Chapter Fifteen
Treg
Hemlock Mountain
When Damon was ready to go upstairs, his sisters lifted him up on either side and carried him upstairs despite his complaints.
They laughed all the way up the stairs and down the hall to our bedroom that they must’ve found when they came upstairs to explore the nursery.
Shortly after that, I figured out that they were alpha yetis.
“And we’re not technically yetis. We don’t think,” Loop said right after explaining that not all alphas were giants like what happened with most ‘people shifters.’ Even then, I’d met some short alpha wolves. I didn’t argue with them about it but figured it was good information to have for later.
“What’s there to argue about?” my wolf cut into my thoughts.
He was right but Damon’s slight irritation with his sisters rubbed off on me a bit and I wondered if I’d have to spend the next few days playing buffer between them.
It turns out that while they did annoy him – in a totally sibling way – that they made our lives a lot easier.
As day turned into night, Damon became ravenous but also got teary-eyed anytime I left the bedroom, making it hard for me to leave.
Enter Sawe and Loop who were happy to sprint up and down the hallway and steps all night to feed their pregnant brother in a way that kept him from getting upset.
As long as I stayed by his side and didn’t let them carry him off to the bathroom to pee every hour, he was happy.
Well and as long as there were snacks nearby.
We finally dozed off at about two in the morning and sometime while he was asleep Damon shifted over to his yeti form.
I woke wrapped around his hairy body with my hand resting on his belly.
Sawe tiptoed past the bed to open the window and Loop carried in another fan.
She fanned herself, wafting around the long hairs that hung from either side of his face, and pointed to Damon.
He promptly sat up and asked for ice cream which she sprinted downstairs to get.
When the ice cream was gone Damon passed back out.
Sawe and Loop went back and forth checking on us and keeping me company when I was awake.
They talked about how the cave system ran deep into their part of the mountain and about how their little village was established by the time Frost and Juda settled Hemlock Mountain proper.
They too had dealt with the cannibals. The yetis buried them alive in the snow whenever they found them eating their own.
The ancients believed that burying them in snow was the only way to purify them so that they weren’t ‘same eaters’ in the next lifetime.
“Is the Snow Demon real, then, too?” I asked.
“Eh, sort of. Demon is a weird word, though, huh? Do you call everyone from a different planet a demon?” Sawe asked, tsking at me.
“I mean, your Frost came from the Other World, and we don’t know where we came from.
Probably not Earthside. Probably anyway.
He’s an elemental spirit made flesh and the one who lives on the mountain today isn’t the only one.
He’s not the same one who made a contract with Frost and Juda either. ”
“Does he have the seer ability they attribute to him?” I asked her and she tsked me again.
“Sheesh!” Sawe rolled her eyes. “You have your mate, Treg. Why do you want to see parlor tricks or bother that poor man?”
“Uh…. I’m just curious. I love Damon and you know that!”
“I do but leave that man alone! Anyone who lives that far away from civilization wants to be left alone, huh? Plus, he’s not even there right now.
He’s gone off to do Mated for the Holidays.
Apparently, this mage guy feeds you to his computer and then spits you out somewhere that your mate might be. ”
“Uh…. I don’t think that’s how it works,” I said, treading gently.
“That is how it works! He had to fill out all these papers and everything! He even had to sign a waiver that said if he got eaten for real that no one could take money from the wolves who run the company! Sheesh! Sheesh! Sheesh!” she played with her long sideburns and shook her head.
“I know we don’t really get out but we do talk to him.
It’s down the mountain we don’t normally go. Not further up.”
“Who else---” I started to ask who else lived up the mountain, but Damon bumped me gently with his heel twice to tell me to stop asking questions.
“So, he’s off doing that and I really hope he’s having fun too.
It’s this whole matchmaking service. Usually, the omegas travel to the alphas’ homes but this time the omega agreed to do it the other way around because of the circumstances.
Most omegas wouldn’t want to climb a mountain and be stuck up there until the spring thaw because it wasn’t safe for them to come back down.
He left…. Well, he left right after you two met.
” Sawe explained. “It was a bit later than the company usually feeds people to the computer but someone else dropped out and they had a slot open.”
“Cool,” I said, unsure of what else to say since my mate didn’t want me prying into the secrets of the mountains.
Soon, Sawe started dozing off and Loop came in with snacks and drinks to trade her places for awhile so that her sister could get some sleep. Loop entertained zero of my questions about the mountain that didn’t pertain to food, kids, or their family directly.
“I’d never let them feed me to a computer,” she said when I asked her about the Snow Demon.
“Never! I am not meant to be chomped on by machines! And what ‘people shifter’ would want to come live in the caves if they are not our true-mates? One who wants to sell a story to one of those gossip papers!”
“I hadn’t even thought about that,” I said, rubbing my temples.
“Loopy?” Damon grunted.
“Yeah?” his sister answered.
“Can you make something to eat? Treg needs to rest their brain. You are overstimulating my mate and that is my job and perhaps Baby Festival’s job.”
“Sure,” Loop stood up and glanced at me. “Rest your brain. You’ll need it when the baby comes.”
I snuggled against Damon’s back and kissed his hairy shoulder. He pulled one of my hands up to his chest and cuddled it. He dozed back off and I wasn’t far behind him.
Our next few days looked much the same as the day and night had.
Chasten and Kirk stopped by a few times and Grina dropped by once bringing half a dozen pies Abby had made and a cookie cake from a local bakery since carbs seemed to be the way to go for Damon.
He still ate meat during meals and nuts were an acceptable hand to mouth food but given the choice he always went for the carbs.
“Carbs are magic,” Loop reminded us every chance she got.
Outside, the snow fell down in big fluffy piles and I had to keep going behind our guests to shut windows and sweep up little piles of snow before the damp crawled into the house and took over.
Damon scolded his sisters but I didn’t bother because they were trying to do what was best for their brother.
Only, no one wanted to live in a damp mildewy house and I didn’t want the floors to rot out from under our very feet.
Soon, Damon no longer stretched out – not even on his side.
He stayed sitting up, slightly reclined against the pillows.
He ate less and slept more. He started chasing his sisters out of the room without asking them to do tasks for him instead of lingering there.
He just shooed them out and told them to go rest and to leave him be.
When Kirk and Chasten came to visit, he wasn’t having any of it for longer than five or ten minutes at a time before he grew restless and started growling under his breath.
Kirk did manage one more ultrasound the day before our baby was born that showed Baby Festival was in the correct position but had not shifted into a wolf pup.
Loop and Sawe had questions but Damon shooed them all out and then put his fingers into his ears and squeezed his eyes shut.
Sometimes I wondered if he was catching my sensory overload over our shared mating link.
“No, mate,” he shook his head with his fingers still stuffed in his hairy ears.
“I can hear and see and smell everything five times better than before. It is because in the wild I’d have to watch for threats and eat them before they got me.
Here it’s just yipping and yapping and stupid questions and little squeaky feet on the floors and the sounds of doors and cars and all the bullshit in the universe dumping itself into my head.
If they would just shut up, I could hear whether or not a threat is coming but NO!
” He roared the last word. “They have to keep chattering on and on and on…” Damon’s bottom lip quivered, and I pulled him into a hug, squeezing him tight under his arms. He leaned into me and the squeezing, slowly relaxed him enough to take his fingers out of his ears.
I didn’t let anyone else in the room for the rest of the day.
It got me called an asshole a few times but I was used to it.
Setting boundaries hardly went over well where family was concerned.