19. Tuft

Iwas pregnant again, according to the dragon. I thought I knew what pregnancy felt like, but I hadn"t gotten sick yet, and I hadn"t smelled the babies for myself. I thought I knew my body well enough to know I was pregnant. Even my urine had smelled different last time. Now, I could only smell the new and improved imprinted and marked version of me, which reminded me of Axel"s heady aroma, too.

I don"t know what I expected to happen after the open house, but I was disappointed when Axel walked me back to the omega wing and kissed me goodnight, same as he did every Thursday evening. "See you tomorrow for dinner," he said.

"See you then."

When he kissed me, it felt like he was going through the motions. He wasn"t really into it, and then it was over. He didn"t even look back when I said, "Good night."

In my room, I dug a pregnancy test out from under the bathroom sink. Then, I stared at it for fifteen minutes before re-reading the instructions I"d already memorized by heart.

I was stalling. It seemed silly, but part of me didn"t want to know. The dragon could have been wrong. I couldn"t shake the feeling that Axel had brushed me off at the door. Was he pulling away from me now that I was pregnant? I couldn"t do it without him. I needed his help to bring our clutch into the world. I knew what would happen if I delayed too long.

I waited the customary three minutes for the test results. Two lines, same as the ones back on Earth. I was pregnant. I"d expected this to be the greatest moment of my life, and here I was, crying on the toilet, scared my babies wouldn"t make it if my alpha changed his mind.

I stood up and turned to the mirror. Unlike my human eyes, my kobold irises covered the surface of my eye, showing only gold around the black pupils. I still looked amazing, even though my nose was running. I used a few tissues and combed my fingers through my hair, letting a strand fall over my forehead. I stared at myself until I was cross-eyed and a little dizzy.

"He may not love you yet," I told my reflection, "but you are a lovable omega, and his mate. He"ll come around. All you have to do is work harder at being yourself."

When I"d run for class president in the sixth grade, my parents had drilled that lesson into my head. "Don"t try to be someone else," they"d said. "Always be yourself."

I"d been guarding my heart around Axel. There were times I could have kept going with a story from my past or an anecdote about my day, but I"d stopped myself, thinking I must be boring him to tears. If that were true, I"d prolonged the inevitable. If Axel didn"t like me, I needed to make him hate me enough to say something and leave.

Except now there was an egg, or eggs. We were going to be parents. My reflection in the mirror had tears streaming down his face.

Thankfully, it had been a long day. I was asleep as soon as my head hit my pillow.

When I woke the next morning, I was ready to tackle the day head-on with my usual chipper enthusiasm, once I cleared up my congestion in the shower. It never failed. Even as a kobold with larger nasal passages, crying gave me a stuffy head the next morning.

Finally ready to face the day in a clean pair of compression shorts, I looked through my closet for the brightest shirt I had. Rainbow sequins. I hadn"t worn it since arriving on Ignitas, but I couldn"t bring myself to throw it away. It was my favorite clubbing shirt, back in the day. I combined it with fishnet tights and black shorts to complete the outfit. I even added some golden glitter eyeshadow, something I"d always done for omega classes but hadn"t bothered now that I worked by myself.

Staring back at me in the mirror was me. Maybe not the same as human me, but as close as I could come as a kobold. My adoptive parents would recognize me like this, as would my college classmates.

I fanned away more tears and headed to my office to put the finishing touches on the rec league schedules. We had some folks who wanted to play more than one sport, which required additional balancing. Kobolds playing kickball from six to seven couldn"t also play volleyball at the same time. It was a lot to manage.

I took my assistants outside to run some time trials and confirm everyone could make it to and from their game locations in five minutes, the break between games. We even did some roleplaying for the folks who wanted to play soccer, volleyball, and tennis all in one night.

"We"re going to need a medic or two," I said as I hustled back to the pavilion to where betas Kolge and Benz waited. "We don"t want anyone getting cramps, and with our claws, there"s always the possibility of injury."

"Tuft, it will be fine," Kolge reassured me. He and Benz shared a look as they led me back to the fortress. "We have most of the medical staff signed up to play. We can ask them to cover a shift when they"re not busy."

I nodded and pasted a smile back on my face. "You"re right. It"s time for lunch. Do you have plans?"

They didn"t, so we grabbed a table together in the cafeteria and ate the sub sandwiches and kettle chips provided. We grew our own tubers on Ignitas. I didn"t like eating them raw the way some kobolds did, but fried? I could eat them all day.

Or so I thought. Halfway through my sub, after a whole mess of chips, I suddenly felt nauseated.

"I"ll be right back," I told my assistants. I clapped a hand over my mouth and swallowed back bile. I couldn"t run like this, but I walked as fast as I could to the nearest bathroom off the school wing. I made it in time before my lunch came rushing out of me.

After cleaning up a bit, I had to pee, so I felt around down there to check things out. My balls already felt bigger, which wasn"t possible. There was no way my egg, or eggs, had already dropped into my balls. They should be in my womb.

I explained my symptoms to Kolge and Benz when I returned to the table (after washing my hands, of course).

"We were outside all morning," Benz said. "You might be progressing faster than before, thanks to the sunlight."

"It hasn"t even been a week!" I covered my mouth with both hands this time, more embarrassed by my verbal vomit than I had been about the actual stuff.

"Nobody knows the timing on this." Kolge, who was sitting beside me, patted my shoulder. "Like your schedule, we won"t know the real impacts until we put it into action."

"The dragon said they know of a midwife in another village," Benz said. "Maybe they"ll know more about sunlight"s influence on kobold pregnancies."

"Ever since we learned about the other villages, I"ve wanted to see one," Kolge admitted, looking down at the table as though he was embarrassed to share with us.

I started to say Weld might leave for another village soon, but I didn"t want to blab if he considered it a secret. I pulled out my phone while Kolge and Benz imagined differences between our village and the others.

"What if there are more females?" Benz wondered.

"My assistant is talking about visiting other villages. Can I share your news with him?"

"I don"t have news yet," Weld reminded me. "I haven"t bonded with a dragonet. Who is your assistant?"

"A beta named Kolge."

"I know him. I"ll talk to him when I know I"m going."

I stopped short of telling him I didn"t want him to go alone. He would have his dragonet companion, and maybe I was being presumptuous, but I had assumed Mac and Galen the dragon would go with him.

Instead, I texted him, "Have a good weekend."

Satisfied I"d done the best I could, I slipped my phone back into my pocket to find both betas staring at me.

"What did I miss?"

"Where is your hunky alpha mate?" Benz asked. "Herb"s texting me to see if I know." Herb was Benz"s roommate who worked construction with Axel.

"He"s not at work?" I tried to call him, and his phone immediately went to voicemail. He never turned it off, so that could mean only one thing. He was out of range. "He"s left Ignitas."

My heart fell into a pit in my stomach. Axel left without telling me. He went back to Earth, after all.