On a lazy, snowy Sunday, a very late-term Xander ponders the quickly-approaching birth of her twins.

Commission for  Xanderblaze !
Icon pic by  Azazel.
Very fluffy, but very cute story I got to do. I really enjoyed it and I think it came out pretty cute.

Comments are appreciated most of all
Enjoy!

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The hair falling over Xander's face didn't protect her from the orange glare of the morning sun slipping through her blinds. It was usually around eight in the morning when the sun would rise high enough above the surrounding buildings to peek through her window and very rudely cast a beam of light right across the pillows on her bed. Xander had thought long and hard and gotten the advice of friends of whether to move her bed somewhere else, but eventually she faced the reality that her bedroom was just too small for the bed to go anywhere else. She only slightly had enough room for the bedside table, and only enough room on that for a single lamp and half of a book, if she angled it right. The fact of the matter was, with space at such a premium, she was lucky to fit anything bigger than a sofa in the bedroom, anyway.

Of course, Xander wasn't the only one running out of room. Tucked beneath the sheets, out of sight, was an impressively ripe baby belly containing her nearly-due twins, a boy and a girl. As usual, Xander's hand was wrapped around it protectively, as if keeping the babies as close to her as she possibly could, while she slept. The bigger she got, the more she noticed her hands unconsciously falling on her belly. Whether she was mid-conversation, driving in her car, reading quietly at home, or in the middle of work, one of her free hands was practically glued to her growing middle, casually rubbing and scratching her stomach as it grew more taut and full. Her friends had started to point out when she was doing it. Xander would occasionally blush self-consciously and stop for a few minutes, but her hands would inevitably find their way back to rubbing and prodding and poking the two pups inside of her.

She'd already been awake for most of the morning by the time the sun cut through the window and sprayed bright, obnoxious sunlight into her face. Xander sighed as deeply as she could and clenched her eyes shut, staring at the red glow through her eyelids and wishing she could just go back to sleep. While she usually kept a strict sleep schedule from 10pm to 8am, Xander's pups didn't share her same punctuality and much preferred 4am as their preferred wake-up time. She'd spent much of the night massaging the sides of her belly and trying to telepathically wish her twins back to sleep. But nothing she could do seemed enough to stop their rambunctious crack-of-dawn kick-a-thon, so Xander just had to try her best to sleep through it.

She was getting sick of the sun in her face, knowing that a few more minutes were enough to give her a headache. Shifting in bed, Xander slid her right hand underneath her belly while her left stayed on top. After taking a few minutes to prepare herself, she clenched her teeth and grunted as she began the Herculean task of turning over in bed while nine months pregnant. Her breath was pushed out of her with an ‘Oof’ sound as the weight of her heavy womb settled on top of her, reminding her unpleasantly of just how massive she’d grown. She rocked herself from side-to-side, like a turtle on its back, before she awkwardly flopped onto her left side, away from the sun. The twins apparently weren’t amused by the sudden shifting of their cramped living space inside their mother, so they angrily protested with another flurry of kicks up near her ribs. Xander grunted again as she reached down as far as she could to pull her tail out from beneath her legs, where it was pinched, and used a finger to flip her ear back into place. As her heart pounded from the effort of just rolling over in bed, Xander could at least relax without the face of the sun glaring down on her.

“Good morning,” she said to her belly, her normally smooth voice grumbling from a night of restless sleep. She felt a foot gently graze her hand and she smiled, imagining it as a way of her pup saying ‘Good morning, mommy.’ As another foot pushed out against the left side her womb, Xander slid her hand down to it and measured its size with her two fingers. She examined the width outside of the covers and found her thumb and index finger nearly an inch and a half apart. At least the size of an average baby’s paw. Of course, she didn’t need to measure any feet to know that the pups were due any day. She had three more weeks until her due date, and while she wasn’t opposed to going the distance all the way to full-term, she doubted her squirmy little babies were willing to wait that long.

“Which one are you?” Xander asked as she felt the right-side pup attempt to turn over inside her. “The boy or the girl? The one on top last time was the girl, but that doesn’t mean you two couldn’t have switched placed since then. With all that moving, I’m surprised you two aren’t tangled up like knots in there.”

She bit her tongue and glanced aside, suddenly worrying herself at the possibility of the twins getting tangled up with one another and their umbilical cords. Of course, Xander’s doctor had known from the instant she did that she was having twins, so her recommended obstetrician was a specialist in pregnancies with multiples. Considering the history of her fox and wolf parents, Xander was happy she wasn’t dealing with a full-blown litter in her belly.

“Not that I’d be complaining,” she added out loud as she cradled her stomach. “I just doubt I’d be able to do much walking if there were an extra pup or two in there.” She giggled as the twins both wiggled for space at the same time and patted her tummy in response. “I don’t think you’d be very happy about it, either.”

It didn’t take long for Xander’s grumpy attitude to thaw away as she stayed in bed, listening to the cars driving by outside while feeling her pups kick and squirm inside of her. She didn’t know how it was possible to have so much love in her heart for something, but she felt a deep sense of warmth and complete devotion to her unborn children. When she closed her eyes, Xander imagined herself in the center of the universe with her babies, engulfed completely by an almost divine love that seemed too big for her to contain. She felt it with such intensity and passion, such a pure and radiant adoration for her pups, that despite the extra weight and sore paws and aching hips, she felt weightless.

