by Amira Rain
Upon seeing Quiet, Jake startled, his big, brown eyes wide, but I held him in place on the couch with a firm hand, petting his head with my free hand. “It’s okay, buddy. You get to give Quiet and Plum some tuna treats today. And they’re going to be so happy and grateful that I think they’re going to want to be friends with you.”
I really hoped that was the way things were going to work out, anyway. If they didn’t, I knew Jake may be traumatized, and I definitely didn’t want that, but at the same time, I thought that what I was trying to do would be worth the risk, since he was traumatized on a daily basis anyway, sometimes several times.
Moving very slowly and surveying me with what I thought was a dubious sort of look, Quiet continued approaching, and I extended one of the tuna bowls toward him.
“Look, Quiet. Look. Tuna treat. It’s from your new buddy, Jake.”
As if actually understanding language and seriously doubting what I’d said, Quiet slowed in his already-slow approach, though he didn’t come to an outright stop. I was just glad he wasn’t hissing, which he normally did immediately upon seeing Jake.
“That’s it, Quiet. Just come say hi to Jake, so he can give you your yummy tuna treat.”
Quiet and Plum were both absolutely fanatical about tuna, to the point that I’d once turned my back while making a tuna salad sandwich, only to turn back around not even ten seconds later to find them up on the counter with their faces buried in the tuna bowl, both of them just gobbling it down.
When Quiet reached Jake and me, I set his bowl of tuna beside a trembling Jake, who I still had a firm hand on, then lifted Quiet up and set him down beside the bowl and Jake on the loveseat. To my surprise and relief, he didn’t hiss. In fact, he merely looked at Jake curiously for a moment or two before lowering his face to his tuna bowl, sniffing a bit, and then taking a great big bite. With his eyes like saucers, Jake just watched him, looking like he was afraid Quiet was going to take a great big bite out of him next.
Petting both Jake and Quiet, I turned my face toward the hallway and called out for Plum, surprised when she immediately came padding right out, probably having already been on her way. Seeing Quiet, and possibly catching the scent of tuna in the air, Plum came over pretty quickly, and I picked her up and sat her right next to Quiet. Now completely hemmed in by cats, Jake looked at me with eyes filled with clear terror, but I just continued petting him, picking up Plum’s bowl of tuna with my free hand and setting it in front of her.
“See this, Plum? Jake has tuna treats for you and Quiet. What a nice friend he is.”
With her face already buried in her bowl of tuna and cat treats, Plum wasn’t even listening to me, and I focused my efforts on soothing Jake.
Just a minute or two later, the cats finished their treats at about the same time, and both looked up, licking their mouths. Still trembling a bit, although not as much as he had been, Jake looked at them as if they were aliens.
Trying to stop his trembling altogether, I began slowly petting one of his silky-soft ears. “See, Jake? Plum and Quiet can be very nice kitties when they want to be. And Plum and Quiet, isn’t Jake such a nice boy? He gave you both tuna treats.”
I knew none of the animals could understand language, at least not word-for-word, but I was so intent on the cats developing some kind of a positive Pavlovian response toward Jake that I could hardly help myself.
Seemingly indifferent to what I was trying to do, the cats began grooming themselves, both licking their arms and paws while sitting up, but I was just thrilled that they weren’t hopping off the loveseat just yet, and I was also thrilled they weren’t hissing. Also, Jake was continuing to become more relaxed, taking his gaze off the cats for a few seconds to have a look inside one of their bowls, which had been licked clean.
“See, Jake? Nice kitties. And look…they brought a treat for you, too.”
I reached in my pocket and took out a bone-shaped crunchy dog treat for Jake, then extended it to him in the palm of my hand. Kind of keeping one eye on the cats, he gobbled it up, clearly now at ease enough to eat around the cats. While he crunched, they each glanced at him but still didn’t hiss.
