Sometimes he even let her get them all off before he had his head between her legs.
She giggled as she put the transporter down and walked into the house. When she got in, she could hear Rager talking to someone. A quick glance told her it was a meeting, so she went to the kitchen. She let them know she was home, then went up to their bedroom and out to the veranda. It was still her favorite place in the house.
It had taken some time, but the house was back to normal, and everything had been peaceful. The leaders of the revolution had been banished from the alien sectors, forever, and had chips between their shoulder blades, where they wouldn’t be easily removed. To ensure they didn’t get help removing the chips, each person was left in a different location, far from anyone else. This would also make it hard for them to get back to the sectors.
Lunch was brought up, but Rager didn’t appear, so she ate on her own with Katy curled up in her lap. It was the life she’d become used to, and instead of complaining, she put her music on and pulled out a cloth bag from her closet. Back out on the veranda, she took out the projects she’d been working on.
Her mom’s babies would be here soon, and it was cool already, so she’d taken apart several old sweaters she’d found and cleaned the yarn to make blankets and outfits for the babies. She’d even found some yarn that had managed to survive the apocalypse in sealed plastic, but they weren’t the best colors for boys .
Her mom was having a boy and a girl so the girl colors would be fine for that baby . She hadn’t found out what she was having yet. The baby was always in the wrong position when they did a scan, so it was still a mystery.
She’d already made two afghans with crochet patterns she’d found in a book in the library, with instructions on how to do it, and she wanted to try her hand at knitting. She had to finish the outfits first, though. She’d knit two more blankets or so, then try to make some socks and other things.
The legs didn’t exactly match on one outfit, so she spent the rest of the afternoon sorting that, and then started to try to follow the instructions for knitting. Rager found her there, an hour later, in tears at the mess that she’d made.
“Ann! Why are you crying?” He knelt down in front of his mate. She had on a long sweater now over her t-shirt and a pair of leggings, and he brushed the panels of the warm garment away to cradle her stomach.
“I can’t figure out how to do this knitting shit!” she exclaimed through her tears. She looked down at him, miserable at her inability to master something that was supposed to be so simple.
“Have you ever done it before?” he asked patiently as he wiped at her tears with his large thumbs.
“No,” she whispered through a tight throat.
“Have you ever seen it actually done before?” His voice was patient and he leaned in to kiss her damp cheek. His orange eyes met hers and her heart swelled with the understanding and… maybe it was love that she could see. Her lips crooked up at the corners.
“No.” She looked miserable and she knew it, but she couldn’t help it. She’d looped, twisted, poked, and pulled it all apart, time after time, but she couldn’t seem to make what she did match with what was in the handy-dandy instructional picture.
“I’ll find out if any of the people in our sector know and have them come to teach you if they want to. How does that sound?” He was still patient as he knelt there, his face wreathed in an understanding smile.
“That sounds good.” She pushed the tangled yarn away and put her hands over his as they went back to her belly. “I can feel it moving now. It kicks a lot too, especially today.”
“How far are you now?” he asked, and she had to think about it.
“I think around six months.” She thought about it and spoke again. “That’s what Skye figured anyway.”
“We have to figure out a better way of keeping track of dates.” He sat down on the floor, at her feet, and kicked his legs out. We could always start a new calendar.”
“I think the humans on this side of Earth are used to our calendar. A new one might be confusing.” She thought it might be too hard to learn a new one, no matter how simple it might be.
“You’re right. Even if it wasn’t exactly accurate.” His smile made her grin and nudge at his legs with her feet.
“Well, that’s as may be, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s the one we know.” She moved from the chair and straddled him with her legs. “Besides, your mate says she doesn’t want to learn a whole new calendar. She likes the old one.”
She hovered over him, a grin on her face as he leaned back to look up at her, hunger already in his fiery eyes. His smell filled her nose, and her own desire flared into life. She moved closer, her lips almost on his eyes. She flicked her eyes up to his and gave him a sultry smile.
“We’ll keep your calendar then. Just kiss me, Ann, before I go insane.”
So, she did.
8
“The baby is fine, Ann, and if you want to know what you’re having, I can tell you now.”
Ann looked over at Rager, and he smiled down at her. It was the first time he’d come in with her, and like a miracle, their baby had finally let them know what gender it was.
“I think,” but her words trailed off as a long scream came from the hall followed by a volley of profanity.
“Help, my wife’s in labor!” a man screamed from the waiting area, and everyone but Ann ran into the room.
It must be earthlings, Ann thought, the man had said wife.
“I’ll tie your fucking dick in a knot, you fucking animal!” Ann heard a woman, obviously in deep pain, growl. “Come near me again, think I’m ever going through this again, and see what you get!”
Ann’s jaw dropped as the woman continued to rant at the man. Skye must have taken her down the hall to another room, because the screams, and the swearing, became little more than a faint impression of sound.
Ann leaned back onto the exam table, a little scared by the woman’s vehement denial that she was ever going to let the man get her pregnant again. Was the pain that bad?
