Page 35 of Dante
Dante raised his eyebrows, and I felt the blood drain from my face. “No. I’m not carrying twins, am I?”
“I don’t know. We can ask Dr. King. He can tell such things, but I’m unsure.”
Not that I was against having twins. A lot of bear omegas had multiples. But I guess I’d never thought that I would have more than one at a time. But then again…Cecil had twins. The only hellhound babies. And they were identical. Was that a thing? I needed to ask Dr. King, I guessed.
“Maybe we should go in?” I said before I put another cracker in my mouth. I was quickly running out, but I knew Dante could provide more if I wanted them.
“It might be best.” Dante escorted me into the front door of the clinic, and we were met by Dr. King himself.
“Good morning,” he said. “And congratulations.”
“Thank you,” I said after quickly swallowing the cracker I’d been chewing.
“Did you tell him?” Dr. King asked.
I looked up at Dante, confused. “Was I supposed to tell you something?”
Dante winced. “No, that was the thing we needed to talk about.” Dante looked over at Dr. King. “He’s not feeling well, and we got dressed and came here. I haven’t been able to tell him anything yet.”
“Tell me what?” I asked, looking back and forth between the two.
Dante winced again, but Dr. King spoke up. “Cecil’s pregnancy was only six weeks long, and we’re unsure if that’s changed or not, so it’s possible you will be giving birth in just over a month.”
I looked up at Dante in disbelief. I tried to say something, anything, but suddenly, my breath felt like it wasn’t coming quite fast enough, and then everything went dark.
Chapter 13
Dante
“There you are,” I said to Banner as I looked down at my mate. He was lying on an exam bed in one of the rooms in the clinic. I’d caught him, but just barely, before he crumpled. I should have insisted we discuss things at home, but he’d not been feeling well, and his mind kept wandering from place to place.
Banner blinked up at me, then looked to his right. Dr. King was standing on the other side of the bed, and Banner narrowed his eyes. “You did not say I’m going to give birth in a month. Please tell me you didn’t say that. I just found out I’m pregnant.” Banner tried to sit up, but Dr. King gently pushed him back down onto the table.
“You are pregnant, yes. And at the moment, we do not know how long your pregnancy will last, but we have to go on what we do know, and that is that Cecil’s pregnancy was six weeks. That is what the goddess has said she would do for the hellhounds’ mates who were pregnant with hellhound babies.”
Banner looked over at me with worried eyes. “Did we talk about that? I feel like we discussed that before.”
“We touched on it. I don’t remember what all we talked about exactly, though, because we’ve covered a whole lot in a short amount of time.”
Banner looked over at Dr. King. “Six weeks? I’ve been mated for two. My heat hit like hours after he claimed me. And I do mean hours. Not even six hours later, I was well into my heat.”
Dr. King sighed. He took Banner’s hand and held it with his and patted the top with his other. “Yes, I understand that. Please calm down. I’ve already reached out to get a definite timeline from the goddess, but she does like to have things her way, and she hasn’t specified if she’s changed the gestation or not.”
“But six weeks?” Banner looked over at me. “I was expecting five months. We were supposed to have months to get ready to be dads. We don’t even have a house yet. Where are we going to live?”
I leaned down and placed my forehead against Banner’s. He grabbed my shoulders and held on. “Shh. It’s okay, baby. We have plenty of time to get everything we need. It might be that we ourselves aren’t quite ready, but we’ll get there.”
Banner took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “I’m okay. I’m better,” he told me. I kissed him quickly before I stood up.
“We don’t know, Banner. I wish I had a definite timeline for you, but I don’t. She’s never come back and said what gestational time she’s giving us. Master Edison tried to reach out to her once again after he’d heard that the two of you claimed each other.”
Banner pushed up onto his elbows, and I helped him sit up completely. “Okay, but six weeks? I…” Banner nodded. “I guess I have to be ready for anything. But that would be just over a month from now. I guess we should pick a house, and our matemoon is over, huh?”
“Matemoon?” Dr. King said in question.
“Yeah, it’s what we’re on. We mated, and now we’re on our matemoon. Dante was going to take us somewhere, but I couldn’t decide where I wanted to go, so we’ve just been staying at his place.” Banner looked up at Dr. King. “Like honeymoon, but since we didn’t get married, just mated, matemoon.”
Dr. King nodded slowly. “I can see that. I’ve just never heard it called anything other than strengthening the bond. But I do like the new word.”
