“I love you,” she mumbles.
“I love you too.”
EPILOGUE
Penelope
“Should we not move the goat? This cannot be sanitary.” Volt is fussing. I am lying on a bed that is about to be absolutely ruined, looking at him over the vast volume of my belly.
“Nothing about this is going to be sanitary. Besides, some of the most famous humans of all time were born in rooms with animals in them. Also. Ow.”
I am in labor.
For nine months I have traveled the stars with Volt and his crew. I have been treated better in these nine months than in any of the many years before it. As Volt’s pregnant mate and fuck-bred, I have greater honors accorded to me even than Volt. Nobody on the ship has been able to contradict me, or deny me anything. I have been completely and delightfully spoiled. But all good things must come to an end, and this end is bearing down on me like a freight train about to come right through my vagina.
I want Bilbo here. Bilbo has barely left my side all this time. Volt was insistent I was pregnant the moment we finished having sex after he completely destroyed all trade routes on and off Earth. I wasn’t so sure until I started being violently ill about six weeks later when the crew was tearing into the raw carcass of a space whale. But Bilbo knew too. He showed it by being very careful with me, and very head butt-y with absolutely everybody else.
“He’s in the pen,” I say. “Don’t worry about him. Come here and help me.”
Volt teleports to my side in an instant. I may be the one in labor, but he is the one racked with concern. He curls up beside me on the bed, his massive body taking up far too much space, but I don’t mind. When I breathe in his scent and feel him pressed against me, I am calmed on a biological level.
Contractions roll through me. Sometimes they start off soft and I think they won’t be so bad, and then they absolutely punch me in the gut. I know this is all part of the process, but it is an awful part of the process.
“The baby will be here soon, and this will all be worth it,” he says.
I hope he’s right. I have no notion what will emerge from a blending of our species. It will not be human, and it will not be Vulpari. It will have characteristics from the pair of us. I hope it has his eyes. And his strength. And his charisma.
Mentally, I keep thinking of the baby as it. I don’t know if that’s some shortcoming on my part or if it’s just the way I feel about something that has grown inside me. My liver is an it. My stomach is an it. The baby, for now, is it.
Volt is holding me now in these hallowed moments before the baby arrives. I have been aching and uncomfortable for several weeks now. My breasts have swollen and now I drip milk in a way I find very disconcerting. Volt did not merely capture me. He changed who I was. He changed what I was. First he made me his pet. Now he is making me a mother.
“Ow ow ow ow ow,” I grunt as another contraction makes itself known. These things are getting more and more brutal with every onset. They too are strange. It feels as though my body has been taken over by a force far greater than itself. That’s no surprise. Ever since I met Volt it has felt as though I am in the process of being taken over by powerful forces both inside and out.
“Breathe,” Volt says. It is somewhat comforting that he, like all males across the universe, is absolutely helpless in the face of birth. This is not something he can dominate, fix, or do. This is a door only I can pass through.
“Thank you,” I say, trying not to absolutely seethe with sarcasm. “That’s very helpfulllllll…”
I am cut off by another contraction. They are coming less than a minute apart, which I am pretty certain means the baby is imminent. There is a great pressure and a tightness and, yes, pain.
He presses his head against mine. I just barely manage to hold myself back from biting his ear. He is trying to comfort me, and in spite of my natural fear and apprehension and all the incredibly sassy hormones making me want to hurt him for doing this to me—it works.
The pressure increases, my screams hit a pitch I did not know I was capable of reaching, and suddenly there is a release, a rush of movement. I reach down to grab at it. It is mine. It came from me. I need to hold it.