When the cats both hopped off the loveseat a minute or so later, one right after the other, I was pretty satisfied that my little experiment had been a success. And later that afternoon, I got proof. While I was folding a load of towels in the laundry room with Jake gnawing on a rawhide bone at my feet, Plum sauntered in, took a quick look at Jake, and then sauntered back out, but she didn’t hiss. This was literally the first time that she’d come into close contact with Jake and hadn’t. Then, with Jake at my heels while I walked to the stairs to put the towels away, we passed Quiet, and not only did he not hiss at Jake, he actually quietly meowed at him as if to say hello. I soon practically bounced up the stairs, smiling.
My good mood continued all afternoon while I contemplated my pregnancy and imagined what Ryan’s reaction was going to be when I gave him his gift. When he arrived home for dinner around seven, I could hardly contain myself, sure I was grinning like an idiot. Grinning himself, Ryan pulled me into his arms, gave me a kiss, and asked what had me in such a great mood.
Resisting the urge to giggle, I just shrugged. “Oh, I’m just really happy to see you is all.”
Mouth twitching with amusement, he gave me a dubious sort of look. “Is that all? Because I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen you smile quite as big as you were smiling the moment I stepped in the door.”
I suddenly wondered if maybe he knew, like maybe someone had seen me going into the baby boutique and had told him. However, in case he didn’t know, I still wanted to play it as cool as possible, so I just shrugged again.
“Well, Jake and the cats kind of became friends this afternoon, which made me really happy, so maybe a little part of my smile was about that.”
Pawing at Ryan’s side, waiting for some love and a greeting, Jake woofed once, as if wanting to helpfully lend validation to my story about why I’d been smiling so hard.
Looking from Jake to me, Ryan said he was happy to hear that the animals were now getting along better. “I thought you might be able to get them to make peace sooner or later.”
I told him how I’d done it, and he smiled, then said I was a very smart, creative, loving woman.
“All things that make me certain that you’re going to be an amazing mother someday.”
I suddenly couldn’t wait until after dinner to give him his gift, like I’d planned.
“I’m pregnant.”
The words just kind of shot right out of my mouth.
Ryan had been caressing my back with a hand, and he now abruptly stopped, his eyes widening and his mouth dropping open. His expression told me that despite what I’d thought, no one had told him anything, and he really hadn’t had a clue.
While I just stood there, grinning, he swallowed, then spoke in a quiet voice.
“You’re…you’re really pregnant?”
I nodded, grinning even harder. “Christine did two tests this morning. Both were positive.”
Before I knew it, Ryan had picked me up off my feet, squeezing me tightly.
“You’re pregnant.”
With my arms around his neck, I nodded with the side of my face against his shoulder, sniffling a bit. “Yes. We’re really going to be parents. We’re really going to have a sweet, healthy baby of our own. Everything is going to be just perfect.”
Later, I would recall these words, wondering if I’d jinxed myself.
CHAPTER NINE
The first few weeks of my pregnancy really were perfect. Although I was unusually tired, I only had a few brief, fairly mild bouts of morning sickness. Ryan babied me during each one, bringing me plain toast and mugs of herbal tea in bed, always asking me if I needed anything else. He’d been able to be at home a lot more, because for whatever reason, the Graywolves hadn’t been causing much trouble. Some people in the village were even starting to suggest that maybe they’d simply given up in t
heir plan to claim more land beyond Shadow Fen.
To her complete disbelief and extreme joy, Jill joined Hillary, me, and the rest of the pregnant women in Briarwood in the “village pregnancy club.” Very early in her and David’s marriage, she’d become pregnant but had miscarried almost immediately, and in the three years since then, she hadn’t been able to conceive again. Despite the fact that several doctors had found absolutely nothing medically wrong with her that might prevent a future pregnancy, she’d almost been ready to give up and just accept the fact that it might just never happen again for her. Now she was simply over the moon, and whenever she, Hillary, and I got together, we pretty much spent the entire time smiling and laughing, all of us virtually drunk off our pregnancy joy.
However, during my fourth week of pregnancy, just as spring was shifting into summer, hot and humid, I started having some unusual symptoms that troubled me. My stomach felt horribly bloated all the time, even though I wasn’t having any digestive issues at all. I couldn’t even button my regular-sized pants and shorts anymore, and I had to start wearing shorts with an elastic waistband.
