Ice Planet Holiday

I
wake
up to the drag of a ridged tongue along my ear. Vektal’s hand carefully cups one of my breasts, large and tender with pregnancy.

“Mmm,” I sigh, snuggling deeper under the furs with him. It’s good to be the chief’s mate, it really is. Every morning, I get woken up to a licking or nibbling of some kind. Today it’s my ear. Yesterday it was my pussy. All of it is equally sinfully delicious and makes a girl look forward to her day.

I don’t even mind the whole ‘ice planet’ thing and the ‘having to wear fur and leather’ thing if it gets me a sexy beast like Vektal.

I roll over and slide into his arms, nuzzling against his throat. My big, pregnant belly gets in the way of things, but Vektal’s large enough that he can still envelop me against him. “Is it morning already?” I ask, sleepy.

“It is.” He nips at my jaw. “Is my mate hungry for food? Or for her male?”

“Little from column A, little from column B?” I reach up and smooth my hand along one of the horns jutting from his forehead and curling back against his hair. He gets wild when I stroke his horns. Maybe it’s the mental image that does it for him; I’ve never asked how much feeling he has there because I don’t have horns. I’m as human as can be.

Sometimes I’m still amazed we ended up together, seeing as how we both are from different corners of the universe, and we’re both stranded, but that’s a story for another day. Right now I just want my man. Vektal’s hand smooths down my hip, and he pulls me against his cock, letting me know that he’s been awake for several minutes, thinking about sex.

I can’t blame him - I tend to think about sex more than I probably should. It’s hard not to when your mate is so good at it.

It’s at least an hour later when my mate and I emerge from our cave. I smooth out my hair, always a little self-conscious that everyone can guess what we’ve been doing just by my expression. No one pays a bit of attention to us, though, and it’s just another ice planet morning. The sa-khui - Vektal’s people - don’t differentiate between days of the week, and they don’t have holidays. There are only two sorta-seasons here - the bitter season and the brutal season. Both have entirely too much snow. Harlow tells me she keeps a calendar because otherwise her days run together and it bothers her. It’s not a bad idea, and I’m tempted to go get the marked-bone calendar out of her empty cave and borrow it. She won’t mind; she’s currently at the ancestors’ ship.

I want to count the days. Maybe then it’ll help me deal with the fact that this damn baby isn’t in any hurry to get here.

Vektal toys with a lock of my hair and then gently tugs on it, dragging my wandering attention back to him. “You are far away in your thoughts,” he tells me. There’s a look of concern in his glowing blue eyes. “Is it the kit?”

I pat my bloated stomach. “No, he’s fine today.” As if wanting to disagree with that statement, the baby kicks me right in the girl parts, and I wince. He seems to kick me there a lot lately, and it sucks. “Just hungry.”

My mate’s face brightens. “Tell me what you want to eat and I’ll get it for you.”

I shrug. “Just whatever, babe.” It all disagrees with my pregnant stomach.

Vektal watches me, then puts his hands on my shoulders. It’s kind of like being grabbed by two baseball mitts, his hands are so big. “I worry about you, my Georgie.”

“I’m fine, I promise,” I tell him. I’m just ultra-grumpy that the baby in my stomach seems to be cemented there. It doesn’t feel like it’s moving at all, and I’m so tired of being pregnant. Pretty sure I’ve been pregnant for at least fourteen months now, because the sa-khui carry longer than humans. At this point? It’s almost like torture. I’m not one of those ‘easy’ pregnancy girls like Liz, who barely had a baby belly and had hers two weeks ago. Nope. I’m one of those ‘barf at everything and bloat like a whale’ pregnant types. The type that cries at the drop of a hat.

Heck, I feel like crying now, and nothing’s wrong.

Vektal pulls me against him and presses a kiss to my forehead. “I shall go hunt you a quill-beast for your meal. Will that make your stomach happy?”

The only thing that would make my stomach happy right now is a ‘vacancy’ sign going up, but I give him a smile. “That sounds great.”