Xander opened her eyes back to reality, the hint of happy tears clinging to her eyelashes. She sighed comfortably and wiped her eyes on the back of her arm. Glancing at the clock on the other side of the room, she realized she’d been lying in bed for almost an extra hour and a half doing nothing but enjoying the feeling of her pups. Her heart skipped a beat for a moment, thinking about her business downstairs, but she soon remembered it was a Sunday, when the spa was closed, and settled back into her sheets.

“Sorry babies,” she said to her belly. “We can’t lay in bed all morning, can we?” Xander paused, as if waiting for a response, then added, “Well okay, even if we could, I still don’t want to.” Xander smacked her lips, frowning at the unpleasant taste of morning breath in her mouth. “Your mom isn’t feeling so… ‘fresh’ this morning.”

In a dramatic motion, Xander clutched the edge of the sheets and ceremoniously threw them off of her in a wide arc, like unveiling a curtain. Glancing down, she saw her belly for the first time that morning and smiled to herself. Not-so-little bulge to her stomach took up most of her torso and rested heavily against the mattress. She liked to watch it for a while to see if she could see it jiggle slightly from the movement inside, but it was less prominent as it had been a few months ago. As the pups grew, so did the pressure in her womb. At the late stage of pregnancy she was in, Xander’s stomach had grown firm to the touch, without as much give as it had before.

Kicking off the remnants of the sheets around her paws, Xander shifted uncomfortably onto her back and hung one leg off the bed.
“Okay,” she said to herself. “Okay okay okay. Here we go. One, two, three!” On ‘three’ Xander held her breath and grunted as she flipped her heavy body off the bed. She caught herself against the beside table in a pseudo ‘push up’ position, her belly hanging beneath her like a ripe fruit on a tree, and held herself up by her arms as she ‘walked’ her legs to a standing position. Xander flipped her long hair out of her face and panted as she wobbly stood next to her bed. She’d long gotten used to her center of gravity being mostly centered around her middle, but getting up in the morning was always the most disorientating part. Even when going to bed in the evening, she had to make sure everything else was turned off and tucked away before she got under the covers, because she wouldn’t be getting up from there any time soon.

“Waddle waddle waddle...” Xander giggled to herself as she slowly walked around the bed and toward the bathroom. Her brother had been the first to point out the heavy sway her body had adopted in response to the pregnancy. After that, she hadn’t been able to un-see the stiff-legged waddle she moved with. Her tail began wagging lazily behind her, as if it was propelling her across the room like a boat motor. It was nice not to make herself hurry and rush to get downstairs to open the spa in time, so she shuffled lazily across her bedroom without a care in the world, one hand scratching beneath her hair, the other hand resting on her pregnant swell.

Xander reflexively flipped on the bathroom light and pushed the door shut behind her, locking it out of habit, despite her apartment being empty. The dim lightbulbs flickered to life on either side of the mirror and needed a moment to warm up before they shined with full brightness. One benefit of her apartment was the larger-than-normal bathroom that housed a two-sink counter top with a long mirror stretching from wall to wall. As the lights began to glow brighter and Xander’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, she caught sight of her big-bellied reflection staring back at her from the mirror.

She smiled warmly at herself, turning to the side to look at her pregnant body in profile. As she grew from week-to-week, Xander loved to come into the bathroom and admire the way her body changed and swelled out as the twins inside her unstoppably grew bigger and bigger.

“I don’t know why I even wear this anymore,” Xander said to herself as she tried to pull down her red pajama shirt around her belly. It had been too big for her nine months ago, looking like a short night-gown, but as her body swelled with the two little lives in her womb, it steadily grew tighter and tighter until it barely reached down to her popped bellybutton. Though she asked herself the question, she knew exactly why she still wore it. She thought it was a little cute and more than a little sexy to see how big she’d gotten over time, to watch how she grew out of her clothes, and see her white-furred tummy poking out from the bottom of her shirts. As strange as it seemed, Xander felt more attractive than ever with her low-hanging baby belly and had a secret folder of pictures of herself tucked deep into her computer’s hard drive.

Before turning the shower on, Xander pulled her shirt off her belly and over her shoulders, freeing her milk-heavy breasts to fall out and wobble slightly on her chest. She winced as her sensitive nerves were jostled by the sudden movement, but the pain quickly faded away into a sensitive ‘buzzing’ sensation in her nipples that she found oddly stimulating. She was given a couple nursing bras at her baby shower, but she preferred to go without them when she was by herself.

“I hope you get born with some big appetites,” Xander said as she gently held her breasts in both hands and measured how heavy they’d gotten. “I don’t know if the girls can handle getting any bigger.” On some days, she caught herself leaking a few drops of white milk from the very tips of her nipples. She’d had an average-sized bust before getting pregnant, nothing much to complain about. But once her pregnancy had reached its peak, she couldn’t help but notice the swelling of her breasts alongside her belly, the way her nipples darkened over time and began to sag as dormant glands and hormones in her body prepared her to feed her pups. She gently prodded her areola with two fingers and applied pressure, jumping as a tiny spurt of liquid sprayed out and a single, opalescent drop of milk hung from the tip of her nipple.

It took a little bit of maneuvering to get her pants off all the way, but she managed to work her shorts down to her ankles and kick them away. Xander sighed comfortably and took a moment to scratch all the nooks and crannies of her body that itched from a night of tossing and turning in bed, most of all the thin fur on the very front of her belly. Things too far away were a little blurry without her glasses, so she stepped a few closer to the mirror until she came into focus.