Surveying my stomach one day, Hillary smiled. “Look at you. You’ve got a baby bump already. My mom started showing really early, too, and she got horrible stretch marks. You better start using some cocoa butter lotion at least two or three times a day.”
I did, each time feeling like my stomach had gotten a little bigger, even if only a couple of hours had passed. Then, within a few days, I started getting sharp pains low in my stomach if I stood up too fast, and sometimes even while I was walking.
Hillary assured me that these pains were perfectly normal. “I read in one of my pregnancy books that many women get them in their first trimester. It’s just your ligaments stretching while your uterus expands. As long as you’re not having any cramps or bleeding, you’re perfectly fine. Maybe go see Christine when you can, though, just to make sure.”
Ryan heartily seconded that idea when, over lunch that afternoon, I told him about my funny pains. “I actually think you should see Christine right away, right after lunch. I’ll tell Steb to lead afternoon patrol so I can go with you.”
An hour or so later, after giving me an exam, Christine said everything seemed perfectly fine. “Your uterus is definitely slightly larger than I’d expect at this point in your pregnancy, but that doesn’t in any way mean that anything is wrong. Some babies just grow faster than others at this stage, and some women just have uteruses that expand rapidly during the first trimester. I’ll see you again in a week, though, just to check everything again and see how you’re doing. And if you’ve gotten any bigger by then, maybe we’ll do an ultrasound, but I don’t think there’s any real reason to do one today.”
Relieved, Ryan and I left Christine’s little office hand-in-hand, and on the way home, we even joked that maybe our baby was just fast-growing because it was a shifter baby.
Steering his truck around a corner, Ryan glanced over at me, smiling. “If it’s a boy who’ll turn into a shifter wolf like his daddy, I bet he’ll be the biggest wolf the world has ever seen. In his human form, he’ll probably be seven feet tall.”
Feeling infinitely better than during the drive to Christine’s office, I laughed briefly. “A seven-foot-tall son from a mom who’s barely five-foot-four? Somehow, I kind of doubt that. I think he’ll be lucky if he reaches five-foot-nine.”
Just then, even though I was just sitting, I experienced a semi-sharp pain in my lower abdomen. It definitely wasn’t excruciating, by any means, but it was painful enough to cause me to take a sharp intake of breath through my teeth. With his amused expression immediately turning into one of alarm and worry, Ryan asked me what was wrong.
After exhaling slowly, I shook my head. “Oh, nothing. Just another little pain. I think our baby is growing by leaps and bounds even as we speak.”
Glancing over at me repeatedly, frowning, Ryan didn’t respond right away. “I think we should go back to Christine’s. I’m going to insist that you have an ultrasound today, just to make sure-“
“No, Ryan, she really didn’t seem to think that was necessary. These pains are just ligaments stretching, nothing more. And besides, I’m starting to feel really tired, and I honestly just want to go home and lie down. Will you please just keep driving us home?”
Ryan reluctantly agreed, although not without giving me a few more worried glances followed by a deep sigh. “I want you to tell me if these pains increase, though. If you start having more than a few a day, I want to take you back to see Christine.”
“Okay, deal.”
Back at the house, Ryan seemed reluctant to leave me to go back out on patrol, and I finally told him to just go. “I’ll call you if I have more than one or two more pains over the course of the afternoon. Okay? I promise. But right now, I’m ready to snuggle with my fur-babies and take a nice, long nap.”
Just a few days earlier, snuggling with all my “fur-babies” at once had finally become possible. After numerous “tuna treat” sessions, Jake, Plum, and Quiet were now officially all friends. And maybe they weren’t the best of friends, but good enough friends to where I could pull them all into bed with me to snuggle up for a nap, and they wouldn’t fight, hiss, or bother each other in the least. Plum had even fallen asleep curled up against Jake’s side once, and he hadn’t seemed to mind at all.
