Chapter Fourteen

"Can you explain to me what it is we're doing again?" Stone followed me as I waddled toward the storage building where we kept the linens.

"I told you. We need to get something," I replied. It was actually many somethings. I couldn't let go of the dream I'd had. As perfect as the nest was, I needed it all it could be, and if that meant my little dragons wanted low-end motel pillows, then low-end motel pillows they were going to get.

"From where?" he asked, following closely while not being on top of me. He really was the best mate ever.

"Fine, just come with me. You'll see." I didn't want to explain everything. I was already out of breath, the eggs pressing on my diaphragm. According to the midwife, they were going to be here any day now. I could only hope.

Stone had been a great support through this pregnancy. I wasn't exactly handling it well, at least not emotionally. One minute I was happy, the next minute I was crying. I was exhausted all the time. I was already the size of a house—and yes, the cabin was small, but still, that made for one huge person.

One of the most difficult things to deal with was how hard my belly was. It was harder than hard and, even though I was told more than once that it was 1000 percent normal, it still messed with my head a little. Sometimes I even questioned whether I was turning into a robot, metal in my middle the only logical explanation.

Except it wasn't logical at all. Not with eggs in the picture.

And what had to be the hardest was that I wanted my mate's attention pretty much all the time. it didn't matter if he was working remotely or reading a book or sleeping, I wanted him to be there for me. And not once had he balked. He'd been great. So beyond great.

We were putting everything on hold for the babies, or, more accurately, he was. He needed to find his brother, and I felt awful that he hadn't managed to at this point. He assured me that his dragon was busy chilling curled up inside of him and wanted to stay here. I took that as a good sign.

But still, that wasn't what I wanted for my mate. I wanted him to get where he needed to be, to meet the family he never knew existed until recently, the ones who weren't going to pretend they didn't know him the way I'd seen his otter family do in dreams. And, from what I understood, it wasn't as far from the truth as I'd like, if not with his adoptive parents, with the rest of the bevy where he was raised.

Once we were at the storage building, I fiddled with the key. I probably should have changed the padlock six months ago when it first started sticking, but I didn't want to have to explain to my boss why I had to spend the extra money, and it hadn't been enough of a pain that I was willing to spend my own money. I got it open, and we went inside. I started grabbing pillow after pillow after pillow and throwing them into the laundry cart.

"Pillows for my nest." I explained as my mate stared at me, mouth open.

It took him most of a minute for him to reply in words, but he instantly helped me grab the pillows. "You already have a nest. Do you need us to fix it?"

"I need these to go with it." What part of this wasn't he getting? Probably the part that only made sense to me because I was the pregnant one.

"I didn't even know we had these pillows." Stone had been helping out around here a lot. But I didn't let him help as much as he wanted to. He had his job, too. Sure he could and did do it remotely, but asking him to do mine on top of his own— I couldn't bring myself to do that.

And I hadn't exactly told my boss about the pregnancy yet. He would only find some reason to be pissed at it and, since I was a short-timer, I figured why rock the boat.

"Well, I do need them." They weren't even good, but that didn't make a difference to me. "I dreamed we need them."

I piled them the rest of them into the laundry cart and pushed them back toward where I'd had Stone set up my clothesline earlier in the week. There were no poles in the ground. Instead he'd attached a hook to one of the trees and a second to the cabin. To that he added the line. It was pretty darn clever, if you asked me.

If you asked the squirrels, they would say the same. I based that 100 percent on the fact that they couldn't stay away from it while it was up. Stone sketched them one day, only in his sketches, they were wearing circus hats.

For some reason, I still hadn't been able to figure out, I couldn't let that particular pillow dream go. For whatever reason, it was important enough for me to have it stick so strongly. No harm could come from indulging in it, so I figured I might as well.

We hung up the pillows, which was exponentially more difficult than I'd imagined. Then I was going to bring the laundry basket back, but Stone insisted he return it.

"Now what?" he asked when he came back to find me staring at my pillows. There were about thirty-five.

"We let them air out." I shrugged. "That's as far as my dream got."

"Okay. Do you want to take a nap?" He spoke my love language.

Also, obviously, that was a trick question. I always wanted to take a nap or go to bed early these days. Pregnancy liked to keep me on my toes, though, and a few times I couldn't sleep despite best practices.

"Yeah, I'd like that."

We went up to the house, and I lay on my side while he curled up behind me, holding me close. I fell asleep pretty quickly. It was no surprise—I was absolutely exhausted. What was surprising was that when I woke up, it was getting dark out. I'd missed most of the day. Which was fine. Between the two of us, we were managing to get a lot of the little things done around here.

I didn't know why I was so vested in the place, but I was, and, as much as I was excited to go meet Stone's brothers and maybe start a new life, I also really liked my old one. If not for my craptastic job, this would be an ideal setting for growing our family.

I woke starving and headed for the fridge for something to eat. Everything sounded awful. I even tried a cracker from the cupboard. Nope. My body didn't want food, as much as it was lying to me.

"Argg!" I cried out in frustration.

My mate ran in. "What's—"

I cut him off with a look. "I'm just feeling weird."

That was the very wrong thing to say. The next thing I knew, he had me flat on my back on the bed, the midwife on her way over, and my mate taking control of everything like a boss.

It became obvious what was happening shortly before Parma got there. She offered me a choice of laying the eggs on the nest or giving birth to them in a more old-fashioned way. I opted for that. It was how I always expected to give birth, and I couldn't think of one good reason not to.

Soon I was squeezing and pushing, trying to deliver our eggs. My mate stood by my side, cheering me on, giving me someone to hold on to, and doing anything and everything I asked of him. I might've been the one who laid the eggs, but he was the MVP.

"Look what we made." I was so overwhelmed with happiness. I didn't know if they were boys or girls or one of each. Heck, I didn't fully understand how they were going to get out of there, only that they were.

The one thing I did know was that I already loved them completely.

"You did all the hard work." He helped me get settled on the nest with them.

That was where he was wrong. The man had been holding down the fort, while working his job and putting up with my cravings and mood swings. He did the heavy lifting on this one. "I couldn't have done it without you, my love."