Something about being naked with her pregnant body felt so natural, like she was some kind of divine mother goddess or something from ancient mythology. She put her hands on her hips and turned from side to side, admiring and smiling proudly at her ripe belly, already looking full enough to drop at a moment’s notice. After a long nine months of heartache, pain, regret, and depression, Xander let herself finally feel proud and happy for herself. She’d done it. She’d carried her babies all the way to the end and it was in her womb that they grew big and healthy and strong. Smiling at herself in the mirror, she stood up in a ‘superhero’ pose, holding out her chest and her belly proudly in front of her.

“I did this,” she said to herself, cupping one hand beneath her gravid middle like she was holding a trophy. In fact, to her, the bigger and rounder and heavier her belly grew, the prouder she was to carry her ‘trophy’ around for everyone to see. She felt powerful and unstoppable.

She only felt powerful and unstoppable for a moment before one of her twins saw fit to ruin the moment by shifting in Xander’s belly and headbutting her in the bladder.

“Gugghk,” she grunted as she twitched uncomfortably. “Thanks a lot, down there,” she grumbled, poking the underside of her belly. She had just enough time to turn on the hot water of the shower before needing to waddle her heavy body to the toilet asap.
Once she was done, Xander stuck a hand past the shower curtain and tested the water. With a quick tweak of the faucet handles and a few extra seconds for the old pipes to catch up with them, the bathroom began to steam up dramatically as the water began pouring out as piping hot as Xander liked it.

She bit her lip as she braced against the wall and carefully stepped onto the floor of the tub. She’d slipped in the shower enough times to know how easy it could be, so she didn’t want to risk falling with a couple passengers on board. But once her paws were securely on the mat on the bottom of the tub, Xander was able to relax as she stepped fully beneath the running water. She sighed, deep and low in her throat, as the warmth and the heat soaked into her fur. She waggled her tail lazily from side to side as it hung straight down her back, already heavy with water. Her long hair clung to her neck and shoulders and she spat a couple times to remove a few long strands from her mouth.

During most of the week, Xander only had enough time to hop in the shower, wash herself down, then hop out again and rush downstairs to work (of course giving herself a little extra time to maneuver around a very pregnant belly). Only on Sundays was she able to really soak herself deep to the bone and relax under the water like she always wished she could. Sometimes she spent nearly an hour in the shower, sometimes laying down on the floor of the tub to just stretch her legs out. Of course, this was when she was a good deal smaller, in the first two trimesters. If she tried that again in the third, she probably wouldn’t be able to get back up again. Still, she didn’t mind being on her paws for a little while.

Xander closed her eyes and made quiet, satisfied little ‘Mmms’ and ‘Ahhhs’ as she threw her hair back and felt her tight muscles relax. As she rubbed her hands over her belly, an odd thought came to mind. She’d read on the internet somewhere that the reason showers and baths were so relaxing was because they subconsciously reminded people of when they were in the womb. Xander drummed her fingers against her belly and glanced thoughtfully down at it. Did the twins feel this way all the time? As relaxed and warm protected as their mother felt in the shower? She smirked to herself, slightly jealous of her babies getting a soft, safe place to grow without a care in the world. Though she didn’t envy how cramped their ‘one room apartment’ had become. Xander couldn’t help giggling at her own joke.

It seemed so strange that, right at that moment, simply being in her belly was giving the twins memories that would stay with them their entire lives. It seemed amazing that the two little kicking shapes inside her would soon be people of their own, with thoughts and feelings and memories and passions like everyone else. But they started there, right beneath Xander’s skin in a soft womb, protected and safe until they were ready to greet the world.

Under the sound of the water, she started to hum to herself as she stroked her tummy. It wasn’t anything in particular, just a string of notes and sounds she put together one-by-one by how they sounded together, with a few little melodies to some of her favorite songs. She wanted to learn some lullabies to sing to them once they were born, but she didn’t know which one she liked. It would stick with the twins for the rest of their lives as a childhood memory, so she knew she had to pick a good one. Even right then, she knew they could hear her from inside her belly and were learning and remembering whatever she sang to herself.

“So you can keep...me...Inside the pocket of your ripped...jeans...” Xander started to sing out loud what she could remember of Ed Sheeran’s ‘Photograph.’ “Holding me cloooser ‘til our eyes...meet...” One of her friends had sent her the video of the song a few weeks ago and it left Xander in a sobbing mess of pregnancy-addled emotions to watch the videos of baby Ed Sheeran growing up over the years. She thought about her own babies growing up and living their own lives and she took to watching the video every other day just to give herself a happy cry when she felt particularly frustrated.

“You won’t eeeeever be alone…” she sang as she rocked her belly from side to side. “Wait for me to come home.”

While she knew bits and pieces of the rest of the song, she knew the chorus by heart and found it getting stuck in her head at least once a week. Xander liked to sing it out loud when she was alone because she hope the twins would be able to hear it through her belly and maybe even remember it once they were born. Sometimes, she could feel them start to relax once she started singing and could even calm them down during some of their more active moments.

Over time, the heat in the water finally started to run down and the twins eventually stopped squirming under the pounding of the water on Xander’s belly. She had to hurry and squeeze out most of the bottle of shampoo into her hand and wash her fur before the hot water totally ran out. Xander never failed to note that the farther along she got in her pregnancy, the more often she needed to buy extra shampoo. More than likely, most of it was used up from her taking extra time to wash and smooth the thin fur over her middle. Eventually, once her fur was shiny and smooth and clean, Xander turned off the water with a squeak of the handle and stepped out into the steamy bathroom (while being extra extra extra careful not to slip).

