Chapter 20
REMY
When I first found out I was pregnant, I wasn’t sure what kind of pregnancy it would be.
Was I having a human baby? Was I having a shifter baby?
Would my pregnancy look human? Would it look like a koala pregnancy?
There was no way to determine the answers besides waiting and seeing.
If I went into my second trimester without any shifter happenings, I was going to have a human birth.
I was getting close to there, and I’d become more confident as the days rolled by that our baby was going to take after his alpha father, or at least the birth would. But this morning, when I stepped into the shower, I saw how wrong I was.
My pregnancy was still fairly early on, but I’d developed a nice little round belly.
If you saw me from the right angle, you knew I was pregnant, but I was hardly popping at the seams yet.
And if you saw me straight on, you might think I had a few too many burgers at most. That wasn’t the unusual part.
Having a small bump at this point in the pregnancy was normal.
Having a dark red line across my torso just below my rib cage—that was the part that wasn't. At least not for humans.
“Honey,” I called out, glad my mate could hear me. He was in the bathroom in only a few seconds. “I want you to see something.”
“When you say you want me to see something, do you mean get naked and come in the shower with you and see something?” He waggled his eyebrows, and I nearly cackled. “Or… do you mean you’ve got a weird mole you want me to check out?”
“Neither. Both. I mean, yes, come under the water, but also, it’s not a mole, I promise.” How did we get talking about moles?
It didn’t take him long to come under the water with me, and I took his finger and traced the red line with it.
“What is that? Did you have, like, your seat belt too tight or something?”
I could see how he’d think that, now that he’d said it.
“No, feel it again.”
He ran his fingers gently across it.
“Harder, please.”
He pressed down. “Oh, it’s like… bumpy. So it wasn’t your seat belt.”
“You know how I’m a koala?” Please don’t let him freak out.
“I’m well aware that you turn into the cutest and softest koala on the planet, yes.” He did love my beast, and my koala loved him right back.
“I think our baby is one too.”
“Wait, what do you mean? Like, you have… Oh, my gods.”
I could see the second he pieced it together.
“You’re gonna have a pouch.”
“Yeah, I’m gonna have a pouch, which means I need to call in sick this week and kind of chill as my koala.
Because trust me, it’s much cuter to have our little one go into their pouch than to have it in human form.
” I’d seen that before as a teen and nope.
Just nope. According to my sex ed, the koala was safer too, and that was enough for me to have it non-negotiable.
“You can do that? You can give birth as your animal?”
“Yes and no. It’s not really giving birth because our baby’s also human.
It’s like moving where they’re growing.” I tried to give him an anatomy lesson, and all it was doing was making it worse.
The more I explained, the less that made sense, but in the end, he seemed to be fine without a full understanding of the science.
He helped me wash my hair, knowing I loved it.
I’d already washed it, but I wasn’t going to turn down the offer.
After we were done with the shower, we ordered a huge-ass shipment of eucalyptus branches to be delivered overnight.
It cost a fortune, but it was going to keep my koala happy, and that was pretty much the point, especially since he was going to be doing the hard stuff for us right now.
Order done, the two of us worked together and built a cozy bed for my koala. If I’d been a bird shifter, we’d have called it a nest. In a lot of ways, it was like one, but it was also like a little pillow fort.
“Are you going to be okay in your fur but not able to climb?”
I loved how he understood my beast and his needs. This time was different than other shifts, but in any other case, not climbing would be a real issue
“Only because of why he’s out. He’s gonna be tired and too busy with you to worry about trees.”
My mate squatted down and kissed my belly. “You need to be good for Daddy, okay? Promise me.” He stood up. “What did he say?”
“He said nothing, and we don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl. They’ll be good, though. My koala isn’t nervous, and if something was going wrong, he would be.”
I called an old school friend who I knew had already given birth and asked to make sure I had the timelines correct. According to him I had until the next day before I should shift. We took that as an opportunity to head into town and pick up any supplies either of us might need.
We both made arrangements at work and then snuggled on the couch, enjoying our last night together as two humans for a while.
It was difficult to say how long it would take for my koala to do his thing.
It could be one day, it could be four, but during that time, my mate and I wouldn’t be able to talk to each other with words, and I knew that was going to be hard for Hari.
The next morning, we woke to the sound of the delivery truck beeping as it backed into our driveway.
“I didn’t think you’d be here so soon.” I walked out, my pajamas on and not caring who saw me.
“Making the flower deliveries for some local florist, too, and you were along the way.” Which was good for me to know, because it meant maybe I could pick some branches up locally next time. Although he probably had a lot more than eucalyptus branches in there.
He brought the boxes out of the truck and set them on the pavement, probably thinking I was doing some sort of outside decorating with them. Because who in their right mind got that much eucalyptus? We signed for it, and after he left, we brought it all in.
“Are these going to stay nice long enough?”
“They do or they don’t, but at least we have them.” We piled leaves out of their box right next to the bed we’d made for my koala.
It was time.
“I love you, and as soon as our little one makes their journey out into the pouch, I’ll shift back. Promise.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” He kissed me, and I took my koala form.
I thought it was going to be a rough time for both of us, but it wasn’t. I climbed up on the couch with my mate and snuggled next to him. My koala gave me full access to our eyes and ears. He wasn’t trying to be in control. He was trying to help.
We watched a marathon of an old vampire show I loved. I ate far too much eucalyptus, and then when it was time for bed, I climbed in beside Hari and fell asleep.
I’d been worried this would go on for days.
I shouldn’t have been. I awoke in the middle of the night, my stomach squeezing.
I went back and forth on whether I should wake my mate or not but ultimately decided to do so.
He deserved to see every moment of this and would feel left out if I let him sleep.
It wasn’t comfortable, I wouldn’t say that it was, but it was manageable.
My mate took out the book that we bought for the occasion and started reading to me.
We decided it would be better to have something planned out like that, where I could hear his voice and he wouldn’t feel like he needed to make up something, come up with affirmations, or accidentally ask questions I couldn’t answer, only causing increased stress on both sides.
As he read me the story of a man who accidentally crossed into the land of the Fae, I listened to the lull of his words and let my beast do what he needed to do.
Our little one might’ve been tiny, but did I ever feel him coming out.
Then, as the story went on, the human becoming a prince of the Fae, not realizing time was slipping away in his own land, our little one worked his way out and into the pouch.
He was tiny. We could hardly see him, and it was hard not to help.
Once our little one completed their trek, my koala fell away, pouch nice and sealed. The red line was still there.
“He’s going to stay there for the rest of your pregnancy?”
“Yep. He won’t peek out like a joey. He just moved homes.”
“Can you go back to work and in public?”
“It’ll just look like any other baby belly unless I do a strip tease, and even then it would look like I had an accident and not that I had a pouch.”
“I vote the strip teases be reserved only for me.” He set the book down and crossed over to where I lay, helping me up. “Deal?”
“Deal, alpha mine. Deal.”