3. Sam

3

SAM

T he clothing piles around Lu's bed get higher and higher in the coming weeks. As his due date gets closer, the clothes make their way onto the bed too. Lu takes to wearing my clothes in layers and sniffing at me every time I visit him.

I come in on a Friday morning to find him tearing sheets out of his sketchbook and crumpling them up.

"Lu, what are you doing?"

He holds his arms out to me. I close the door and walk across the room, thinking he wants a hug, but he just sniffs at my shirt and keeps ripping out pages.

"Hey, there are drawings in there," I say, trying to get the sketchbook from him.

He yanks it away from me. "They're wishes. I want our baby to be born in a bed of hope."

Usually this stage of the nest is completed with pillows. I wonder if something is wrong.

"Do you need some pillows? I can bring you some."

He rolls his eyes. "We don't need any more pillows. Kevin put them in the bathroom. The fluff is wrong. It smells like soap. These wishes smell like paper. Like new books."

I walk over to the bathroom door and open it. Inside is a huge mountain of pillow guts. There have to be at least thirty destroyed pillows in here.

"If you didn't want the pillows, why did you cut them all open?" I ask.

Lu shrugs. "I had to see if they would work."

Okay. I don't know if he needed to destroy all thirty pillows to figure that out, but Lu is far enough down the rabbit hole of his nesting that it isn't useful to reason with him anymore. I close the door on the huge pile of fluff.

"Do you need anything from me?" I ask. Allen would have asked me to do strange things like roll in the pillow fluff or scatter his nest with lavender. He collected cleaning supplies for his first nest, bath salts for his second, and dried flowers for his third. Lavender was always a theme.

"Put your wishes in the nest," he says, as if it were obvious. He scribbles onto his sketchpad and tears out the page.

"Wishes, huh? How do I do that, exactly?"

He points to a notebook on the desk Axe brought for him two weeks ago. There's a pencil next to it.

"Oh. Am I supposed to draw things I want to happen?"

He raises his eyebrows. "You? Draw? Sam, you can't draw to save your life. Write the wishes down and put them in."

Lu sketches an outline of Mary and Scooch with a small penguin chick, then rips off the paper, and tosses it in with the rest.

Wishes. What could I want that I don't already have?

I pick up the notebook and open it to the first page. I've always wanted to travel Europe with the kids. I write that down and tear out the page, tossing into Lu's pile.

Lu pulls off one of my shirts and keeps drawing. It looks like he has five layers, so he's not to the point of getting naked yet. As I think of my next wish, I watch Lu sketch. His next sketch is… graphic. It's of us having sex, and my knot is very detailed.

I pull out my phone and send my omega father a quick text, warning him to not bring the kids.

My wishes are all over the place: a healthy birth, a successful book release, and for Mary to call me "alpha daddy" instead of "pancake daddy." Lu's wishes are all very similar. He draws us having sex in various positions. I am quite the acrobat in some of his wishes. He removes a shirt with each drawing, depositing them around the bed.

"Lu, if you want me to join you on the bed?—"

"We need more wishes," he says, even though the scent of his slick is becoming more powerful with every minute.

He draws us in a sex swing. I didn't even know he was interested in that.

"Focus!"

Right. I should be writing my own wishes, instead of looking at his. Even though this exercise is proving to be very educational.

I add "Make love to Lu in a sex swing," in case he was wondering. I flash the words to him before ripping the paper out of the notebook and adding to his pile.

He yawns. "I'm so tired." He removes the last shirt and lies down on the pile of papers. "Go get the fluff."

"But you said the fluff smelled like soap."

He closes his eyes. "You'll have to come on it, obviously. It will be like a cloud of your cum all around me."

That sounds kind of disgusting, but I smile as convincingly as I can. "Alright. I'll go get it."

Something primal takes hold of me as I bring the fluff over. It's strange. I always thought Allen's preoccupation with pillow fluff during egg-laying was strange. But pillows are important. There has to be a cushion for the egg.

And Lu is right. These pillow guts smell wrong.

Once the bed is haloed in fluff, my naked omega stirs. I pull off my clothes, distributing them evenly around the nest, and climb inside the bed with him.

"What do you think of the nest?" I ask.

He opens his eyes. His body is sheened in sweat, his white hair plastered to his head. "Oh, Sam. It's perfect. Except…"

I run my hand along his ass. "I know, baby. I'm going to make it better." I dip my fingers in between his asscheeks. "You're so wet."

He moans. I sink a finger inside him. He's so open right now—so ready. I withdraw and scoop out the slick, spreading it on the pillow fluff.