After stepping onto the bathmat, Xander toweled off as much of her body as she could reach. Then, for old time’s sake, she balled up her fists, clenched her jaw shut, and closed her eyes before she violently shook the water out of her fur. She ended up dizzy and wobbling on her paws as she caught her balance, but she was, nevertheless, dry. The twins didn’t appreciate the sudden jostling in what little space they had left and complained by kicking and thrashing angrily beneath Xander’s hands for the next few seconds.

She stretched and groaned loudly as she stepped out into her apartment, steam escaping the bathroom door as if she’d just exited a space ship. With no one around to tell her not to, Xander decided to skip putting her clothes back on and spend most of the morning in nothing but her fur. It was so freeing and liberating to feel the air blowing past her and it made it all the more easy to glance down and admire her pregnant form. It wasn’t until she’d really started to show that Xander felt so connected and in-tune with her body, but the feeling of the twins inside her and her body growing to accommodate them made her feel much more aware of herself than she ever imagined.

Her paws clicking on the wooden floor, Xander sauntered her way into the small kitchen, taking note of the way her belly bounced with every step and her unrestrained hips bobbed seductively from side to side. She paused at the kitchen table to flip open her laptop and start the boot-up process, then headed for the cabinet above the sink for her mugs. But as she pulled out her half-empty box of assorted tea bags, she paused. Frowning thoughtfully, she stuck her hand behind the cups and mugs and boxes and bottles and fished out an unopened bag of her favorite coffee from deep in the back of the pantry.

“You two are probably big enough now that a little coffee wouldn’t hurt,” Xander said to her belly. She cocked her head to the side and held up the tea. “But...I’ve gotten so used to the morning tea that I don’t know if I can go without it.” Tapping her paw on the ground, she hefted up the coffee grounds, as if weighing the two packages on a scale. “But...I haven’t had a good cup of coffee in so long...” As she tapped the tea and the coffee together and thought, an idea came to mind that made her tail start to spontaneously wag.

“How about this?” Xander held the two boxes in hand and lowered them to her stomach, pressing the coffee against her right side and the tea against her left. “You decide for me. C’mon! Coffee?” She rubbed the bag against her stomach. “Or tea?” She tapped the box against the other side of her belly. She spent a few seconds holding them there, waiting patiently for some kind of response. Right as she was beginning to get impatient and decided to just go flip a coin, Xander jumped and made a sound as a swift kick from one of her pups bumped out against the box of tea in her left hand.

“Tea it is!” she said happily. She pulled out her last bag of Oolong and unraveled its string until it dangled from between her fingers, then fished out a mug with her other hand. She needed to wait a few more seconds for her electric kettle to come to a boil, but soon after she poured the steaming water through the thin bag at the bottom of her cup. Once the water was high enough to nearly reach the lip of the mug, she covered the top of it with a small plate to keep the heat in as it steeped, then carried it, along with a spoon and a well-loved bottle of honey, to the table.

“O-kay, here we go…” Xander grumbled. Setting down her tea, she clutched the edge of the table with one hand and cradled her belly with the other. Groaning, she slowly and carefully lowered herself into the chair. She couldn’t bend over far enough to comfortably sit up at the table, so she had to slouch back and turn to the side so she could stretch her legs out far enough. As awkward as it was, sitting down wasn’t half as difficult as getting up. If she had it her way, Xander would set up a recliner at the kitchen table and not even bother standing up until she eventually went into labor.

Her laptop had mostly booted up in the time it took her to prep her tea, with most of its processes focused on the final task of opening Steam. Drumming her fingers impatiently atop her bare belly, she frowned as the dark gray loading bar slowly ticked forward at a snail’s pace, unable to do anything until it finished updating. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the update finished and the screen popped open to the sight of her game library, listing far, far, far too many games she’d be able to play in one lifetime (but that didn’t stop her from trying).

She scrolled to the top of the page and began to tab over to the front page of the store, wondering if November was too early for the Christmas sale to begin. But before she could, a green chat box popped open in the corner of the screen with a message from her friend Tak.

Tak: morning big mama. How you feeling?

Xander smiled and shifted in her chair to better reach the keyboard, both her hands flying over the keys at lightning speed.

Xander: Big. Really big.

Tak: to be honest, I don’t think anybody expected you to go more than a week past the baby shower without popping

Xander: and that was almost two weeks ago, right?

Tak: maybe more

Xander: I don’t think they’re going anywhere. At least not anytime soon

Tak:i thought you kinda liked being pregnant?

Xander: the belly is cute and my fur is all shiny and healthy and I like feeling the twins move but i’m just ready for them to come out already

Tak: you won’t be saying that once you go into labor

Xander: eugh, don’t remind me

Tak: you’re up early. Wyd?

Xander: sitting around wearing nothing but my baby bump

She paused, surrendering to a long yawn that ended with a canine whine

Tak: that’s a little TMI…

Xander: i’m too pregnant to care

Xander: twins woke me up too early. They can kick and wiggle all night long when they’re in a crib outside of my body. Wish they’d just be patient

Tak: that’s gotta feel so weird

Xander: you get used to it

Xander turned away from the computer and reached for her mug. The tea might have been slightly oversteeped, but adding a few spoonfuls of honey seemed to take care of the taste. She took a moment to carefully sip the hot drink, mentally preparing herself for when the sugar and the caffeine made their way down to the twins and send them into a wiggle frenzy.

