STAN
I was loving my new life in our new home with my new pack.
I’d been so nervous when we first came and asked Healer if I could train under him. Unlike my aunt, who everyone simply called Clarissa, “Healer” was a title in the wolf pack. Just like most packs called their alpha Alpha, the pack called him Healer. Something about that title had me on edge. Looking back, I was worried he’d be snobby and “better than” others without a title. How wrong I’d been.
Healer welcomed me with open arms. He knew my aunt and thought highly of her. Apparently, at one time she’d talked to him about me when I was first considering nursing school. He said she knew what I didn’t at the time, that my calling was in healing but not necessarily in the human world.
Healer not only offered to train me, but also offered to let me work by his side if my apprenticeship went well. He was getting ready to slow down and eventually retire, something he’d been postponing until the right apprentice came along. What an honor it was for him to think that apprentice was me.
Healer called me a natural. I wasn’t sure if that was exactly it, or if it was just that I worked really hard and my nursing school background helped me connect some of the dots he was laying out for me. In either case, I was excited to be growing so much in my field. And on days when I was feeling unsure or overwhelmed, my aunt was a phone call away.
A side bonus to being with Healer every day was my peace of mind. When I was working in the hospital, I’d seen the worst of the worst with pregnancies. I’d seen the best of the best as well but rarely, because the patients who came through the emergency department doors were not the ones who were having a fabulous time. Because of that, little normal changes of pregnancy had a way of making me worry more than they should: a pain in my side, charley horses two nights in a row, being out of breath when I climbed up a flight of stairs while carrying a box of old books… all of which were very normal, but because of my former job, they had me on edge.
Healer would always roll his eyes and tell me it was a good learning experience for me to see how ridiculous pregnant omegas could be. And then he’d laugh, and I’d laugh, and I’d go on with my day, no longer worried.
The pack treated me like one of their own, which was something that had been a big worry when I arrived. I was different from those around me when I was living in the human world, sure, but people didn’t know that. A human didn’t look at me and think, “Oh, he furs out sometimes.” But on pack lands, it took just a whiff of my scent for them to know I was a fox. There was no blending.
My worry had been for nothing. They treated me like I was Axel’s mate and a pack member. Nothing more, nothing less. I’d made friends with some of the omegas and imagined that I’d probablymake more friends when I had more time on my hands. But for now, I was focused heavily on learning. I wanted to get as much done as possible before the baby came. It would make it so I didn’t feel rushed to get back to it when they arrived. Healer wouldn’t impose that on me, but I would impose it on myself. I knew me well enough to know that.
“Are you almost ready to go?” My mate’s arms came around me from behind and settled on my belly, his chin on my shoulder. “We have the big game today.”
I loved how he called it “the big game.” It was big to the kids who were coming, but there was no champion cup waiting for the victor. His team was meeting with a local hockey league that they sponsored and was designed to give the children who might not be able to play otherwise a chance to experience the sport. It was the sweetest thing ever, and based on the excitement I’d seen from not only my mate but from some of his teammates, it was one of their favorite events of the season.
“Yeah, just let me pee first.”
I was at that stage in pregnancy where I couldn’t see my feet and I had to pee all the time. I still had many weeks to go, too, but that was okay. Because as big and awkward as I probably looked, I loved every inch of me and was generally feeling great.
I loved how my baby had a safe place to grow, and not for the first time, I thought about how glad I was for the changes I’d made in my life. I was no longer bombarded with all the germs that came with the hospital. On pack lands, mostly what we did was help with babies and injuries, and most of those injuries were with pups who didn’t heal quite as fast as their adult counterparts because their wolves hadn’t emerged yet. As for sicknesses, the few times we had them, it was mostly peopleeating something they shouldn’t, or their wolves doing so. It was definitely a much safer place for a pregnant omega to be hanging out.
I waddled out of the bathroom and grabbed my big tote bag from the chair. Once upon a time, I used to go everywhere with nothing but a wallet, keys, and phone, if I even remembered all of that. Now I had a bag of snacks… salty snacks, sweet snacks, and high-protein snacks. If it was a snack I might possibly want, I had it. I also had a change of clothes, which, sadly, was necessary thanks to the aforementioned peeing situation, along with a pair of flip-flops for when my feet got too swollen. And because sometimes I got ideas and didn’t want to forget them, my notebooks came too. I looked like I was moving into the rink.
We drove to the arena, and Axel spent the entire time talking about the different activities they had set up for the kids. It wasn’t open to the public, but there would be parents there and some siblings. And what was really sweet yet surprising was that there would be no media. This truly was just about the kids. They said they’d do a press release and send a picture later because sometimes they got corporate sponsors that helped do really cool things out of those. But at its core, this wasn’t a photo op or a PR stunt. This was about giving back.
When we got there, Axel had to go get ready, and I climbed up into the stands, sat down, and pulled out my notebook. I started to sketch a layout for the nursery. I did this quite often, and it really didn’t matter which one we used, they were all about the same, but it made me feel like I was doing something while I waited.
Soon enough, parents started coming in. There weren’t a lot of them, but quite a few held their little ones or had them at theirside. It was such a different crowd than when I came to the games.
“Is this seat taken?”
I looked up to see an omega who looked to be about as pregnant as I was, with a toddler on his hip.
“No, join me. I’m Stan.”
“I’m Mark. Is your little one playing today? My Junior’s going to be out there for the first time this year. He’s so excited.”
“My little one’s not quite big enough yet.” I rubbed my belly. “My husband is Axel.” I felt weird switching from mate to husband, especially since husband felt like a downgrade from mate. But humans were weird about calling your partner a mate.
“No way!” He set the toddler down on the bench beside him and showed me a picture on his phone’s lock screen. It included him, a man who I assumed was his husband, and Axel at some event. They were holding his stick and had the most ginormous smiles on.
“Yep, kind of lucked out in college when they assigned him as my roomie,” I said.
We chatted until the players came out, and it was fun watching the kiddos skate with their heroes. They did some silly relay races and competed in a scrimmage that was very much geared for the kids to have low stakes competitions. It was wonderful to witness firsthand.
When the ice time was over, they had a pizza party for everyone, and I got to watch firsthand as Axel talked to the kids, encouraged them, and gave each of them a personalizedcompliment about something they had done that day. He was going to be such an amazing father.
“You’re a lucky one,” I said to our baby as I rubbed my belly.
I was, too.
