child. Perhaps H’looder can help with that.”
“Dropping me after’s okay?” He grins.
I sigh, pulling another laugh from him. “Dropping you at all is not okay, and especially while you are with child. But you do tend to bounce more easily when not with child.”
A beautiful laugh erupts from Sy, making me smile. How did my kind never discover this sound before? It rolls and dances through the air like insects from flower to flower, spreading warmth as it flows.
He snuggles tightly against me, a precious blessing. He is very proud of having taught me how to make jokes. I am not yet certain I am very good at it, but he is a very good husband—mate, whatever—for making me think I am.
He is also a very good mate for trying to be so considerate about how he addresses me, yet he does not seem to understand one thing—I truly do not mind what he calls me, as long as he is mine when he does.
He is my blessing, and I love him beyond my ability to label it.
In this sweet, slippery human I have my one true mate, my true love, and my future, all contained within one generous heart and beautiful spirit.
Mine.
And I am his.
That is all I wish to be.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Simon
Oooooh boy. So that’s how I ended up knocked up by a big, pink bastard.
The love of my life.
I suspect there’s a good chance I might forget how to walk before our baby’s born. Phey’re bound and determined to carry me everywhere. Mohrn’s already set the bar pretty damn high in the “overprotective father-to-be” department, and we’re barely forty-eight hours into this.
Not that I’m complaining, because I’m not.
Not seriously.
The big pink bastard’s going to be a great dad. I know phey are.
Parent.
What-fucking-ever.
Mohrn hasn’t yet told me phey visited the prison, or about pheir visit with Yyallohrn. But I know all about it. Dehnzen and his crew let me know, for starters, as soon as Mohrn arrived, because he wanted me to know they were on it and were going to protect Mohrn.
When Mohrn returned, phey didn’t say anything about it.
And when phey went to sleep, I dug into their mind and saw the whole thing play out.
Those two fuckers. All pheir lives, phey lied to Mohrn.
Something else I know that Mohrn doesn’t?
Dehnzen found out a couple of months ago that the guys who attacked Mohrn that time had been paid to do it. Some friends of theirs started the diversion in the other part of the prison. Thankfully, due to Mohrn’s protected status, one of the regular guards realized no one was around Mohrn and was able to get back there and save them.
Dehnzen found out because when one of the conspirators who’d started the diversion spotted Yyallohrn in general population, he ratted phem out to Dehnzen.
Oh, I should mention I finally figured out how Dehnzen and his guys could pay off the debt they still owed me. Fortunately, after a little testing of my own with Mohrn, I realized I can keep tiny pockets of information hidden away from phem in my mind. My envenomation of phem isn’t nearly as strong as pheirs is when phey bite me.
That gives me a slight advantage. Just enough.
The Guyardiens had a break from the prison to return to their planet and do their thing, while another crew took over.
When Dehnzen and his crew returned to the prison at the start of their new contracts, Dehnzen contacted me to let me know.
I told him what I wanted.
He told me it’d be done.
I hate that I figured out how to keep a secret from Mohrn, but this is one thing I don’t want phem knowing. Besides, if phey knew what I asked of Dehnzen to settle the score between us, I know Mohrn—phey would’ve begged me not to do it, because phey’re kind and good, and I have a mean streak a mile wide in me when you fuck with my loved ones.
Guess I did get a little of Mom’s hidden fire and spit after all.
All I know is that, a week after making the request, I receive a one-word message from Dehnzen.
Done.
And I smile. Because while I don’t know the details, and don’t want to know them, I do know that the prison complex is now less two Pfahrn inmates.
Not that anyone is actually going to miss the lying fucks.
I damn sure won’t.
* * * *
We’re all at H’looder’s for four weeks before we’re allowed to return to Pfahrn. Our long stay on the station was more because our Pfahrn partners felt nervous and overprotective rather than because H’looder said we needed to be there.
Doc would’ve let us go two weeks ago, but that nearly sent Mohrn and Olarte into panic attacks, the thought of us being away from immediate medical assistance.