Xander: got the day off at least. I really needed this one. it’s hard to run a business with a belly full of kids

Tak: there’s a thing called maternity leave. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it

Xander: not in my dictionary

Taking a sip of her tea again, she glanced at the clock on the edge of her screen. Realization suddenly hit her and she nearly choked on her drink.

Xander: crap, it’s the last Sunday of the month. The stock guy’s coming today

Tak: you might wanna put clothes on. Just a suggestion

Xander: easy to say before you start to grow out of all your shirts. I gtg

Tak: no prob. Later big mama

Xander quickly shut the laptop and groaned out loud as she pushed herself out of the chair and wobbled on her paws. She shuffled into the bedroom as fast as she could, feeling her heavy, naked body swaying as she did, and pulled open the top drawer of her tiny dresser. She clutched a pair of gray sweatpants with over-stretched elastic that sort-of kind-of sometimes fit her widened hips and a pink t-shirt that absolutely did not fit over her belly, despite being the biggest thing she owned. Nevertheless, she threw the clothes on and tried to make herself look as decent as she could with nearly half a baby belly hanging out in the open. Snatching up her phone, her glasses, and the mostly-full mug of tea, Xander waddled hurriedly to the stairs at the end of her apartment.

She didn’t want to risk falling, so Xander took every step of the old stairs carefully, wincing to herself as the wood creaked under her weight. They hadn’t done that until she’d gotten to her third trimester, a fact she hoped none of her workers or customers noticed. She breathed a sigh of relief once she reached the bottom floor without incident and backed into the old door leading out into the spa.

Xander’s first pride and joy (aside from the twins, who were a relatively new addition to her life) was the Serenity Day Spa, a locally-owned and independent spa she’d built from the ground up over the years. Usually bustling with her employees and customers waiting for their treatments, Xander always found it surreal to look out over the empty room full of massage chairs, salon equipment, and privacy screens scattered about. She shivered slightly as her paws touched the cold tile floor, but it was to be expected. The windows were dark from the accumulated snow piled up outside them, the only sunlight blaring through the glass door between them and reflected by the white snow. Winter was one of the spa’s most popular times of year, both from the gift packages they offered and the cozy atmosphere blocking out the cold of the snow outside. Xander was happy to pay extra to crank the heat up during the winter, as it brought in even more customers inside to escape the dreary cold outside.

She shuffled behind the counter and toward the hallway in the back. A couple wooden doors on either side of the hall led to the new and popular steam rooms they’d added just a year ago. They were an expense to cram into such a small space, but at the rate things were going, Xander hoped they’d pay for themselves within the next six months. She instinctively checked them on her way to the back door, making sure all the heaters were off. One of the heaters had been left on over a weekend without her knowing and that alone had cranked the electric bill up a full $110 for that month. There was a small storage room to her left that usually remained closed and locked, except in cases of overstock. It was Xander’s dream project to put a full-size mineral bath treatment in there, but it wasn’t much more than a pipe dream at the moment.

Panting slightly, she finally made it to the back door. She could some of the cold air from outside slip from beneath the door and nip at her exposed underbelly. She tried in vain to tug her shirt over it, then simply resorted to wrapping her arms around her round stomach to keep it warm. Xander waited patiently at the door for nearly five minutes, then grew more and more irritated with every minute after it. Ernie was late. She expected as much from the icy roads and snowy weather outside, but she was grumpy at having to rush her late-term body down the stairs just to stand there like an idiot and wait. Another five minutes past with Xander’s paws and belly growing cold and her knees starting to ache. With a huff, she flicked her ears and turned to waddle away down the hallway, but was stopped halfway by a heavy, thudding knock on the door.

“Coming!” She called out, grumbling frustratedly under her breath as she hefted her heavy body all the way back down the hall just to unlock the door. She took the key off the hook above the doorframe and unlocked the security door with it, then stepped out of the way as quickly as she could move. The moment she did, the door burst open to the sight of a thick, muscular badger in a heavy coat, shuffling backwards inside as he dragged a handcart full of boxes in both hands. Xander tucked her tail between her legs and shivered as the wintery air blew inside, tugging desperately at her shirt as she wished it to cover her entire belly. Even her twins seemed to shiver at the cold inside the warmth of her womb.

“Geeze louize!” The gruff badger grumbled in a stereotypical Jersey accent as he slammed the door shut and stamped the snow off his boots. “It’s like the North Pole out theah!” He shivered, knocking snow off his shoulders and threw back his hood to blink as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. He caught sight of Xander and grinned widely with an open mouth missing a couple teeth. “Mornin, Miss Xandah! How ya doin?” He glanced inevitably down at her half-covered belly and whistled. “Oh my God! You still ain’t had that baby yet?”

“Babies,” Xander corrected him. She giggled bashfully and rubbed her hands around her swollen middle. “No, not yet. Soon, though. I’m due in about three weeks.”
“You bettah take a load off while ya can, then,” Ernie nodded as she started to unzip his coat. “Gonna need all the energy you got just ta keep up with ‘em once they’re outta theah.”
“Somebody has to run this place,” Xander said, shrugging. Ernie laughed and shook his head as he turned and gripped the cart.

“Yer one tough chick, I gotta tell yah,” he said as he kicked up the cart on its wheels and wheeled it past Xander down the hallway. “My old lady didn’t wanna do nothin’ while she was pregnant. Nothin’. Made me do all the work ‘round the house. ‘Course, I was happy ta do it and all. She was doin all the real hard work, ya know what I mean?” He laughed to himself.

