Chapter Twenty-One

The rest of the house had been ready before we moved in, but we'd kept the nursery to take care of when we were settled. And, unfortunately, that meant it kept getting pushed off since we were both so busy at work and tended to spend our free time in more enjoyable pursuits. But as my omega grew larger, a sense of urgency overtook him. He bustled around the house whenever we were home, cleaning, picking at unseen dust specks, and reorganizing drawers. Quinn called it nesting and said it was very common among pregnant omegas coming close to their due date.

It was a real change, since he'd been exhausted for quite some time, but no sign of that showed now. "Alpha, I need you to get down some fresh sheets so we can change the bed."

We'd changed it the day before, and nothing was going to get changed unless I could focus all that energy and soon. Walking down the hallway, the open door to the nursery caught my attention. There were bags of clothes and boxes holding furniture we needed to get out and put together. The zero-fume paint and things needed to apply it stood in a corner.

"Hey, omega. Come here," I called. "I found something we need to take care of."

He came huffing down the hallway, a duster and cleaning cloth in one hand and a bottle of the homemade vinegar cleaner we had switched to in the other. "What is it? Something is dirty?"

I stepped out of the doorway and waved inside. "Something is incomplete. We have an entire nursery here in kit form, and a baby due soon."

Cicek paled. "How did we let this get away from us? We have to get started right now, or the baby will be sleeping on the floor."

To be fair, that would never happen. Even if we didn't already have the bassinet set up in our bedroom where the baby would sleep for some time, we were not about to leave our child on the floor. But since my point was trying to distract my omega from silly tasks that did not need doing and refocus him on what we did need to do, I did not point that out.

I followed him into the nursery and we organized how we wanted to get things done. Together, we prepped the walls and I did the painting. It only took one coat for the pastel yellow to cover the ugly off-white likely in every house in the area. And then I lured my omega into the bedroom for a little nap and cuddle while it dried.

After dinner that night, he was anxious to get started again, so we returned and picked up the next part of the job—assembling the furniture. For a fee, the store would have done this task, but when we bought it a few months before, we'd asked one another questions like, How hard could it be? Half an hour into working on the crib, I understood the smirk on the sales clerk's face when we declined the service. But I eventually had it completed, and Cicek checked every bit of it for sturdiness and pronounced it acceptable.

My omega was not able to get down on the floor and help, instead working on folding all the clothing and blankets and little adorable things preparatory to placing them in the dresser as I got each drawer put together. We had selected a light wood that looked very nice against the yellow walls, I thought, once I had finished with the last of the furnishings. At least the glider hadn't had to be put together. I had managed to bruise myself no fewer than five times in the process of assembling all the rest, however, and I was ready to relax.

"Would you like to come and have a treat, omega?" He had been all about a bedtime snack lately. "I baked some cookies this afternoon, and you can dunk them in milk." Some people were horrified by dunkers, but that was because they had never seen my adorable omega dipping a cookie into a tall, cold glass of milk then eating it, beaming the whole time. He looked more like a happy little boy than a man about to give birth to a child of his own.

"I'm not sure."

"You're not?" This scared me more than anything else that had been going on lately. "Do you feel all right?"

"Yes." His cheeks colored, and he could not meet my eye. "But I ate them."

"All of them?" A full batch?

"While you were working on the changing table, I went for a drink of water and spotted the tray on the sink. Are you mad?"

"No of course not. But it is a lot of sugar for you in one sitting."

"You're right, alpha. But I can still have a glass of milk, can't I?"

"Why don't you have a nice relaxing shower, and I'll go down for the milk and see what else I can scrounge."

He hugged me as closely as his currently round shape allowed. "You aren't mad at me, are you?"

"Never. But I won't bake more cookies unless you promise to show more care in how many you gobble."

Of course he agreed and then went to the bathroom for his shower.

I finished up a few things in the nursery then went to the kitchen for his snack. I returned with a tray, holding his milk as well as some woven wheat crackers and sharp cheddar only to find my omega asleep in bed, the covers down at his hips and his bump swelling toward the ceiling. He needed rest more than food, it seemed. Still full of cookies, the scamp.