16. No Word For It
NO WORD FOR IT
I couldn't remember the last time I'd walked anywhere.
The thought arrived while Keth was carrying me from the nest to the window – the big one, the one that looked out over the settlement, too high for me to see through unless he held me up to it.
My belly pressed against his chest, heavy and round, and my arms looped around his neck because it was easier than trying to hold myself steady.
He'd been carrying me everywhere for weeks now. To eat. To the hygiene alcove. To the window when I wanted to see outside. Back to the nest when I was tired, which was often.
I'd stopped objecting somewhere around the fifth week, when standing up had become an exercise in careful engineering and walking had become genuinely difficult.
The weight was too much. My centre of gravity had shifted so far forward that every step felt precarious, and my feet – my human feet, built for a human body carrying a human pregnancy – weren't designed for what I was carrying now.
So he carried me. And I let him.
Being held against him, his arm secure under my thighs, my face tucked against the warm fur of his shoulder – it felt like the most natural thing in the world. My current body was the only body I had. This was how my current body moved through space.
"The light is good today," he said, settling me on his hip so I could look out the window. "Clear."
The settlement stretched out below us, Khorreth moving through their days, going about their lives. From up here they looked almost manageable – not quite so enormous, not quite so alien. Just people. Living.
"I used to watch the stars from the relay station," I said. "Through the observation port. It was the only window that showed anything except bulkheads."
"Do you miss it?"
I thought about the question. The cold quarters. The recycled air. The endless maintenance shifts, alone in the corridors, talking to myself because there was no one else to talk to.
"No," I said. "I don't."
His arm tightened around me. His tail swept once, warm against my calf.
"Good."
In the nest, I moved on all fours.
It had become my default – the only way to navigate the soft, shifting surface without Keth's help. The weight of my belly hung suspended beneath me, distributed across my hands and knees instead of pulling forward. My breasts hung too, heavy and full, swaying slightly with each movement.
I'd stopped noticing it as strange weeks ago.
My body was what it was. It did what it needed to do. I crawled from one corner of the nest to the other, adjusting furs, rearranging the walls I'd built, settling into positions that would have mortified me six months ago and now felt as natural as breathing.
The pressure in my breasts was building again. I could feel it – that familiar fullness, the ache that meant I'd need relief soon. I shifted onto my side, propping myself against the banked-up furs, and waited.
Keth appeared in the doorway within minutes.
He always knew. Whether he could smell the shift in my scent or simply tracked the rhythm of my body through days of careful observation, he always appeared right when I needed him.
"Full?" he asked.
"Mmm."
He crossed to the nest and settled beside me, his bulk dipping the soft surface. His hand found my breast, cupping the weight, testing the pressure.
"Very full," he murmured. "You're producing more."
"I noticed."
He smiled and lowered his mouth to my nipple.
The relief was immediate – that rush of warmth as the milk flowed, the pressure easing, the pleasure rolling through me in familiar waves. I let my eyes close, let my body go loose against the furs, let him tend to me the way he'd been tending to me for weeks now.
This was the rhythm of our days. I filled. He emptied me. I filled again. He returned.
I'd stopped keeping track of the hours between cycles. What was the point? My body knew what it needed, and he was always there to provide it. That was enough.
Vorreth's name came up once, in the fifth week of my pregnancy, when a formal notice arrived at the dwelling.
Keth read it with his jaw tight, then set it aside.
"What is it?" I asked from the nest.
"Final withdrawal of all claims. Formal acknowledgment of the mating bond and pending offspring." His tail lashed once. "He's finished."
I should have felt triumph, maybe. Relief. Some kind of victory at watching the male who'd tried to take me retreat in defeat.
Mostly I felt nothing at all.
Vorreth was a distant irrelevance now. A mated omega, heavily pregnant with a Khorreth alpha's child – I was beyond any challenge the hierarchy could bring.
I had status I'd never sought, protection I'd never asked for.
The political manoeuvring that had seemed so threatening weeks ago had faded into background noise.
I had more important things to think about. Like the way my belly had grown overnight, or the new ache in my lower back, or the small fluttering movements I'd started to feel from inside.
"Good," I said. "Is there food?"
Keth laughed and went to fetch me something to eat.
At night, I thought about who I used to be.
The nest was dark and warm around me, Keth's bulk curved against my back, his hand resting on my belly where he could feel the movements of our child. I should have been sleeping – my body was exhausted, heavy with the work of growing something new – but my mind drifted instead.
The relay station. Night shifts. The hum of machinery and the cold of recycled air.
I'd been competent there. Self-sufficient. I'd built a life out of needing no one, and I'd been proud of it. I can take care of myself, I'd thought, every time I fixed a broken panel or rationed my food stores or spent another shift alone in the corridors. I don't need anyone.
I'd been wrong.
Not about the competence – I'd genuinely been good at my job, genuinely capable of managing my own survival.
But I'd called endurance peace, and isolation independence.
I'd been always slightly cold, always slightly hungry, always working, and I'd told myself that was enough because I didn't know any other way to live.
Now I was warm. Now I was fed. Now I worked at nothing except growing the life inside me, and someone else handled everything else.
I'd had a word for what I was then. Night-shift operator. Relay maintenance. A job description, a function, a place in a system that made sense.
I didn't have a word for what I was now.
Mate, maybe. Omega. Producer. None of them quite fit. None of them captured the totality of what my life had become – the nest and the milking and the carrying and the bond, the way my body had been remade and my mind had followed, the quiet contentment of being exactly where I was.
I found I didn't need a word.
I just was.
Keth settled into the nest beside me as the light faded.
His weight shifted the furs, creating a warm hollow that I rolled into automatically. My belly pressed against his side, round and heavy. His arm came around me, his hand finding its usual place on the curve of my stomach.
"How do you feel?" he asked. The same question he asked every night.
"Full," I said. The same answer I gave every night. "Heavy. Good."
His tail swept against my calf. I felt him smile against my hair.
Inside me, something moved. A flutter, a shift, a small life rearranging itself. I pressed my hand over Keth's, feeling the movement through my own skin.
My child. Our child. Growing in a body that had been remade to carry it, tended by a male who had crossed stars to find me.
I reached up without thinking, my hand finding his horn in the dark.
He went still.
Not the dangerous stillness of threat, the kind I'd seen in the assessment chamber. This was different. Soft. Waiting. The stillness of someone who knew what my touch on his horns meant and was letting me take whatever I wanted.
I kept my hand there. Traced the curve of the horn with my fingertips, feeling the warmth, the smoothness, the faint ridges near the base where he was most sensitive. He shivered but didn't move.
"Stay," I said quietly.
"Always."
The nest was warm around us. His body curved against mine, protective, present. My hand rested on his horn, feeling the slight tremor that ran through him at the contact. Inside my belly, our child shifted again – a small movement, barely perceptible, but real.
I closed my eyes.
Just here, in this nest I'd built, with this male I'd chosen and this child I was carrying and this life I hadn't imagined and would choose again every single day.
The movement came once more. A tiny foot, maybe. A tiny hand.
His arm tightened around me. His breath was warm on my hair.
I kept my hand on his horn, feeling him shiver, and let the warmth of the nest settle into my bones.
I was home.