“Yeah...well, I manage.” Xander paused and glanced down at her belly, a sadness coming to her voice. “...Things don’t always go how you think they will.”
Ernie grunted, evidently not hearing Xander’s last words as he dragged the boxes back to the storage closet. Xander flipped the key on the ring and handed over to him so he could unlock the door.
“I wish I could help,” Xander said, changing the subject.

“Don’t even worry about it,” Ernie scoffed as he stacked two boxes of hair product on one arm and carried them into the storage room. “Even if you wasn’t gonna have a baby and all that, your stuff ain’t all that heavy t’begin with. Now when we get ta Christmas, that’s when I gotta do all the heavy liftin, yknow what I mean? ‘Course all these kids want electronics nowadays and they’s gettin’ smaller and smaller all the time. I’d a thought a little kid would want somethin’ like a...a model train set or somethin’, not one-a these iPhone thingamajigs. But hey, I ain’t complanin’.”

Ernie rambled and chatted up a mostly one-sided conversation as he moved the boxes back into the storage room. He was a rough guy on the outside, but Ernie was a sweetheart deep down. He’d helped Xander set up the spa in the first place and helped her move into the apartment upstairs without any payment more than cup of coffee, and he always made sure she was doing alright, especially once she’d gotten pregnant. He’d even made a short, surprise appearance at her baby shower, gifting her a basket full of old hand-me-down baby clothes his son had grown out of decades before.

“I’d offer you a cup of coffee or tea, normally,” Xander said guiltily as Ernie finished unloading the hand cart. “But...they’re all the way upstairs and I...” Xander blushed as she patted her belly. “That’s a long walk for me, right now.”
“Xandah, you don’t gotta do nothin’ on my account,” Ernie said as he shut the door and picked up the light handcart. “All you gotta do is take it easy, y’understand?” As he passed her, Ernie affectionately pinched Xander’s cheek and ruffled a hand through her hair. He then lightly tapped the edge of her belly and added, “Next time I come by, these two bettah be upstairs in a crib, y’know what I’m sayin’?” He grinned toothily and zipped up his jacket before shuffling to the back door. Stopping a moment to wave goodbye, Ernie hunched up his shoulders and pulled open the back door to brave the cold air outside.

Xander sighed in the renewed quiet, shivering as the cold from the outside blew past her. She took her glasses off and rubbed the fog off of them with the edge of her shirt, feeling one of the twins lazily try to turn over. She took a deep breath before waddling to the back door, locking it with the key, and making the long trek all the way back upstairs. But at the end of the hallway, her ears twitched at the sound of a light buzzing coming from her pocket. Bracing against the counter for balance, she buried her hand in her pocket to pull out her cell phone, vibrating louder than a ring tone would have been.

“So much for a lazy Sunday,” Xander sighed, answering the call with a practiced swipe of her thumb. “Hello?”
“Status report?”

Xander smiled at the sound of the male voice on the other end of the line.

“All systems nominal,” she responded, rubbing a hand down her swollen middle. “But hull is reaching critical mass.”
“What’s the status of the cargo?”
“Contained, but not very happy about it.”
“What are the chances of containment breach?”
“Negligible. No traces of cramps or contractions. No leakage detected. Not today.”
“Captain’s report?”
“Sleepy and cold and sore paws.” Xander paused and grumbled into the phone. “And I think my tea is cold now...”

“Oh you poor thing,” said Alex, her twin brother. Since Xander had reached her third trimester, he’d called every day to check up on her and the pups. In the absence of any immediate help, she appreciated it immensely. “Think you’ll make it to term?”

“Looks like it, at this rate. Maybe even more.” Xander cradled her stomach in her hand as she walked lazily around the spa. “They just don’t want to get a move on.”
“Maybe you’re just too comfortable. Once they see the weather out here, they’ll probably try to climb their way back inside.”
“Eeewwww,” Xander laughed. “I talked to mom about it. We were overdue by a week and a half and so were her sisters. She was the only baby that was on time. It just runs in the family.”
“All the more reason to call you,” Alex said. “We never know when you’ll pop.”

“I’m ready for it,” Xander said, calmly. She padded over to one of the skin care stations on the right side of the spa. Holding her phone to her shoulder, she used her free hands to roll up what little of her shirt still covered her belly and squeezed a dollop of fur and skin care lotion into her palm. Taking the phone in her left hand, she used her right to gently rub the lotion around her stomach.
“If you say so...”

“I mean it. I was scared at first, and I still kind of am, but I’m mostly ready for it to finally happen. I wanna see my babies and hold them and feed them.” She felt one of the twins push out a paw into her hand as she rubbed the lotion into her fur. “The birth is worth it to me, even if it’ll be hard.”
“I’ll be there for you,” Alex said. “You can count on me.”
“I know I can,” Xander smiled. Still rubbing lotion around her tight belly, she began the long and arduous trip back up the stairs. “What are you doing up so early?”

“I slept like crap for some reason. Woke up at like the crack of dawn and couldn’t go back to sleep.”
“Me too! I’ll bet it was a twin thing.”
“Oh, so this is your fault.”
“Blame your niece and nephew. They’re the ones throwing 5 am belly-raves.” Xander stopped halfway up the stairs and panted, her ears drooping. “Hang on… I’m going up the stairs. Give me a few minutes.”
“I’m getting tired just listening to you.”