We settle in at the house, Cloohdlin’s new job being phey takes care of us.
When Mom and Hells unexpectedly arrive a few weeks later for a visit, I start crying happy tears, and Mom immediately starts with the pregnancy jokes.
It’s okay. I don’t even mind.
Mom’s selling the apartment and moving to Pfahrn to continue her education, because the MC is establishing a permanent base here, including opening a small secondary school on the space station ahead of building one on Pfahrn in the next couple of years. H’looder will be permanently stationed here, too, conducting ongoing studies of us and our children, and the ishblane mutation.
See, more of them are being born all over Pfahrn in recent years. And it looks like ishblane have a tendency to be extremely artistic, like Mohrn. Not just drawing, but sculpting, music—and writing.
Seriously, art, and fiction writing in particular, is something frowned upon as a waste of time in this society. Apparently the fine arts, other than musicless singing, has been systematically removed from their culture over the past several hundred years. No coincidence, in my mind, that it fell in line with the upswing in obsessive contract creation.
Hells is going to eventually move here, too, once she finishes school in a few years.
As the two pregnancies progress, Davies and I commiserate with each other. We’re not supposed to do anything that might trigger…eh, contractions.
Orgasms. We’re not supposed to orgasm.
Thankfully, H’looder can temporarily tweak our bionanotech to help reduce our urges, and our bodies’ responses, but this is fucking miserable, man. I want to get crazy in bed with Mohrn, but my mate has crazy-good self-control and is apparently content to lie in bed with pheir hands on my belly.
Thirty weeks, by the way, is a long fucking time when you can’t have orgasms.
Finally, when Davies and I both reach a point where it’ll be safe, and our eggs should be ready to be delivered, H’looder lifts the orgasm restriction and…whooo, boy. Watch out.
But I have a special request.
Dr. H’looder, in a full mech suit, and with several techs, accompany us as Mohrn helps me with the walk.
I want to walk this and won’t let phem carry me.
It’s a gorgeous day, absolutely perfect, and the water is warm.
Thankfully, Mom’s not here today. Might make this…weird.
Giving birth to an egg in water is very common. Apparently it’s an old tradition or something. That we can do it here, in Mohrn’s special spot—a spot that’s special now to me, too, and where we�
�ve spent hundreds of hours sitting and talking—is even better.
I lie in Mohrn’s arms in the water, my head tipped back against pheir shoulder so phey can nuzzle the top of my shoulder and finally bite down.
I…
Well, let’s say it’s been a long thirty weeks.
But immediately on the heels of my pleasure, I feel a deeper, cramping sensation. And it doesn’t take long. Less than an hour later, we’re both crying and holding our baby between us.
Well, the egg. I mean, it doesn’t look like an “egg,” it’s sort of oblong, the outer casing flexible and thick now, and inside it we feel movement.
The techs immediately run scans while we’re holding it and give us the good news that our baby is doing fine. Moments later, we have the egg securely bundled in the special sling Dr. H’looder created, and it’s secured around Mohrn.
Our baby will be monitored constantly now, and there will always be a tech on-site with us. Mohrn sits there in the dirt, pheir arms around the bundled bulge pressed against pheir stomach, and sobs with joy so powerful it nearly knocks me over.
I kneel next to phem, holding them, crying with phem.
Our greatest blessing.
Later that night, we lie in bed, curled around our baby, our stomachs carefully pressed around it, surrounding it with our love. Meanwhile, in the guest bathroom, we hear Olarte gently talking Davies through his delivery in the bathtub while technicians and H’looder help.
I stare into Mohrn’s eyes and smile. We have another twenty weeks to go, but it looks like we’re going to be parents. The baby will continue developing, absorbing the yolk sac for nourishment, getting oxygen through the membrane of the egg. As pheir delivery draws close, the membrane will thin, dry out, and start ripping. Then we’ll know phey’re ready to be born.
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