He nods, releases me, and heads off to grab his hunting gear. It gives him something to do and it will let me get out my whining before he comes back. I’ve been awful the last few months, and I worry he’s going to wake up one day and boot my human ass out of his cave for being such a jerk. And then I cry until I barf, because that’s apparently what I do when I’m pregnant.

The other humans are near the center of the cave, by the bathing pool. I see Nora (pregnant), Stacy (pregnant), Liz (nursing her cute little Raashel), Ariana (pregnant and annoying), and Megan (pregnant). Marlene must be sleeping in. I waddle my way over there, wincing when the baby kicks me in the girl parts again. Me and this baby need to have a talk, seriously. I sit down in my regular spot next to Nora, wincing.

She eyes my stomach. “You still haven’t dropped.”

“Thanks for the cheerful reminder,” I tell her dryly.

“Stacy has,” she says, excitement in her voice. Stacy gets up to show us all, and indeed, it seems as if her belly is quite a bit lower than yesterday. She caresses it, beaming a happy smile. So Stacy will be the next one to give birth.

I hate how jealous I am. “Lucky,” I say, and hope it doesn’t come out as sullen as it feels. I was the first one to get knocked up. How come I’m not the first one to give birth?

“You look like someone pissed in your Cheerios,” Liz observes, pulling Raashel away from her breast and then burping her.

“I wish I had Cheerios,” I say grumpily.

“Awww,” Liz mocks. “Does someone need to hold a baby to feel better?”

I put my arms out. “Yes. Gimme.” I never resist a chance to hold Raashel. She’s the cutest little mite. Harlow’s baby Rukhar isn’t here, and if I’m being honest, he’s not as cute as Raashel. He was born early and is still a little small. Raashel, however, is plump and always smiling.

Ironic, given her parents are two of the moodiest people ever.

I hold the baby and we all coo over her tiny toes and her little horn-buds. Raashel has a ton of thick black hair that clings to her scalp. She doesn’t have a tail, and she’s a lot pinker than Rukhar, and I wonder how my own baby will look.

“You know, if you want to watch her for a few hours, I wouldn’t mind going out and getting some hunting in.” Liz looks excited at the thought. “I won’t go far. Just close to the caves and check a few trap lines. I haven’t been in weeks.”

I tap Raashel’s teeny tiny nose, where I can see the barest hint of sa-khui ridges coming in. “Has it really been weeks since she was born?”

“Fuck if I know,” Liz says. “Where’s that calendar of Harlow’s?”

“In her cave? But it doesn’t do any good if she’s not here to update it.” Harlow has a tiny chip that she moves from one notch to the next to count the days. “And she and Rukh are going to be at the ancestors’ cave for a bit longer, I think.”

“I need to make my own calendar,” Stacy complains. “I can’t get over not having days of the week.”

“You know what I miss?” Megan chimes in, splashing her feet in the wading pool. Her ankles are swollen with her pregnancy, something I’ve had a lot of experience with. “I miss holidays.”

“Oh man, me too,” Liz says, leaning back instead of heading off to hunt. “I loved me some Thanksgiving.”

“Valentines’ Day for me.” Megan giggles. “Just because of all the chocolate. God, I really want chocolate lately.”

My mouth waters at the thought. Sweets aren’t something the ice planet has in abundance. Or at all. “Chocolate sounds amazing.”

“I miss Christmas,” Stacy says with a dreamy expression on her face. “I see all this snow and every day it makes me think of Christmas songs.”

Megan leans forward, excited. “We should celebrate Christmas!”

Nora snorts. “Girl, I’m Jewish.”

“Oh.” Megan frowns. “Sorry.”

“A holiday does sound nice,” I agree, wistful. I love the thought of a big celebration. It’s not even the presents or the food, it’s just the idea of something to look forward to. I look over at Stacy as she takes a bite of dried rations - heavily spiced - and think maybe a meal isn’t so bad, after all. “I think we should have a holiday. Not a specific one like Christmas, but we could bring in elements of all the holidays we miss and just have one great big non-denominational holiday. Like…” I cast around for an idea. “Landing day!”

“We crashed, we didn’t land,” Liz points out.

I rock Raashel in my arms. “I thought you were going hunting?”