Without hanging up, Xander tucked the phone into her pocket and used both hands to grip the railings and heavily thump her way up the stairs, feeling her stomach wobble slightly with each step. By the time she reached her apartment, she felt like she’d just climbed a mountain to get there and it left her exhausted.

“Okay, I’m good,” Xander wheezed back into the phone.
“Once the twins are born, you’ll probably be flying up those stairs three at a time.”
“It’s a workout, that’s for sure.” She shuffled past the kitchen table, checking on her tea. It was still lukewarm, which was warm enough for Xander to shrug and finish drinking it anyway. Picking up the mug, she finished her long journey to the couch and flopped heavily onto the cushions.

“Yknow what I’ve been thinking about?” Xander said as she shifted back in her seat and pressed her hand affectionately against her belly. “This was us, once. I think about the twins inside me, together like this, and it reminds me that this was you and me a long time ago.”
“Huh...I never really thought about it,” Alex said. Xander didn’t need to see him to know that he was shrugging on the other end of the line.
“How could you not? We were twins and now I’m having twins. I think about, yknow, all the twin stuff we used to do and the way we grew up together and how my pups are going to have that, too. They’re even a boy and a girl, like us.” Xander swallowed a lump in her throat, knowing she was moments away from getting misty-eyed. “It’s just… it makes me happy.”

“Are you going to cry again?”
“Shut up! I’m nine months pregnant, I can cry if I want to.”
“Well don’t, ‘cause you might make me cry, too.”
“Awwww, Alex, you big weenie,” Xander teased.
“Have you thought of any names?” Alex asked.
“I was thinking of coming up with only one name I could just chop in half,” Xander teased, referring to their mother’s story about how she wanted a boy named ‘Alexander.’ When she discovered she was having twins, she simply split the name in half and gave it to each of them. Alex and Xander.
“Oh my god, don’t do that,” Alex pleaded.

“I won’t, I won’t...” Xander cocked her head to the side and drummed her fingers on her belly. “Well...maybe it’s the hormones talking but…the idea actually seems kind of cute, now.”
“I’m going to call CPS if you do that, Xander. I swear.”
“They’re my babies! I have the right to embarrass them a little if I want to!”
“Oh my god…Well, I gotta head to work soon. You alright today? Need my help with anything?”
“Nope, I’m just going to be lazy,” Xander said, turning to kick her legs up on the couch, her belly settling down into her lap. “Maybe I’ll order a pizza or something.”

“Don’t forget to put maple syrup or pickles on it or something,” Alex teased.
“Don’t think I won’t,” Xander retorted, feeling the stirrings of a craving coming on.

“Hey, Xander,” Alex said, “you wanna know something?”
“What?”
“You sound really different these days. A lot like mom.”
“… I do?”
“Yeah, especially when you talk about the babies. Your voice is different. Older. It’s…nice. You sound like a mom.”
“Okay,” Xander sniffed, “I think you really are gonna make me cry now.”
“Good. It’s worth crying about,” Alex said. “Take it easy, sis. Take care of those kids.”
“I will.”
“Call me if you need anything.”

With a click and a beep, Alex hung up. Xander set her phone face-down on top of her belly, like a shelf, and stared thoughtfully at the opposite wall. She’d been so scared she couldn’t do this, that she wasn’t fit to be a mother. That she shouldn’t have gotten pregnant and it was a mistake. But maybe she was more ready than she thought. She rubbed the sides of her belly, big enough to bulge out slightly, and smiled.

One of the twins tried to roll over inside her. Xander gritted her teeth through the discomfort, but her belly wobbled as the pup moved and sent her phone toppling off the top of her stomach and straight into the gap between the couch cushions, like hitting a bull’s eye.

“Uggh,” Xander groaned. Getting up off the couch seemed like more hassle than it was worth, so she just shifted her gravid body to the side as far as she could without falling off the couch and buried her hand into the cushions to fish her phone out. “If I was…nng...just a month or two smaller...”

Xander grumbled as she sunk her hand deeper beneath the couch. Eventually, she felt her fingers brush against the hard edge of her phone, but felt her thumb touch something else. Raising an eyebrow, she pinched her phone between her first two fingers, then used her thumb to pull out the scrap of paper she at first thought might have been a dollar bill.
It wasn’t. Once she’d unearthed her phone and set it on the coffee table, Xander unfolded the tiny piece of paper and held it above her to better see it in the light of the window. In an instant, she felt her entire chest go cold. It was a scrap of a photograph, long forgotten and discarded. On it was a tall, gray wolf with half-lidded eyes and a bemused smile, a familiar arm draped over his shoulder. It was a face Xander never wanted to see again, but one she knew would haunt her for years to come.

It was her ex-boyfriend. The father of her pups.

On a desk in the corner of the room, housed in a small frame, was a picture of Xander and her brother in the park, posing for the camera and grinning. Only she and Alex knew that a third person had been angrily torn out of that photograph. She did it a month after she realized she was pregnant, and only three days after the father had left her. It had been an accident, of course. Xander came to him with the news and the test, the pink lines as clear as day, hoping for some comfort to her fears, some advice, some love, and some understanding. Instead, she was met with his fear and even anger. He’d spent so much time blaming her, screaming and raging that it was her fault she hadn’t taken her birth control like she should have, or not counting the days right when she was on and off her period. He found whatever reason he could to blame her for the accident, and Xander had been too afraid to defend herself and remind him that she didn’t exactly get pregnant on her own.
He left that night and went home, promising to come back the next day after he’d thought it over. A day went by. Then another. All of Xander’s calls and texts went ignored and unanswered until there was one last message, three days later. A three-page long text from him, about how he wasn’t ready to be a father. He wasn’t ready for that commitment, and wasn’t sure he ever wanted it. The risk, the fear, it wasn’t worth it to him. He couldn’t give up his life for Xander or their children. So he ran. He left the state that day, went back home. Told Xander it was over. She hadn’t seen him since.

