Page 25 of Omega Haunting

“I love you,” I said. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too, magic,” he said and kissed my forehead.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

“Come in!” I called out.

“Good afternoon, Astral. Little did I know many moons ago that the little wolf pup I saw on the screen would one day come in for me to look at his wolf pups,” Doctor Leem grinned. “Good, you gowned up. Young people these days don’t understand how important it is to ensure everything is okay.”

“They like to exercise their freewill,” Marsin said before I even had the chance to introduce him to the doctor.

“You must be Marsin. I’ve been doing what reading I could on your flight. There isn’t much out there about it. I’ve read everything Izora Moonscale published and put out for the public. It seems your flight often skips on some of the steps we take. I understand why that might be an adjustment for you but as wolf pups do not generally come with hard protective shells, we do our best to ensure they’re safely tucked away inside the uterus.”

“I understand that,” Marsin nodded. “The baby is a wolf pup. I listened.”

“You listened?” Doctor Leem asked, his voice lowering with skepticism.

I cringed. Marsin was usually a dragon of science, but he hated anything that wasn’t necessary. If an ear could do the job no fancy equipment was needed.

“Moonscale literature doesn’t cover how dragons hear not only through sound waves but also through space? It’s similar to the echolocation bats use but much more sophisticated.”

I frowned. Was this a science off or an alpha off?

“Neither,” Marsin said, picking up on my thoughts over our mating link. “As I toldmymate, I will respect his freewill and as long as your tests don’t violate that I won’t stand in your way,doctor.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. Marsin was usually so levelheaded.

“What are you talking about?”my wolf laughed into my thoughts.“He’s smart. Maybe even a bit of an intellectual but levelheaded isn’t the word I’d use for him. He still thinks Dern is going to gobble us up with his tomato soup. He’s territorial, bossy, and gonna eat the doctor. I think I’m falling in love all over again!”

“I am not eating the doctor, yet,”Marsin’s dragon joined the conversation.“If he goes against your wishes, I’ll eat him. One bite. One big, stringy, probably horrible-tasting bite.”

“I’m ready,” I told the doctor and stretched out on the table.

He grabbed his machine from the table across the room and rejoined us. I held onto Marsin’s hand for dear life because I believed his dragon would eat the doctor and I didn’t want to go on the run because my mate committed murder in the misguided name of protecting me. I would, but that path would be a bitch during pregnancy.

As soon as my stomach was exposed, Marsin’s grip on my hand tightened. I almost made a joke about how his over-protectiveness was all the test I needed but thought better of it. The doctor pushed a button on his handheld device and the monitor on the wall came on.

“That’s where we’ll see the baby,” I said to Marsin, hoping to redirect him but he didn’t take his eyes off Doctor Leem.

To his credit and years of experience, Doctor Leem didn’t engage further with Marsin as he performed my ultrasound. In no time, our little jellybean was up on the screen. Marsin’s eyes gleamed wet but he still didn’t look away from the doctor.

“You can look at the screen,”I told him over our mating link.“It’s not like he’s going to eat me. He took all sorts of oaths not to do those things.”

“I can see through you,”he said.“I can see the baby and the doctor at the same time.”

“Marsin, don’t be that guy. Look at the screen. See your baby with your own eyes for the first time. We’ll never get these moments back, mate.”

Marsin glanced at the screen and then back to the doctor. Then he looked at the screen again. Really looked this time and his eyes misted over more. I gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. That jellybean would grow into the tiny wolf pup we’d love, raise, and protect. It was the tiny baby our love made and was so much more important than the doctor who was just doing his job to ensure our baby was healthy and that my body was healthy enough to continue growing a healthy wolf pup.

Chapter Fourteen

Marsin

Witnessing our jellybean pup on the ultrasound monitor didn’t calm my inner beast’s hyper vigilance. If anything, it doubled or tripled it. I took my parental leave starting as soon as we arrived home from the clinic because Astral and the baby were literally all I could think about. Day and night, all I wanted to do was be by Astral’s side to love and protect him and our baby. Having parental leave as a flight birthright made that so much easier. Though, I still wanted to build a nest and keep my mate inside of it, I was able to offset that desire by following him everywhere. Any time he went to visit his family or out for work or to run an errand I went with him. We became that couple where you never saw one without the other.

Wolf pregnancies didn’t last long, and healthy pregnancies followed predictable schedules. Dragon egg pregnancies did no such thing. So, in a way, having a timeline for what to expect made everything easier. As Doctor Leem assured us after the ultrasound and Astral’s flash exam, our pup was healthy and should grow for somewhere around sixty-three to sixty-six days total. Though, that started from the day of conception and by the time we found out we were pregnant we were approximately twenty-four days into that. So, when Astral wasn’t working we got ready for our pup. His family was a huge help – so many items appeared in the once empty bedroom turned nursery seemingly overnight. His parents and siblings gathered close whenever they could and for the first time in a long time my introverted dragon didn’t mind the crowd. They were family now too after all.

Dern came by more than we liked. Astral reveled in the fortune teller’s attention but it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. He brought all sorts of pies and cakes over and I made a point of either seeing Dern himself take a bite or taking a bite before my mate did. The old wolf picked up on what I was doing and made exaggerated gestures of pretending to humor me.

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