She reached over to the table where some towels rested, wiped the gel off of her stomach, and rearranged her clothes. A pair of sweat pants and a very large sweatshirt were all she was able to fit into now. Her stomach had become quite large, almost overnight, which was another reason Rager had come.
They were both concerned. Rager’s people only stayed pregnant for 6 months and she’d already beaten that timeframe, but maybe her pregnancy wouldn’t last as long as an Earthling’s would. From what Skye told them, the baby was fine, just big.
“Fuck, I forgot we have medicine for this,” Rager said as he came back into the room, his face flushed and clouded with a look of shock. “We have equipment that you’ll all need too. I have to make some calls.”
Just as quickly as he came into the room he left. All Ann could do was watch and wait for somebody to come back. Skye eventually sent someone back to her room to tell her she could go home. Skye was deep in the middle of a delivery and couldn’t leave the woman. Ann understood, so she went out to find Rager.
She finally noticed a heavy weight in her bag, and sure enough, Katy was in there, sleeping in the open largest section of the huge bag’s compartments. Ann mainly used it for when she was out gathering supplies, but lately, it was just a convenient bag to keep on her. Especially since Katy had figured out how to pull the zipper down with her teeth.
“You’re going to get me in trouble one of these days. Not everybody likes dogs, you know?” Ann stroked the dog’s head when she popped it out of the compartment to see why she’d been lifted. The dog licked the tip of her finger, then disappeared back to sleep in the bag. “Lazy little critter.”
It was better than the alternative, the hyper puppy that she’d first been given had calmed down and now spent most of her days asleep. Ann was glad she was also a little bit independent, as long as Katy knew where she was, she would run off on her own to walk or play.
&n
bsp; “Let’s see how long it takes him to notice.” Ann stood at the waiting area desk and watched Rager march back and forth. He was talking to some of his people to get some kind of pain medicine and equipment down here from their mother ship.
From the sound of the screams coming from the end of the hall, the pain medicine would be a relief, and the equipment definitely useful. She stood there, patient as always. When he turned to her with a guilty look, she smiled. “It’s okay. I know you’re helping. Get it sorted, then you can take me home.”
He nodded and carried on with the conversations. The woman’s screams were stressful and didn’t help to ease her mind about what birth would be like. From the sounds of it, it was the most torturous experience a person could have. She’d read a couple of books she’d managed to scavenge early in her pregnancy, and knew what could, would, and might happen. The whole thing didn’t seem pleasant, but all the women she knew said that pregnancy and birth were worth the baby you got at the end. She grimaced and turned away from the screams. They would say that though, wouldn’t they?
She wasn’t sure anything was worth those pitiful wails she heard. Maybe those results weren’t typical.
“She won’t be screaming like that for much longer. I don’t know how it slipped our minds, but we have the means to make this all better. You won’t feel any kind of pain like that and we have equipment that makes the process much easier.” Rager came up behind her and hugged her close.
She lifted her head, smiled, and kissed his jaw. “That makes it less scary.”
“Good.” Rager kissed the top of her head and pulled away. “Let’s get you home, and away from all that screaming. I’ve told them to bring some of the pain medicine straight down here to the clinic.”
“So, what’s it like, this medicine?” She was curious to know. There’d been methods to block pain before the cataclysm, but they came with their own drawbacks.
“It’s a cream that’s applied to the skin. It blocks the pain signals without causing the euphoria and problems that we had with old medicines. It only blocks the pain, so it won’t harm the baby or the mother, and because it’s applied to the skin, you don’t get some of the problems that might come with injecting at the site of pain.”
“That doesn’t sound like it would help much, actually,” she said as they climbed into the transporter. “Are you sure it actually works? Has it been tried before?”
“Our people use it for a variety of pains. It can’t stop the pain, in this case, she’s going through some major physical stress, but it will block her from knowing how much pain she’s in. That will calm her and make the experience a much better one.”
“Will it make her muscles not work?” Ann wasn’t exactly sure how to say it. “I mean, will she be able to push the baby out?”
“Of course. It blocks the sensation of pain, not the nerve signals that control the muscles.” Rager took the controls and they were soon on their way back to the house.
Ann had planned a couple of stops before they went back to the house, but decided that going home was probably for the best. She was tired, and a little stressed herself, after hearing that poor woman’s screams. Rager’s news about pain relief was welcomed, but it still didn’t calm her mind about what her body would go through during birth.
Women used to die from complications, what if that happened? Would this equipment help with those complications?
“What is this equipment you’re having brought down?” She picked at a piece of lint on her sweatshirt, her mind in a whirl.
“It’s a robot, basically. A robotic doctor. It can do all kinds of things, scans, monitor, and diagnose problems before they even happen in some cases.” He gave her a smile that made her feel better before he turned back to the task at hand. “It’s got quite a few different abilities and comes with hands so finely tuned they can pick up a scalpel and do surgery if needed.”
“I’m not sure I’m ready for robot surgery,” she scoffed and held her hands over her stomach.
