15. I Used to Have a Waist
I USED TO HAVE A WAIST
I used to have a waist.
That had been three weeks ago. Three weeks since Keth went still over my belly and his eyes filled, since the words barely begun, since the change was nothing but a new sweetness in my scent.
Three weeks would be nothing in a human pregnancy – a missed cycle, a vague maybe.
On a Khorreth timeline it was most of the way to the end, and my body had spent every day of it racing to catch up with the life inside me.
I'd watched it happen in the reflective panel, morning after morning, too fast to ever quite get used to.
I stood in front of the reflective panel in the hygiene alcove – positioned too high, like everything else in this dwelling, requiring me to climb onto a stepping block Keth had carved just so I could see myself – and surveyed the damage.
My belly had rounded significantly in the last week alone.
Not the gradual swell of a human pregnancy, the kind that crept up on you over months until one day you couldn't see your feet.
This was faster, more insistent. I could track the changes day by day, sometimes hour by hour.
The skin was stretched taut, faintly luminous, and when I pressed my palm against the curve I could feel the warmth of what was growing inside me.
My breasts were enormous.
There was no other word for it. They'd been larger since the serum, fuller since production established, but now they were genuinely, absurdly big – heavy and round, the veins visible beneath the skin, the nipples darkened and swollen.
The support wrap Keth had commissioned for me when we first arrived on Khorreth no longer fit.
The craftsperson had been back twice already to remake it, each time with more fabric, more structure, more accommodation for the weight I was carrying.
I needed the support. I was practical about needing the support.
"You're staring at yourself again."
Keth's voice came from the doorway. I glanced over my shoulder and found him leaning against the frame, watching me. His eyes dropped to my belly, then my breasts, and the satisfaction in his scent deepened into something warmer.
"I'm trying to remember what I looked like before you got your hands on me," I said. "I'm having trouble."
"You were beautiful then." He crossed the room, his hooves quiet on the floor. His hand found my hip, steadying me on the stepping block. "You are more beautiful now."
"I'm the size of a small shuttle."
"You are carrying my child." His other hand came up to cup my belly, warm and reverent. "You could be the size of the dwelling itself and I would still find you beautiful."
"That's because you're biased."
"That's because I have excellent taste."
I laughed despite myself. His hand moved from my belly to my breast, testing the weight, and the familiar ache flared – the pressure that had been building since I woke, earlier than usual, my production increasing alongside everything else.
"Already?" he murmured.
"Already."
"Then we should tend to you."
He lifted me off the stepping block with one arm, easy as breathing, and carried me back to the main room.
The milking had become something I looked forward to.
I'd stopped pretending otherwise weeks ago.
The relief was too profound, the pleasure too deep, the intimacy too necessary.
Every few hours now, my breasts filled to discomfort, and every few hours, he tended to me – his hands working the pressure loose, his mouth drawing out the milk in steady, reverent pulls.
I lay back against the pile of furs he'd arranged for exactly this purpose, my swollen belly curved towards the ceiling, and let him work.
His fingers were impossibly gentle for their size.
They found the ache in my tissue and eased it, pressing and releasing, coaxing the milk to flow.
When he lowered his mouth to my nipple, the sensation rolled through me in waves – pleasure and relief tangled together, better than anything I could have managed alone.
"More?" he asked, lifting his head.
"Don't stop."
He smiled against my skin and went back to work.
My hands found his shoulders, fingers sinking into the dense fur there. It was warm under my palms, soft and thick, and I could feel the muscle moving beneath as he adjusted his position. His tail moved behind him in the loose, contented sweep I'd learned to read as happiness.
The milk flowed easily now. My body had stopped fighting the process – had stopped fighting any of it, really. Whatever the serum had begun, the pregnancy had completed. I was fully, irrevocably changed.
I watched him drink from me and felt nothing but satisfaction.
I noticed the all-fours thing by accident.
Three weeks into the rapid progression of the pregnancy, my belly had grown large enough that moving through the nest required thought.
The soft walls I'd built caught on my sides when I tried to manoeuvre.
The furs shifted unpredictably beneath my weight.
Standing up and sitting down had become exercises in careful balance.
And one morning, navigating from one side of the nest to the other, I simply dropped to my hands and knees.
It was easier. The weight distributed differently – my belly suspended rather than pulling forward, my spine aligned rather than curved.
I crawled across the soft surface and settled into the corner I'd been aiming for, and it wasn't until I'd been there for several minutes that I realised what I'd done.
I'd moved like an animal. Like –
Like an omega, some part of my brain supplied. Like what you are.