“Not when I can stay and shoot down all your ideas,” she says cheekily. She crosses her legs and props her chin on one hand, thinking. “So kind of like Christma-kwanz-akkuh? What if we call it, like…I don’t know. Resonance day?”

“Not everyone resonated,” I point out to her. “I’d love to bring both caves together for the celebration. Get everyone together.”

“I would love to see Kira and Tiff and the others,” Nora agrees.

“Unity Day,” Megan calls out. “We can celebrate both caves coming together and both humans and sa-khui coming together! It’ll be like Thanksgiving, but no one’s going to take over someone else’s land.” She wiggles her eyebrows. “And we can add a tree and some presents and a feast to the mix.”

Everyone’s getting excited at the thought, me included. I stroke Raashel’s fat little cheek, my mind on babies. Maybe mine will come before the big Unity Day celebration. “I think it sounds great.” When everyone’s silent, I look up and see all eyes turned to me. “What?”

“You’re the chief’s mate,” Stacy points out. “You might need to convince him that it’s a good idea.”

More titters rise from the group. “Convincing,” Liz hoots. “Like she doesn’t ‘convince’ his ass on a regular basis.”

She’s not wrong about that. I smirk at her. “I’ll see what I can do.”

I
don’t get
to talk to Vektal until later that night. He delivers a fresh kill to me just in time for lunch, and then quickly heads back out for more hunting. The winter - sorry, the brutal season - was harsh and there were days that no one could leave the caves to hunt because of fierce snowstorms. That meant eating the food that was stocked, and with the extra twelve mouths to feed, it was enough for everyone, but
just
enough. Now that the weather is nicer, Vektal and the hunters have been spending a lot of their time hunting to replenish supplies and prepare for the next winter. Since me and the pregnant girls can’t do much, we sit around and sew baby clothes out of leather.

Or at least we try to. Maylak’s really the only one that’s good at working the leather into something that resembles baby clothing. The rest of us fumble with bone awls and sinew and do our best. I’m the worst at it, but I also have a baby coming that will need something to wear. Maylak’s own toddler, Esha, tends to run around naked, but humans are more sensitive to the cold than the sa-khui, so we have to assume our children will be, too.

By the time Vektal makes it back to the cave for the evening, I’ve retired back to our cave and have been picking out crooked stitches by tallow candle-light. I might be weeping in frustration at how bad I am at sewing. Just a little. But when Vektal comes home, I dry my tears and put on a bright smile for him, because I feel like he shouldn’t come home to a pregnant, crying, miserable mate. Not when he and his hunters work so hard to make us humans happy and keep us safe. “Hi baby,” I say brightly and put away the sewing. “How was the day’s hunt?”

“Very good,” he tells me. “We slaughtered many dvisti. The elders are butchering them for drying as we speak.” He leans in and kisses my head, and he smells like sweat and dried blood.

“Yum yum,” I comment dryly. “Have you eaten? There’s some stew left.” Liz is a big fan of stew with dried meat and root vegetables.

He makes a face and flops down on the ground near my stool, wrapping his arms around my belly and resting on my legs. “I ate while on the hunt. How is our kit today?”

I play with his sweaty hair, stroking it back from his face. My heart squeezes with love and I can’t get over how much I adore this man. He looks tired tonight, and his horn is jabbing into my stomach, but I don’t care. He looks like he is exhausted, and I want to comfort him. “The same as usual. Kicking me in all your favorite parts. Not ready to be born yet.”

Vektal chuckles. “Stubborn. Just like his mother.”

“And his father,” I point out pertly. He’s got a bit of dried blood on his cheek and I absently rub at it. “You’re dirty.”

“I should bathe.” He doesn’t get up from his place nestled against my lap, though.

“I could help you with that.” I trail my fingers over his jaw and then down his neck. “Want a…” There’s no word in their language for ‘sponge bath’. “…Wipe down? From your mate?”

He rumbles low in his chest and his hands squeeze my buttocks. “If you wipe down your mate, you might find he’s less tired than you think, my resonance.”

A warning about arousing him? Challenge accepted. “I find my mate is never as tired as I think,” I tease, and lightly trace his ear. “So is that a yes? If so, I’ll need you naked.”