“It’s perfectly normal to be a bit nervous. All this baby having business can be a wee bit intimidating,” she said. “Are you having any morning sickness?”
“No,” I said. “No symptoms of anything at all really except for the positive pregnancy test.”
“He’s been a bit emotional too,” Beal said like the traitor he was.
“I have not!” I hissed at him and bit my lip. “Okay, maybe I have.”
“Well, that’s within your rights. Growing a life is never an easy task. You get hungry and achy, and everything is moving too fast or too slow for you. Every sense comes in at ten times the normal intensity. You go on and be as emotional as you need to be. You won’t be the first carrier to cry, shout, or break something in this room. I’d recommend avoiding the medical equipment, if at all possible, that’s a rather expensive bill. But I’ll let you snap my clipboard over your knee if you feel better. You’d be surprised at how many clients take me up on that offer.”
“I think I’m okay,” I said, unsure if she was joking or not.
“Well, I’m Edna. I always like to introduce myself before I ask folks to hop up on the table. Just seems like the polite thing to do.”
“I’m Nic and he’s Beal,” I said, holding onto his hand for dear life.
“Well, whenever you’re ready to see baby, I’m ready to show him to you,” Edna said, crossing the room and turning on the big monitor that sat next to the table.
“Can you put me on the table?”I asked Beal over our link.
“Can you tell her you want me to? She looks like the sort who’d break that clipboard over my head for manhandling you in front of her,”Beal said and I blinked.
“What happened to eating her?”
“I will eat her if she hurts you or you ask me to. I just don’t see the point in pissing her off. She’s older and probably an omega.”
“What’s that have to do with anything?”I hissed at him over our mating link.
“Everything unless she hurts you,”he said.
“Is everything alright?” Edna asked after a few seconds of silence.
“Yes,” Beal said.
“He’s going to help me up.”
“Are you having any pain, Nic?” Edna said, starting to round the table but Beal had already picked me up.
“No,” I shook my head. “My dragon’s just rooted to the spot.”
Inside me my dragon wouldn’t budge up. He was laying with his tail curled to his belly and his wings over his head as if she were about to scale him instead of performing an ultrasound.
“My raccoon once made me jump out of a window to avoid a jab as a kid,” Edna said, flashing me a conspiratorial grin.“Though, there are many perks to having a mate to carry you around.”
A few seconds later, she had the robe open and thankfully didn’t comment on my having kept on my black boxer briefs. Beal’s jaw tensed as he stood next to the table so that I could keep a death grip on his hand. For a second, I had a visceral image of him biting her in half. Then I told my dragon to cut it out. She was a nice old raccoon.
A soft whooshing filled the room and then on the screen came a jellybean. It wasn’t as small as I expected it to be this early on. In fact, the jellybean had a distinct shape to it.
“I would say you are definitely having a baby,” Edna grinned.
“Did I wait too long to come in?” I asked, my heart thumping inside my chest.
“Not at all. It’s always hard to tell when you conceive if you don’t have the obvious symptoms. Add in the fact that Earthside has zero resources about primal cat pregnancies and you couldn’t have known. Primal cat? Is that a fitting descriptor or is that a bad way to say it?”
“I’ve been called worse,” Beal shrugged.
“Not in my clinic you haven’t,” Edna shook her head. “I wasn’t sure if sabertooth was outdated. I wasn’t even sure if it was hyphenated or not.”
“Primal cat or sabertooth would both be fine. I’m glad you didn’t add the tiger. Not all of us are tigers,” Beal said, not taking his eyes off the monitor. “He’s already at the start of his second trimester, huh?” he asked a second later.