Eventually, after twice making me promise to call him if my pains increased or if I felt unwell in any way, Ryan left to go back out on patrol. Late in the afternoon, he’d join the men on logging patrol that day, probably not arriving home for dinner until after seven, maybe even eight. On these “double duty” days, I’d learned to make use of the crockpot for dinner so that it didn’t really matter when he came home, dinner would still be ready when we were and not burned. This was especially helpful on nights when a kiss at the door turned into a whole lot more. This had happened already on several occasions. One night, a kiss at the door had somehow led to Ryan carrying me into the bedroom, and we only realized that we hadn’t eaten dinner yet around ten o’ clock. Ryan had been pretty aghast for my sake, saying that he was sure it wasn’t healthy for a pregnant woman to miss a meal, but I’d just laughed. Over the previous couple of hours, he’d thoroughly distracted me to the point that I hadn’t noticed a single hunger pang.
After my nap with Jake, Plum, and Quiet, I got up, used the restroom, and then began applying a dollop of cocoa butter lotion to my stomach, stunned and vaguely alarmed to feel that my little baby bump had grown larger, seemingly while I’d slept. Surveying my reflection in the mirror from the side, I was almost positive that it had. Unless I’m just retaining water, I thought. I had maybe overindulged on some potato chips at lunch, and I’d also had a thick slice of ham with my eggs at breakfast. Briefly discussing my dietary habits with me at my appointment, Christine had encouraged me to try to limit my sodium intake and to include more fruits and vegetables in my meals. That’s all it is, I told myself. You’re just retaining water from eating too much salt.
Except that the next day, I kept my sodium intake to a bare minimum, and my baby bump still got a bit larger. Even the elastic waistband pants and shorts I’d been wearing were a bit too tight now. Wondering if it was possible that maybe I was having twins, I redoubled my efforts with the cocoa butter, wanting to avoid the numerous stretch marks I was pretty sure would come with two babies.
Over the next several days, my baby bump grew larger, I continued experiencing periodic ligament-stretching pains, and my appetite went off the charts. Ravenous, I started eating anything that wasn’t nailed down, whether it had sodium in it or not. If I’d had to guess, I would have said that I’d started to eat maybe double the amount of food that I normally did on a daily basis. I was eating for two, I figured, although I knew that that expression was never meant to be taken literally.
On the fifth day since my appointment with Christine, I had lunch at the café with Jill, Hillary, and another mom-to-be, a young woman named C
laire. More than a bit embarrassed about my extraordinarily large appetite, I ordered two lunches and two fruit smoothies, and then polished everything off before my fellow expectant moms had even finished their single lunches. While Jill chattered to Claire about something, Hillary studied me over the rim of her iced coffee cup. When Jill had stopped talking and went back to her chicken sandwich, Hillary asked if I wouldn’t mind standing up for a second.
Not comprehending why she might want me to, I looked at her across the outdoor café table, frowning. “What? Why?”
She glanced over at Claire before returning her gaze to me. “I just want to take a look at your baby bump. Just indulge me for a second.”
Still a little hungry, unbelievably, I picked up a pickle chip that Jill had discarded, ate it quickly, and then sighed, my gaze on Hillary. “Look. I know my bump is a little big for five weeks pregnant, but Christine told me that some women just naturally get bigger faster. Not to mention that I’ve been eating like a horse. Also, not to mention that I remembered this morning that my mom told me something once about several sets of twins somewhere not too far back in our family tree. So-“
“Come on. Just stand up and let us take a peek.”
Knowing that Hillary probably wasn’t going to take no for an answer, I finally got up, sighing again. “All right. Everyone have a good look.” So that they could do just that, I smoothed my shirt over my bump and held it in place. “Yes, I know it’s huge.”
After exchanging glances with Hillary and Jill, Claire looked at me with her chocolate-brown eyes slightly wide. “You’re as big as I was at five months.”
Claire was one of the “original” Briarwood wives, the women who’d already been married when their husbands had become shifters, and she and her husband Tom already had a two-year-old little girl.