“Really?” Mathlin perked up.
“Really,” Titan said, kissing him soundly.
Mathlin’sbelly was half the size of a watermelon by the time he had enough energy to properly heal Titan’s bicep.
“Math, I can work with this for a long while yet,” Titan said, his forehead crinkled. “You don’t need to use all your magic on me.”
Mathlin scowled. “I told you I would fix it, and I’m going to right now. Sit!”
Titan sat, eyeing him warily. “I just don’t want you to overexert yourself.”
“I won’t,” Mathlin growled. “And I will bite you if you say I’m weak!”
At that, his alpha grinned. “You know you’re fucking hot like that, right? All growly and fierce, your belly round with our pup.”
Mathlin fumbled. “R-really?”
He had been feeling a little like a whale lately, with his swelling hands and feet. Titan still touched him as though he were the only omega in the world, but sometimes Mathlin felt... well, a little ugly.
“Yes, you’re the hottest omega,” Titan purred, leaning in to sniff at him. “Best smelling too.”
“Oh hush,” Mathlin grumbled, his cheeks growing warm. “I’m going to work on your arm and I need to focus.”
“Otherwise you might accidentally connect those nerves to my cock.”
Mathlin rolled his eyes. Titan was sitting placidly at the kitchen table, his arm propped on some plastic sheeting that Mathlin had laid down for easy cleanup.
With a scalpel, Mathlin sliced open Titan’s bicep where the scar tissue was, until he’d gotten down to the deepest part of the old wound, where the muscles were attached out of alignment. He carefully removed the scar tissue, then reattached the muscles strand by strand, the way they were meant to be.
“Does it hurt?” he murmured. “Want me to stop?”
“Give me a reason to test the new brownies, sweetheart. I can do both the pain ones and the healing ones this way,” Titan said through gritted teeth.
Mathlin snorted and continued to work.
More quietly, Titan said, “I had never truly appreciated having two working arms, until I couldn’t use them both. I didn’t realizehow important they are. And... I hadn’t realized just how empty my life was, until you came along.”
Mathlin’s heart skipped a beat. “I’m... trying to focus here.”
“I’ll shut up,” Titan said, but he was grinning.
Slowly, his bicep began to heal. Mathlin had to stop for the day and tape up the surgery site so he could continue working on it tomorrow, but at least this was finally happening. Titan was finally healing the right way.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” Titan murmured when Mathlin gathered up the bloody plastic sheet and scalpel. “You’re amazing.”
“Anything for my alpha,” Mathlin said, his pulse thumping.
Titan flushed with pleasure; he always did whenever Mathlin called him his alpha. He wrapped his unhurt arm around Mathlin’s waist and tugged up his shirt, pressing his face against Mathlin’s bare belly. “I can’t wait to feel our pup kick. Gods, I want to feel a kick. It’ll make this so much more real.”
Mathlin’s breath hitched. “Yeah. It would.” It was going to happen soon; Mathlin had already felt a few tiny kicks, but they were too faint for Titan to sense them. “You’ve seen the videos of omega bellies with those little kick-bumps. You’ll get to feel the kicks soon enough.”
Titan trembled, his eyes lighting up. “Yes.”
Mathlin’s heart swelled; he dropped a kiss on Titan’s head.
A week later,Titan sat with Mathlin in his lap. “I miss my whiskers,” Titan said. “It was fun being a wolf-cat.”
If only because he got to be silly with the Twin Buns customers. Mathlin laughed and wriggled his hips, spreading his legs wider on Titan’s muscular thighs. “I can make it happen again, if you want.”
