Page 87 of His Temporary Alpha Mate
Do not feed that to Spice!I yelled at my alter.He’ll get sick.
Demonstrating their intelligence, they opened the refrigerator and found the uncooked meat I made up for Spice to eat. They sniffed out the right one straight away, it was uncanny. They were rather overzealous in their portion sizes, but if it kept Spice from trying to get the stuff I wanted, then that was fine with me.
We sat on the counter for a while, eating our spoils together, crumbs and wrappers littered around us. At this point, I’d stopped trying to urge my alter to shift. When they got over whatever this was, then they’d let me take control. If not, Larken would be back at lunchtime and he could use his alpha power to force a shift. I wasn’t due in the office, so it was possible it would take that long for Chase to notice I wasn’t working at home. No need to panic.
Sitting in my house, on the kitchen counter in my shifted form, was rather freeing actually. I got the sense the babies were enjoying it too. They weren’t as active as they usually were, but they still wriggled. It was getting tight for space in there.
Fed, I told my alter I was thirsty. They were talented, no doubt about that, but there was no way we were making tea with our little paws. Juice from the fridgewas too difficult to open. Water from the tap would have to do. It was fine. A drink was a drink. They were doing their best.
We didn’t bother with a glass, we didn’t want to risk breaking it, so we just lapped at the stream like a pure animal would do until our thirst was slaked. More effort went into switching off the tap this time and we managed it.
Priscilla, the little gray diva, who was accustomed to being fed by this time, let her displeasure be known that her biscuits were old and that she would like some meat, too, thank you very much.
Determined not to let me shift, my raccoon took over the task of feeding the cat.
Sure, they got the crunch everywhere and didn’t refresh the water, but at least she had some fresher food, right? They also tried to feed her one of the pouches. Half went on the floor but Priscilla was too much of a lady to eat off the floor. She ate whatever landed in her bowl and flounced off in a huff, tail swishing wildly.
Tired from our exertions, we took a nap on the sofa. The couch was much more comfortable in this form, I discovered.
I kept getting woken up because my stomach and back hurt. It was annoying but I put it down to sleeping on the sofa and what we had eaten for breakfast.
My bladder insisted we wake up and go to the bathroom again. I thought my raccoon might let me take over and shift back, no such luck, so we clambered back up the stairs for whatever reason. There was a half bath downstairs.
My alter caught my thought about the tap being on. That explained the trek upstairs. I loved the furry beast. They were so smart. They caught that thought and preened. Yes, they were, thank you.
Sure the sofa was causing our growing discomfort, we climbed onto the bed to go back to sleep. The trek to the upstairs bathroom had been exhausting with such little legs!
It must have been only ten minutes later, I was still so very tired, when my phone rang.
Please let me shift, I begged my alter again.
They ignored me.
Instead, they picked up the phone and tried to unlock it, somehow answering the call and turning it into a video call.
“Oh hey,” Chase grinned. “Why are you shifted?”
Unable to answer, I just did my cute chittering thing.
“Man, you’re adorable like this. Look at you, being all chubby!”
My alter was offended. We were not chubby, we were round with our babies. We needed to make them a nest sothey could come out.
We dropped the phone, on a new mission. We needed blankets, towels, cushions, oh, and the shiny things Ingal made for the babies. They needed to know they were so loved and could come out now.
What? No! They couldn’t come out now! It was far too early. The babies would be sick. They could die if they were too small.
No. Babies come now. Make nest.
I don’t know how much time passed as my alter ignored me and built the nest instead. They pushed me further back so they could focus on the task at hand. To be fair to them, the nest was pretty cool. They couldn’t get the crib mobile, but they did find some of Ingal’s jewelry in his room, to line the nest with his scent too. It was not stealing, just borrowing.
Alpha. The raccoon decided they needed some of Larken’s shirts from the laundry basket. We would need his scent surrounding us when we pushed the babies out.
A contraction rocked me to my core. They really weren’t lying. The babies were coming and they weren’t going to wait another moment!
Footsteps thundered up the stairs. Larken was home, Chase hot on his heels.
“Dalton? Are you okay?” he called.
