12. Chapter 12
Ewan
I was three days past my due date, and more than anything on this planet, I wanted to eat hay, lots and lots of hay, and maybe some grass from the pasture.
No other food sounded good—not the scrambled eggs my mate made me, or the grilled cheese, or the ice cream he scooped up after I asked for it.
Everything that sounded good today, no longer did once it was in front of me.
And that was how I found myself sneaking out of the house to break my promise to my Graham. I’d told him I wouldn’t shift past my due date, that I’d learned from Sue Ellen’s mistake. At the time, I’d meant that promise. I meant it with everything fiber of my being.
No one told me what this would be like or I might not have.
The smart thing to do would be to call Cora and tell her what I was going through.
She was the healthcare professional, after all.
But I wasn’t feeling smart. I was feeling hungry.
I waddled to the barn, skipping the pasture that was calling to me because I knew without a shadow of a doubt I’d be caught there.
One of my cousins would see me there, or worse, my mate would when he looked out the window.
As it was, I was on borrowed time. Graham was finishing up chili he promised my cousins, and once that was set to simmer, he’d be looking for me.
Graham didn’t like that I was past my due date. Not that I loved it, but it was pretty common for my breed. Cora said it was that the due dates were based on human biology and not ours. That did make sense. I didn’t love it though, because I was so ready to meet our little one.
I went into the barn and looked around to make sure my cousins weren’t here before taking off my clothes.
It was a lot more difficult at this stage of my pregnancy.
I’d taken to wearing slides two sizes too big on my feet because I tended to swell, and since I couldn’t see my feet, tying my shoes became problematic.
I was wearing my new uniform, sweats and a t-shirt, which made them easier to get off than any of my other clothes.
I laid them over the gate, ready to devour some hay, but there was a problem with that plan—there wasn’t any.
Crap. That meant I needed to get more, and where was that more located? In the freaking hay loft. It was as if the world were telling me to give up and go eat something from the kitchen. Heck, it was shouting that, but I pretended not to hear. I wanted that hay, and I’d come too far to give up.
I slipped on my slides and climbed up the ladder and into the loft. I took it slow, but that didn’t make this the safe choice. Once up, I tossed a bale of hay down. Of course, that was when Micah walked in.
“Explain to me why you’re wearing slippers in the loft, nine months pregnant, with your dick hanging out, please, because every scenario in my head is not good.”
Reality wasn’t going to be any better.
“You can’t tell my mate.” Graham was going to kill me.
“That’s your response? For me to keep this from your mate?” He pulled out his phone. “I need you down here with your feet on the ground. Safely. Or I’m dialing.”
“You’re an ass.”
He wasn’t. He was doing exactly what I would do in this position, but that didn’t mean I liked being caught.
Getting down was exponentially more difficult than getting up.
My belly kept hitting the rungs of the ladder.
I apologized to our little one each time it did and was grateful when I made it down without injury.
“I followed your rules. Put the phone away.”
“Slippers. Explain.”
He was so hung up on that.
“They’re not slippers. They are slides, you know, footwear you can wear anywhere. All the cool kids are wearing them.” I wasn’t sure about the last part, but the rest was true.
“Are you saying you’re a cool kid now?”
“Fuck off!” I was not in the mood. The hay was so close and yet so far away. It wasn’t fair.
“Real talk, I need to know what you were doing out here, or I am going to tell your mate. Not because I want to be a jerk, but I’m worried about you.”
How could I be mad at that? I wanted to be, though.
“Fine, I’ll tell you. But please don’t tell him. He’ll be mad.” I’d end up confessing. I hated keeping anything from my mate, including presents. It was rough at Christmas time.
“I’m fairly confident that’s true.”
“I wanted hay. I wanted hay so bad. Nothing tastes good. Nothing smells good. Nothing sounds good. Except hay.”
“You were going to shift now.” His eyes went wide.
I covered my face with my hand and mumbled, “Yes.”
When I uncovered it, he had the phone to his ear. “You need to come out to the barn.”
“You really did it. You called my mate.” Hadn’t he said he wouldn’t?
“Of course I did. And when he gets in here, I’m calling Cora. I can’t believe you tried to pull a Sue Ellen.” He smacked me on the side of the head, not hard, but enough to sting a little bit.
“I was trying to eat, nothing more.” Which was probably exactly what she had done too
My mate came bolting in, out of breath, his eyes going straight to my naked form. “Jeez, I’m not going to like this, am I?”
Micah squeezed his shoulder. “Oh, trust me, you’re not. I gotta make a call,” and he walked out.
“Mate, it’s not what it looks like.”
