Chapter Sixteen
Temple
I was huge, beyond huge, and I still had two months left in this pregnancy.
I asked the midwife every time I saw him if I had twins or triplets in my belly.
He assured me there was only one, which was scarier.
If this was one baby, I was going to be giving birth to a toddler.
I’d already had to go up a size in paternity pants, and those were snug.
I’d gotten to the point where I was pretty much living in joggers, but today, I put on “real” pants.
I was leaving the joggers behind and heading back to the diner for what I was told was to pick up something I had forgotten when I moved.
It was the worst excuse to get me there ever, but I played along, pretending I didn’t know about the baby shower they had planned for me.
Gary was thrilled that I had settled down, gotten out of this town, and was now growing a family.
Both he and Layla had deemed themselves our little one’s grandparents, and I was glad for it.
If my parents had been around, they wouldn’t have created a healthy environment for our little one to be in.
I’d have spent my time wishing for grandparents just like Gary and Layla.
But on the way to my shower, my mate and I stopped at my brothers’ pack, the one that would have been mine had I not become alpha omega.
Gabe was a miracle worker when it came to interpack relations and had somehow gotten my birth pack to see that my brothers weren’t responsible for what our fathers had or hadn’t done.
He also proved to them that my brothers needed the structure of a pack to survive and that without it, the pack was at risk.
I wasn’t sure pack was going to make them any less assholes, but from the short visit we’d had today, pack life was doing well by them.
I didn’t think I’d ever love them the way brothers “should” love each other, but I was growing to understand and forgive them for the crap they put me through, knowing that they too were hurting and it was their way of dealing with it.
That didn’t make them my brothers in my heart, not really.
They were just people I used to know, and we were still on the fence about whether our baby would ever meet them or not.
Currently, I was leaning toward not right away.
“Are you glad you went?” Gabe asked about ten minutes down the road from their pack lands.
“I am. It’s good that they’re in a better place, and, seeing that…I’m not unhappy about it. But I’m okay if we don’t go back there any time soon.” In my daily life, I had to be fairly diplomatic, but when it was just Gabe and I, I tried to never sugarcoat my words or hold back.
“Then we won’t,” he said, putting his hand on my knee. “But if you ever change your mind, just tell me.”
“Will do. Is it bad that I thought it was cool that they have to bare their necks to me. It must’ve really burned their butts that I, their human sibling, was now their superior.”
“First of all, you’re not human. You just don’t have a wolf.”
It was a semantic game I didn’t understand, but to him and our pack, I was a wolf, a full-on wolf. My lack of furriness didn’t change that because my omega father was a wolf and that was that. I didn’t feel the same, but I was growing to accept that was how others saw me.
“And second of all, heck yeah it was. That may make me petty, but watching them do that filled me with pride.”
Best. Mate. Ever. Feeding into my pettiness like that.
“I got a surprise for us,” he said a few more miles down the road.
“Oh, a surprise? Do tell.”
“I booked a room for us at the motel so we don’t have to rush home.”
“You did? Please don’t tell me you got the big, fancy one with the sofa.”
“I made sure not to,” he chuckled.
I’d teased him about that room numerous times since we’d been together, how he picked the room where I’d be farthest away from him. Of course, when he got the room, he hadn’t picked it; it was given to him. Also, he hadn’t known I’d be coming back with him.
The motel was our first stop. We checked in and left our baggage in the room. We weren’t planning on staying long, but I was exhausted and ended up taking a power nap. I’d been doing a lot of that lately. Not long ones, just twenty, twenty-five minutes, but they were enough to keep me going.
We walked into the diner an hour later to see it covered with discount-store baby shower decorations from multiple decades.
It was like a time machine of baby decor, and it was fabulous.
I didn’t ask where they got it, and, really, it didn’t matter.
Whether they had saved it up over the years from other showers or if they found it in the back room of the general store, the fact that they took the time to put it up was everything.
“Surprise!” Layla said, waving her coffeepot. Yeah, she was never going to learn.
Quite a few of our regulars were there as well, and others I knew in town.
When you lived in a town as tiny as this one, even a baby shower was a big event.
I caught up with friends, ate lots of pie—because who wanted cake when there was pie—played the silliest baby shower games known to man, and laughed and laughed and laughed until it wasn’t only my mate who saw my exhaustion and said it was time to go.
It was everyone. Nodding off midsentence tended to give people the hint.
Still, I didn’t want to go. I was having too much fun.
“Come back in the morning,” Gary said. “I’ll make you a good breakfast. It’s good to see you so happy, son.” It wasn’t the first time he’d called me that, but each time he did, it hit me in the feels.
“I can’t wait.” I turned to Layla. “Maybe tomorrow, you can hold off on making the decaf until I get here?”
Decaf was known to be the dregs of the diner.
It sat there from dawn until somebody ordered it, if anyone ever did.
I’d taken to drinking it, not wanting to give up my coffee but also not wanting to caffeine-up the baby.
The fresher, the better because no matter how good it was, it wasn’t the same as high-test.
“Got you. See you in the morning.”
I was asleep before we even got back to the motel, my mate carrying me to bed. I snuggled close when he joined me.
“This room is so much better,” I mumbled against his chest.
“So much,” he said and kissed my head.
That was the last I remember before I fell into a deep slumber, filled with wild pregnancy dreams filled with baby diapers to the ceiling, a flying baby stroller, and a pot-roast sandwich. Because of course they were.