She cried and raged and screamed for weeks, at times slumping into a miles-deep depression she couldn’t fight her way out of. Xander hadn’t told anyone, not even her brother, that it was only for the sake of the babies inside her that she didn’t take her own life during that time. Every time she looked at her reflection and saw her belly growing, she wept in hopeless despair. She was alone, alone and discarded with an unwanted child on the way she would have to take care of all by herself. She barely left her room, leaving the spa to be run by the employees and the expenses taken over by Alex. It was a dark time, darker than she’d ever had.

Even months later, with the thought of him cast almost completely out of her mind, Xander felt that same darkness and despair constricting clenching its constricting grip inside her when she stared at the fragment of his photograph. She held it up to her face, trying to see in his soft smile the shade of the man that would abandon her so cruelly just weeks later. But she couldn’t. All she could see was the warmth he’d given her, the love he’d made to her, the tenderness he’d shown her. They’d been happy together. She couldn’t understand how all that, in the end, meant so little to him that he could leave her alone and vulnerable without a second thought.

Xander’s vision focused away from the picture and settled on her rounded belly, now big enough to eclipse her view of the room around her. It was his children growing in her. They’d be born so soon, just weeks away. Did he know? Did he care? Where had that warmth and love and tenderness been when she needed it most?
Her vision blurred as tears clung to her eyelashes. She took a deep, shuddering breath and sighed, wiping her eyes on the back of her arm. She tried not to look at the photograph, but she couldn’t help it. She missed him. Even through the anger and the resentment, she still missed his touch and his voice and his smile. Xander wanted to feel his hands on her belly, his lips against hers, as promised to be the best father there ever was.

She opened her eyes, jerked out of her fantasy, at the loud rumble of her phone vibrating on the table beside her. Blinking the tears out of the way, she reached over and dropped the photo on the table as she swapped it for her phone. It was an email, sent to her personal account instead of her professional one. Whatever it was, it would be good enough to distract her from the sadness that was beginning to well up inside her.

Xander’s eyes went wide. It was a message from ‘Lewis Imaging Center,’ the company that worked with the hospital for ultrasounds. She scrolled down the page as fast as her fingers could move until she found the folder of attachments at the bottom. She downloaded them, her heart pounding excitedly, and opened them in he photo app.

Her breath stopped in her throat as she stared at the photos. Twenty five high-resolution, 3D images taken from inside her womb just a week ago. She opened the first. The image resembled something made out of clay, with completely monochrome colors, but she instantly recognized the stubby, canine face in the middle of the frame as if she’d known it her entire life. It was her baby. Her son. His eyes were clenched shut, his tiny arms tucked into his chest, his ears folded over.

“Ooohhhh...” Xander breathed shakily. She dropped a trembling hand down to her belly, rubbing her left side. She started to laugh manically as she felt the pup moving inside her. “It’s you! I see you! I see you!” At her last check up, the boy twin was positioned solidly on the left side of her womb with his sister taking up most of the right. “That’s you! That’s you, little man!” Xander’s tears, which she’d been holding back for the past few minutes, finally began to pour freely from her eyes as she scrolled through the pictures. They’d taken ultrasounds from every possible angle, from the tips of his paws and his short tail all the way up to the top of his head. It amazed Xander to see from those photos what was happening inside her, barely a foot away.

She continued to scroll through the pictures until they began showing images of the right side of her belly, where her daughter was. Her muzzle was longer than her brother’s, but her ears were shorter. One of her hands was tucked into her mouth and her tail was pulled up between her legs, a good deal longer.

“I see you now!” Xander called out, patting the right side of her stomach excitedly. “You’re beautiful! You’re going to be so tall, I know you are.” Her vision blurred from the joyful tears in her eyes and she wiped them off to better see the rest of the pictures. The twins looked exactly as she thought they would, but actually looking at their faces, even in pictures, was completely different.

After she’d been left, Xander didn’t know who to blame more, herself or her ex-boyfriend. But over time, as she grew bigger and fuller with life, she discovered that, as much as she wished she could hate the burden growing inside her, she couldn’t. She wanted to be angry with them, to blame them for ruining her life, but it was like trying to hold water in her hands. Eventually, it all slipped away. And in its place, growing every day just like the twins in her belly, was a warm and incorruptible love. It was love deeper and more intense than she’d ever had for anyone else in the entire world, something as pure as snow and unbreakable. Over time, her hate and sadness fell away and was replaced with a burning, all-consuming love for her babies. She began to love her bump, the way it grew more and more noticeable by the week. She loved telling people she was pregnant, that she was having twins. She loved the happiness she got whenever she felt them move or brushed her stomach against something or was somehow reminded of the pups inside her. It didn’t matter if their father didn’t want them, because she was already in love with her children enough for the two of them.

After shifting onto her side and chatting to her belly while scrolling through photos, Xander and her twins finally began to drift off to the sleep they’d neglected the night before. In just a few minutes, the three of them were fast asleep together, with Xander’s hand draped protectively over her stomach and her phone on the couch next to her.

She slept with a proud smile on her face.