Chapter Fifteen
Ralph
It had been a couple of weeks since we moved in, and our life here was wonderful. It took me but a second to get used to not being in the city. Sure, I missed some of my friends, but I was already making new ones here, and I’d never been quite the social butterfly that Craig had.
We divided up the different chores around the house, and I got lawn mowing. At the time, we had a riding mower, and I thought that would be cool. And it had been—the first and only time it worked. Now, I had a little push mower, and I was an hour or two into mowing for the day. I didn’t mind the physical exertion of it or the time that it took to do, but the noise was starting to drive me mad. I was grateful to be nearly done for the week.
I put noise-canceling headphones on my mental list of things to pick up in town.
Tonight was my turn to cook, and I’d gone to the market and gotten the ingredients for chili. Craig had been wanting it lately, and who was I to deny him? He always loved my chili. It was pretty good, and even though I called it my chili, it had been my aunt’s—the thing she brought to every single family event we ever had. It was always the first dish gone.
I took a shower to get cleaned up from the sweaty, grassy mess I was and went into the kitchen to get started. I cheated, using canned beans instead of dried. I didn’t find a large enough difference between the two-day process to get the beans ready to cook and the cans. And yeah, there were faster ways to get the beans the way you wanted them, but I always followed my aunt’s method. When I started from dried beans and did them the way she taught me, that was a long-ass process.
My mates were out in town, grabbing some cat food and a cat condo from the pet store. It was fair to say that Lion was a little bit spoiled. And by a little bit, I meant a whole lot.
It was funny because when I was home and Trace wasn’t, the cat was nowhere to be seen. The second Trace walked in the door—if not the second he pulled into the driveway—that little cat was by his side. It was all kinds of adorable.
With the chili put together and simmering, I was setting the table as they pulled in. They didn’t get a cat condo. They got a cat condo complex. The thing was huge.
“Where should we put it?” Trace asked Lion, as if the cat was going to be able to answer him. “It’s gonna be pretty big.”
He then gave the cat the dimensions. Even if he were a shifter, which he wasn’t, most people didn’t understand the kind of dimensionality he was reading off the box—not in a real way, anyway.
“What do you think?” He turned to our mate, who was trying to get the feather on the string for part of the condo.
I wasn’t sure exactly where it would go, but Lion would either ignore it or destroy it in 2.5 milliseconds. It could go either way.
“I think—I think—” He dropped what he was working on and bolted into the bathroom, his hand in front of his mouth.
I wouldn’t have needed my shifter ears to know that he was in there getting sick.
“What do we do?” Trace asked. “Will he be embarrassed if we go in to help?”
“Nah, he won’t be embarrassed about that, but he will about something. And really, I don’t think he’s gonna be embarrassed as much as he isn’t gonna be happy that I figured it out before he did.”
“What did you figure out?” Trace seemed confused. He hadn’t noticed either, then.
I walked into the kitchen, opened the cupboard, and pulled out a box I’d picked up from the store the day before.
“What’s that for?”
I held it up for him to see more clearly. It was a pregnancy test. Our mate was showing classic signs and, knowing Craig, he’d have figured it out long after the stores around here closed. It was better to have it and not need it than the other way around.
“I have questions. So many questions. Such as, why was that under the sink? And do you really think—could it be?”
“That’s not so many questions. That’s two.” I chuckled.
“Well, it’s two, but they keep going in my head over and over and over again, so it’s a lot.”
“The answers are yes and I don’t know. It was someplace to keep it away from the cat.”
I took his hand, and the two of us went to the bathroom. The door was open, our mate not having taken the time to shut it before emptying the contents of his stomach. He was up, rinsing out his mouth at the sink, looking right as rain.
“Oh, guys, that’s sweet that you were worried, but you don’t need to be. I’m fine.”
“I don’t think ‘worried’ is the exact word,” I said, holding out the pregnancy test. “I mean, personally, I’m more excited than anything else.”
“Wait. You think—you think I’m pregnant?” He came over to us.
“Well, it fits. You’ve been tired. We’ve been going at it nonstop since we moved in—” I probably could have said that more delicately. “And you just hurled for no reason.”
He shot his gaze to Trace. “And you? What do you think?”
“I think that if you’re pregnant, it’s the best news ever. And if you’re not pregnant, then that tells us that maybe we should start trying a little harder.”
“We tried pretty hard,” he muttered.
“That we did. Although, we technically didn’t call it trying, because that wasn’t our goal.” And if the test results were negative, I wanted to make it our goal.”
“As long as I have the two of you in my bed every night, I don’t care what we call it.” He snatched the box from me. “All right, get out. I gotta pee.” He moved to shut the door.
“I’ve seen you pee before.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not gonna see me pee now.”
We waited for him to come out. And he did, less than a minute later.
“So what does it say?” The suspense was killing me.
“Nothing. Directions said to wait three minutes before looking at the result. We need to wait.”
“Three minutes? That’s like an eternity.” Trace rested his head on Craig’s shoulder.
“I assure you it’s not.” I was lying to myself and my mates.
Although Craig was wrong about three minutes being long, it felt like an eternity. Or nine. But finally, the alarm on his watch went off, and he grabbed the test and brought it over to us.
“Okay. Whatever it is, it’s what was meant to be.” His sweet hand was shaking.
We all agreed.
He slowly turned it over.
Not one but two lines appeared.
He was pregnant.
“We’re having a baby,” Craig squeed.
“Yeah, my love.” Trace kissed him. “We’re having a baby.”
Trace pulled us into a hug, and I sank into my mates’ arms, happier than I’d ever been. We were going to be dads.