The doctor moved the wand around, shifting the image of our tiny little peanut and showing them secured to Gabe's womb. "Well, everything looks good," he said after a moment. "They're a healthy size. No worries that you'll pop out a tiny meerkat instead of a human baby."
Gabe's eyes nearly popped out of his head at the doctor's words. "That's a possibility?"
"Very rare." The doctor continued with his checklist, oblivious to Gabe's mental state. "No extra limbs, and none missing. Still too small to count fingers and toes, but they look to be coming along nicely. You're having a baby!" Usually, I appreciated his jokes and jovial laughter, but today, it grated on my last nerve.
"When will we know if they're a meerkat shifter?" Gabe asked.
"It's a 90% chance for fated mates."
"Wow, strong genes." Gabe grinned up at me.
"What can I say?" I shrugged. "They're dominant."
"Good thing you're not," Gabe whispered as the doctor rolled the ultrasound machine away. I couldn't wait to show him how submissive I could be once we were in our own house and away from my parents' sensitive ears. While he wiped the remaining gel from his rounded belly and pulled his baggy t-shirt back on, my imagination wandered.
It had takenmonths of planning, but finally, the energy commission was ready to discuss my alternatives to building a plant at the Wolfcat Nature Reserve. A lot was riding on this meeting. If I failed to convince them to build an energy plant elsewhere, I had no way to explain the loss to my mom. Weall loved having the wilderness within sight of our compound. Like most meerkats, I'd had my first hunt in those woods. My great-grandmother had first purchased the land on which the compound was built knowing that the nature reserve was nearby and with the expectation it would always be there.
I couldn't let them down, not now.
My first presentation was on the delicate balance of the ecosystem, including a few adjacent endangered species, like the California condor, who used the woods to nest. Then, I went into disturbing the seismic balance by drilling and excavating so close to a known fault line, "Not to mention the higher risk of water contamination, if the cooling pipes were to break during an earthquake."
The harried representative from the Department of Energy looked up from his notepad. "Let me guess," he said. "You also have a long list of notes on upfront cost, land subsidence, and air and noise pollution this would introduce to a national park."
"Yes."
He sighed. "I gave the committee this exact same information when they first mentioned the reserve as a potential building site." He pointed to my presentation. "This, though. The facts and figures you've compiled should be enough to dissuade them, but first, we need a better site."
"Agreed," I said. "If you'll allow me to skip ahead, I've picked three other locations near the coast that would work better."
After another fifteen-minute discussion of the other areas, he agreed to take them back to the committee. "Off the record," he said, "Clean energy alternatives aside, I don't think this is the reason Teddy Roosevelt set all this land aside for national parks, only to have the government fuck it up in the name of progress."
"You've invoked Teddy's ghost," I said with a grin. Rumor had it, if anyone mentioned Teddy Roosevelt's name when criticizing the government's actions on public lands, his ghostwould ensure swift vengeance on the offending public officials. "This project is doomed to fail now."
He laughed. "You've heard that one, too? Well, let's hope it works."
It helped to know we were on the same page when it came to the nature reserve, but while my part was done, the fight was far from over.
19
GABE
I spentmy second trimester making up for lost time. Most of the second and third month of my pregnancy had me bent over a toilet. The fourth, fifth, and sixth months were a virtual delicatessen of all the foods I'd never tried before.
My Omega dad was not the best cook. Growing up, most meals contained pasta topped with cheese, Alfredo sauce, or red sauce. Variety? Who's she?
The Mears family introduced me to rice pilaf, beef stroganoff, couscous, quinoa, and a host of spices and flavor varieties I had never tried. When before my most adventurous meal had been the Korean barbecue at Becca and Bruce's rehearsal dinner, I now could say I had tried dishes from all over the world, from Bangladesh to deep south Creole, and from France to French Guiana.
I had my wonderful partner's influence to thank for my diversifying palate. Mika wanted to learn a recipe from every country in the world. He and Talia spent their evenings after dinner searching for lesser-known internet chefs.
Though I didn't participate in the search, I sat nearby, either at the kitchen island's bar stools or the breakfast nook overlooking the patio. My pencils flew as I sketched new meerkatart. When the muse ignored me, I worked on my new online gallery.
According to Mika, and the entire Mears family, who had cornered me at one Sunday dinner or another to make their opinions known, I didn't have to work. I could quit my job at the courthouse when the baby came, but I wasn't ready to leave just yet. My omega dad had drilled into me the importance of supporting my family at all costs, including my own personal desires. I'd rebelled against him by becoming an artist, but now I felt like I had to work twice as hard to make the kind of money my dad found acceptable.
Granted, he always did say I would need to marry a wealthy alpha to support my art. And I did … ish. Mika's family probably had about the same amount of money as Bruce's, but they also had twice as many people for whom they were responsible. Talia and her family had money, but their family was large and came first.
Here I was, adding to the number of mouths to feed, and the thought of doing so without contributing spiked my anxiety. Talia had said I was worthy to bear her son's child, but I couldn't accept it. I was still the loser omega my dad swore would never amount to anything, even now.
While Mika and his mom dug through new recipes, I wrote rebellious messages to my baby and drew cute meerkats beside them. It was too radical to be a children's book, but one day, when they were old enough, I would flip through it with them.