“No, it’s quite safe, really,” he reassured her and reached over to pat her knee. “The same machine has done surgery on many hearts and brains in my world. If it can do that kind of surgery, it can handle anything.”
“Wow, yeah, that is pretty good.” Brain and heart surgery, she thought, that was impressive. “So, there’s not a lot I need to worry about then.”
“No, the days when you women have to suffer through birth are over. I’m still not sure why you don’t have the same kind of solutions in your world.” He sighed with a perplexed look. “Maybe it’s because you were so busy making war with each other?”
“From what you’ve said your people are war-mongers too, Rager!” She protested his dig at her world. “You all even came here as a military force, and still dress as soldiers.”
“Ah, but there’s a difference. My people are used to defending themselves from constant invasion attempts from outsiders. We also don’t make war on each other. We just defend.”
“Then you had time to find better solutions to the problems your people face. That still doesn’t explain why you came here as a military force.” She glared at him, a little angered by the way he always made out that her world was inferior to his.
He might be right, but that didn’t mean he had to point it out as often as he did. It had started to annoy her, and she wasn’t in the mood for it right now.
He had the good grace to look sheepish at least.
“You’re right about that. We wanted to make sure if there were any of you left that you understood we were taking control of the planet,” he said without a lot of inflection.
“You invaded us, you mean,” she pushed, wanting him to say the words.
“No, not invaded. Well, maybe. We didn’t know how many of you there’d be left, and we thought it would likely be void of life. From what we could make of your people, there probably wasn’t much chance of survival. But if there were some of you left, we wanted you to know we were in charge.”
Rager landed the transporter and the shell opened. She stood up, turned back to look at him, and tilted her head in a way that left little doubt that she was a little bit miffed.
“Well, you made sure of that.” She crossed her arms over her chest, or tried to, but ended up with her arms somewhere under her breasts. “I’m going to the bedroom.”
“Ann? Why are you angry with me?” He followed behind her, quick to help her down.
“Because you’re always putting things down here. Nothing is ever good enough; nothing is up to your level of superiority.” She waved her hands over her head, as if to say his level was way over her head. “But, I can tell you this much, Rager. This planet made me, the people made me, and that means that I’m inferior according to what you’ve said.”
“Now that’s a jump in logic. How do you get that, Ann? I never said you were inferior.” He stared down at her, annoyance in his voice now.
She hadn’t wanted to start an argument, but she felt she had to say this, and if he didn’t like it, fuck him. She was tired of it.
“No, but everything on this planet is. And by extension, that means I am too, Rager. Don’t you get that? Some of your people didn’t want you to be mated to me, because I’m inferior to your people. That’s what they thought. You only think I’m not because I’m your mate. Otherwise, you’d think me, and soon this baby, aren’t equal to you.” She turned on the doorstep, her hands cradled around her stomach. “Don’t you see? You might not have outright said I’m not equal to you, but you have by the other things you’ve said.”
“Oh.” He looked like he wanted to argue with her about what she’d said, but then couldn’t think of an argument. “I don’t think you’re inferior though, Ann.”
“Then stop putting everything here down, even if you don’t mean to. I know I’m just being emotional because of hormones,” she rolled her eyes at herself when tears started to sting to life and swiped the tears away. “But it gets old, you know? And why am I not s
upposed to think I’m inferior, when all you do is say what I come from and what my world accomplished wasn’t good enough? That the people of my world weren’t as enlightened as yours, and therefore not as good? I’m a part of that community, you know.”
“I do. I’m sorry.” He didn’t say it petulantly, or with rancor, he just simply apologized. “I should have been more aware of what I was saying. Or not saying, in this case.”
“Thank you.”
They walked into the house, hand in hand, and Ann wondered, again, if he loved her. She looked up at him, this man that had been a stranger to her when she was mated to him, and felt her heart swell. She hadn’t told him how she felt, not in those words. She’d proven her love with her actions, and she just wanted the same in return.
She hadn’t realized until that moment just how much it stung when Rager made what he thought were off-hand remarks about her home planet. Yeah, their world had been shit for a lot of people, and it hadn’t been a good place for a long time, if it ever really had been, but it wasn’t all bad. She’d just wanted him to acknowledge that.
“Want to come upstairs with me?” she asked in a soft voice, a voice that always got his attention.
“Always, Ann.”
9
“I don’t want to see this,” Ann whispered to Skye as she walked into the clinic a few weeks later.
Skye came to a sudden halt and looked back at her friend. “What?”
“I’m afraid… you know, the tearing, the screaming, the… mess…” Ann frowned, ashamed to admit any of it, but her fear was stronger than her sense of shame.
“But it’s beautiful!” Skye exclaimed; her head tilted now. With her dark skin, the lightness of her eyes was pronounced.
“Beautiful? The books I’ve read tell me it’s a nightmare. And I saw pictures in one book. I thought it was impossible for a baby’s head to come out of that area, but I got a full view of what it looks like, and beautiful is the last thing I’d call it.”
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