“Oh, it’s not that you wanted to eat that hay in there.” Why was it so easy for him to see? For the first time since we’d met, I wished he was more like Micah.
“Okay, it’s exactly what it looks like. But Micah…”
“Micah what? He stopped you, or are you saying he went up to the loft to get the hay?” My mate was not playing.
My eyes went to the ground.
“You went to the hayloft.”
“Yes?” It came out as more of a question than I’d intended.
“Come with me.” He grabbed my arm and made a beeline for the house. He didn’t drag me, making sure his pace was one I could keep up with, but there was no dilly or dallying. Once we were inside, he sent me to the shower. “Go clean off the barn. I need to call Cora.”
“No need to call her. I took care of it.” Micah came out from the kitchen with a bowl of chili in his hand. “This needs something.”
“You mean time to finish cooking?” My mate was in a bad mood, and it was 1,000,000% my fault.
“Sorry, it smelled so good.” He took another spoonful. It couldn’t be that bad. “As far as Cora goes, she’ll be here in fifteen minutes. I figured might as well eat while we waited.”
“You Highland bulls and your obsession with food,” my mate said.
I left to shower, not wanting to make things worse. My cousin was now getting the brunt of his anger as my mate went on and on about why chili needed time to cook and couldn’t be rushed. And when I came back out, Cora was there, and from her expression, she knew exactly what happened already.
“Do you know what it means when your beast wants hay so badly that nothing else tastes good at this junction of your pregnancy?”
“No.”
“It’s because your bull is trying to handle your labor and knows it will be easier for them if you’re in your hooves.” She had the same energy as my mate did now.
“Except I’m not in labor.”
“But you are. Your bull’s just hooking you up for a while, swallowing that pain for you like a boss, and what do you do?
Nearly make your labor ten times more difficult than it needs to be.
Your animal doesn’t know that being in hooves makes things worse, but you do.
” She pointed behind me. “Get in the bedroom and let me see how you’re progressing. ”
I didn’t argue, and my mate stayed by my side the entire time. She examined me. “The only shock was that you haven’t given birth already. Baby is so close. You’re going to be pushing in the next ten minutes.”
“But I don’t have any contractions.”
“Oh, you will.” She chuckled. “Don’t worry, you will.”
And less than thirty seconds later, she was proven right. The online birthing class my mate and I took talked about the slow progression of first-time labor and how at first it might just feel like your stomach was squeezing and how it could take hours or days to meet our little one.
I experienced none of that. The first contraction had me sure I was going to die and felt like it lasted a week. The second, which was only a minute later, was just as strong.
“Why did he stop keeping the pain?” For all I knew he’d been doing it since before I woke up. What a strong beast I had.
“Because at some point you need to push, and if you can’t feel the labor, you can’t feel when it’s time.”
I squeezed my mate’s hand as another contraction ripped through me. Each one felt longer, and the time between them shorter.
“I need someone to pat me on the back.” Cora looked up at me. “I’m getting so good at this.”
Exactly ten minutes in, and it was time to push.
She was enjoying herself being right far too much, and I couldn’t find the ability to care.
My body was now burning, and even if I wanted to disobey her directions to push, I couldn’t.
I needed to push as hard as I could. My alpha praised me, telling me how good I was doing, as I was wondering if I would make it through.
When she told me to take a break, I did, and then she had me pushing again. We went through that cycle four times before I heard the most glorious sound of my life—the crying of our son.
“Congratulations, dads.” She set him on my chest, where he started rooting around for his first meal. “You have a beautiful baby boy. Do you have a name for him?”
“We do.” My mate kissed my cheek. “We’re going to name him Stanford.”
“Like the college?”
“No,” I said, still partly out of breath, “like my grandfather.”
“Grandpa Stan was Stanford?” Micah asked. I hadn’t even been aware that he was in the room. I was too focused on my baby and my mate.
“Yeah, his dad thought if he named him that, he’d quote ‘be big-brained.’ He was one of the smartest men I’ve ever known, so maybe it worked.”
“I’m going to step outside and give you two a few minutes to bond, and when I come back in, I’ll help clean things up and make sure you are both still doing well. Until then, I’m go steal some of that chili.”
“I swear you all only ever think about your stomachs,” Graham said.
“Yeah, that’s pretty accurate.” She walked out.
When I looked up, my mate’s eyes were glued to our sweet baby boy. “Thank you, omega mine. Thank you for coming in my life and making me a father.”
“I should be the one thanking you. You are the one who bought me.”
“How about we don’t tell our kid that you’re technically my property. On second thought, it is a pretty good story.”
I reached up and put my hand on his cheek. “It’s my favorite story.”
“Mine, too, mate. Mine, too.”