"Yours," he whispers. He means my scent.

He rolls onto his stomach, coming up onto his knees and presenting his ass to me. I push his asscheeks together and slide my cock between them. He reaches back, grabbing for me. With every thrust, I graze against his hole. He's writhing against me, begging. It's all so much that I speed up as my body tenses, and the pleasure surges through me. I spurt cum all over his back. There's so much of it.

I add it to the fluff.

"Please. Your knot. I need your knot."

With one fluid thrust, I drive inside of him. He pushes back into me. With the nesting hormones he'll come many more times before we're done.

"That's right, baby. Do you want this?"

He nods.

I grab his hips and slam into him again. Our bodies move in tandem, rocking away and crashing together. The smell and sound of his slick overwhelm me. He's mine. He's carrying our egg, wearing my pebble. And I need to claim him more than I need to breathe.

The door to the room opens, and Kevin, in his rubber duck scrubs, peers inside.

I freeze. I was so caught up in the moment with Lu, I forgot that I was supposed to tell the doctor when Lu was done building his nest.

Lu glances at him, then says, "Don't stop."

Ice help me, but I get even harder. Kevin stands there with an amused smile while I thrust into Lu, the squish of his slick and a guttural moan filling the room.

The moan is from me.

"More," Lu whispers as Kevin closes the door. I pound into him harder. My knot is growing, Lu tightening around me, and I don't care who hears. I roar as I swell inside him, pushing as deep as I can.

He scrabbles at the sheets, his breath coming in short gasps. I reach around and pump his cock. He tightens around me, coming all over the sheets.

I add the cum to our nest and keep thrusting.

An alpha penguin shifter's knot is for his omega. There to satisfy him, there to open him up for egg laying, there to fill the ache during nesting. I let him have it without mercy. Lu doesn't need gentleness right now. He needs satisfaction.

"Sam! More. Please more."

With every thrust, I pull out further, stretching Lu's rim. Some alphas prepare their omegas with their fist. It all depends on the size of an alpha's knot.

I've never needed to use my fist. My knot is more than enough.

"Relax for me, baby. C'mon, you can do it."

Lu screams and comes again. His ass clamps down on me, but then he releases, and I'm able to pull my knot out further—far enough that it catches.

Lu panics, his shoulders tensing. "Sam, I can't!"

"Shhhhh, it's okay. I need to open you up. I promise you that I won't hurt you."

He takes in deep breaths, trying to calm himself. We talked about what this would be like, but the haze of nesting is too much for logic to penetrate. This part is hard for every omega.

"Push me out, baby. C'mon, I know you can do it."

He clutches the sheets and grips me like a vice, screaming as he pushes.

I can feel it at my tip. Something solid.

Our egg.

"You're doing so good. Our egg is descending."

He shakes his head. "I can't."

"You can. I believe in you."

I grab for his cock again and give it a few short strokes. He comes hard, pushing my knot until it's almost halfway out. The pressure of his rim around the center of my knot makes my head swim. It's so good that it's hard to focus.

"I love you, Lu."

He takes in a few more deep breaths, then bears down. My knot slips out, and in its place is the white of an egg—a perfect, solid egg.

"The egg is beautiful. Just a few more pushes, and you can see it," I say.

Lu moves forward, grabbing for the plastic headboard of the hospital bed. He brings each of his knees up until he's in a squatting position. I crawl over to him, kissing the crook of his neck. "I've got you. I'm here, baby."

I hold his cock, slowly pumping it. He just came, but he's still hard and orgasming can help.

He rocks back and forth. "It's so big, Sam."

"I know, I know. But you can do this. Push for me, okay?"

His hands grasp the headboard so hard that his knuckles go white. His whole body tenses and the egg lowers, just a bit.

"Oh, God. I can't!"

"Breathe. Long inhales, okay."

He nods, his breath slowing. I pump his cock faster. He's harder. His orgasm is coming.

"Sam!" He spurts all over the headboard.

"Push now."

With a low moan he pushes, pushes, pushes, until the egg drops onto the bed. I pull him into my arms and drag him backward, so he can see.

Our egg that took so long to grow is just fine. The shell is just as hard as the shells of my other children's eggs.

"It's lovely," Lu says.

"Yes, it is."

"We had sex in front of Kevin."

I laugh. "Yes, we did."

Lu picks up the egg and brings it to his chest. Without telling him what to do, he knows to shift, his body growing to twice its normal size and softening with fur. I shift with him, and we cuddle our egg close in our animal forms.

It doesn't matter that we're in the hospital. We're together, and our baby is safe.