I waited for the embarrassment to arrive. The indignation. The part of me that should have been horrified at the regression, at moving through space on all fours like I'd given up on being human entirely.
It didn't come.
The second time it happened, I didn't even notice until afterwards. I'd crawled from the nest to the modified chair and back again, following Keth's voice, and only realised I'd done the whole journey on hands and knees when I was already settled back into the furs.
By the third time, I stopped keeping track.
My body knew things before I did. It always had. The stillness in the cargo bay when I first smelled him. The way I leaned into his touch before I'd decided to trust him. The nest-building instinct, the heat responses, the production that came easier with him than without.
This was just one more thing. My body knew how to carry this weight. My body knew how to move through the space it needed. My body had already worked out what I was becoming.
My mind was just catching up.
His horns were warm under my palms.
We were in the nest – where else? – his bulk settled behind me, his hands running over my belly in slow circles. The afternoon milking had eased the pressure in my breasts, and now we were simply lying together, his scent close around me, his heartbeat steady against my back.
I shifted, turning to face him, and my hands found his horns without conscious decision.
He went rigid.
I remembered this – the discovery from weeks ago, the knowledge I'd stored very carefully. His horns were sensitive. Intensely sensitive. Touching them produced an immediate, visceral, full-body response.
I ran my palms along the curve of them, tracing from the base above his temples up towards the tips. The surface was smooth, dense, warm from blood flow. His breath caught. His tail lashed once, sharp and uncontrolled.
"Mara...”
"Shh." I gripped harder, pressing my fingers into the sensitive ridges near the base. "Let me."
The sound that tore out of him had no words in it. A groan, a growl, something between the two – pulled from deep in his chest, involuntary and raw. His whole body shuddered, his hands clenching in the furs beneath us.
I had him.
This enormous Khorreth alpha, eight and a half feet of muscle and horn and protective fury – and I had him completely undone with my hands.
I stroked along the curve again, slower this time, letting him feel every inch. His eyes were closed, his jaw clenched, his breath coming in sharp gasps. When I reached the tips and circled back down, pressing into the base, his hips jerked forward involuntarily.
"Please...” His voice was wrecked. "Mara, I can't – if you keep–"
"You can." I leaned in, pressing my lips to the spot just below his horn where the texture changed from smooth to rough. "Let go."
He let go.
His whole body arched, a roar tearing from his throat, his tail thrashing wildly.
I felt the shudder run through him – release, pure and overwhelming, pulled from him by nothing but my hands on his horns.
He came without being touched anywhere else, his cock pulsing against my thigh, his arms wrapping around me and pulling me close as the waves crashed through him.
I held on through all of it. Kept my hands on his horns, kept stroking, kept him locked in the sensation until he finally collapsed against the furs, breathing hard.
"Stars," he managed. "Mara. That was–"
"I know." I smiled against his fur. "I've been saving that."
His laugh was breathless, broken.
"You have power over me," he said. "You know that."
"I know." I traced one finger along the curve of his horn, light and teasing, and felt him shiver. "I'm keeping it."
Night settled over the dwelling.
I was in the nest, on all fours, the position that had become natural over the past weeks. My belly hung heavy beneath me, my breasts swaying with each breath, my body entirely at ease in a posture I would have found humiliating months ago.
Keth was behind me, his hands running over my hips, my back, my sides. His touch was warm and steady, checking on me the way he did every night – making sure I was comfortable, making sure the weight wasn't causing strain, making sure I had everything I needed.
His hooves had been quiet in the corridor when he came to find me. They were always quiet at night. He moved through the dwelling like a ghost when he didn't want to wake me, his bulk somehow made graceful by the care he took.
I felt his hands settle on my belly, cradling the curve from behind.
"How do you feel?"
"Heavy." I shifted my weight, adjusting my knees. "Full. Good."
"You're beautiful like this." His voice was low, reverent. "On all fours. Carrying my child. Settled into the nest I built for you."
"You built the frame. I built the rest."
"Yes. You did. You built your space. You made it yours."
I had. I'd stopped fighting that too – the instinct to arrange and rearrange, to adjust every surface until it was exactly right. The nest was mine. I'd made it. And settling into it on all fours, my body heavy with his child, his hands warm on my skin –
Something in me had completely stopped arguing. After everything, I had simply arrived.
I was here. I was his. I was becoming something new, something the serum and the bond and the pregnancy had conspired to create.
And I didn't want to be anything else.
His hands moved higher, finding my breasts, heavy and full again already. I arched into his touch, and my own hands reached back, finding his horns in the dark.
He groaned.
I smiled.
The night settled around us, warm and quiet, and I let myself be exactly where I was.