The Tiger's Forbidden Mate: A Paranormal Pregnancy Romance

by Angela Foxxe

  “Hold,” Winston soothed. “My mate and I just need shelter for the day, see, she’s pregnant and we’re trying to get to Traz,” Winston explained. “We can’t be wandering during the day or the monsters will get us.”

  “That’s for sure,” the old woman replied as she put the gun down. “Close the door; you weren’t raised in a barn, I assume?”

  Winston smiled and closed the door behind them. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Don’t mention it,” the old woman replied. “Been living here my whole life. Haven’t come out to see the light of day in almost forty years because of those beasts up there.”

  “That long?” Shawna asked.

  “My, you’re huge! You’re gonna pop any day now,” the old woman crowed.

  “I definitely feel like it, but I can’t until I get to Traz,” she said.

  “Why there?” the old woman asked, squinting her rheumy, half-blind eyes.

  “Well, Winston and I are of the tiger anima tribe to the south and we are making our way to Traz to live,” she explained.

  The old woman looked at them sharply.

  “The elders did not approve of my choice of mate,” Winston explained. “They wanted me to be with my first cousin, I wanted Shawna. Because I violated the precepts, we were both exiled.”

  Yes, it was stretching the truth a little, but they were far enough away that the truth didn’t matter anymore.

  “I see. Well, I’m a sucker for a good romance so I guess old Martje will help you two out,” the woman said as she rummaged through her shelves. “There’s no way you can make it topside,” she said pointing at Shawna. “Even if you slink around as a kitty cat, you’re not gonna make it to the bay before you pop.”

  Shawna looked at Winston sharply and shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve been feeling a bit… done, yes,” she said.

  “Feeling the beginnings of labor are ya?” she asked Shawna.

  Shawna’s expression changed as she felt a tight band of pressure around her large abdomen, and the old lady cackled. “Yes, pre-labor. Makes it easier when the big event comes. Well, you’re lucky you stumbled on old Martje.”

  “You can deliver?” Shawna asked.

  “Nope! But I can get you to the bay without even setting foot on the streets of the Glowing Desert ever again,” she replied.

  “That’s excellent!” Winston cheered. “What’s the catch?” There was always a catch.

  “You tell them that your grandmother regrets everything and wants to return, that her fool husband got ripped to pieces in front of her very eyes by a behemoth after they got run out of Traz due to his arrogance,” she said softly, looking at Winston.

  Winston’s eyes widened and filled with tears. “Grandmother?” he asked in a quavering voice as he stepped closer.

  “What?” she asked. “Just because you come from the same tribe I did doesn’t mean we’re related,” she snapped.

  “Did you leave any children behind?” Winston urged.

  “One son, he was ten when we left, why?” Martje asked.

  “My father said he was ten when his parents got exiled,” Winston whispered.

  “My fool husband tried to get all authoritarian and it didn’t work, the people talked to the humes and learned they voted their leaders in and wanted the same thing, said it was fair. I agreed but since I was mated to Carl, there was no way I could voice it,” she said softly.

  “Carl was the name of my grandfather,” Winston replied softly. “You are my grandmother!”

  “Well, I guess you’re right,” Martje replied. “You turned out pretty fine. How’s your father?”

  “Dead. He tried to do the same thing grandfather did, but the council executed him for it. They wanted me to lead in his stead until an election was called, and to do that I had to marry my cousin.”

  “We didn’t have any other children,” Martje said softly.

  “My mother had two siblings. Her sister had two daughters, I was to mate one of them,” Winston explained.

  “Ugh, I always hated how the council dictated who married whom for the purity of the bloodline. Good thing you got out of it and picked a very pretty one, too,” she said as she looked at Shawna.

  “Thank you,” Shawna replied. “Winston has been more than kind to me.”

  “He’d better,” Martje said. “So you need to get to Traz to have that baby. Been shifting a little too much I guess?”

  “You could say that,” Shawna replied. “I actually didn’t know I was an anima until a week ago,” she explained.

  “How?” Martje gasped.

  “Was taken by a slaver raid before I could remember, got rescued by the man I thought was my father who raised me as a scavenger,” Shawna explained.

  “Wow,” Martje replied as she pulled out an old, yellow scroll of paper. “Here we go, I found it. This is the map of the sewers of this city. You’re in one right now, actually.”

  “Really?” Winston asked as he peered over the small woman’s shoulder.

  “Haven’t been used in two hundred years, so you don’t have to worry about stepping in shit.” She laughed. “Anyway, all sewers lead to the water, but there’s so many twists and turns, you need to know which way to go. I’ve been exploring these tunnels for decades, and mapping them out. Gives me something to do other than hunt for food. Anyway, this red tunnel here, that’s the one we’re in,” Martje explained as she pointed to the map. “Every tunnel is colored differently for some reason. Probably for the old workers to know where they are and where the crap is coming from. Anyway, you go down the red tunnel and turn right, down the yellow. When you see the green, turn left down that and keep going. You’ll be at the bay in no time.”

  “Is it grated off?” Winston asked.

  “No. But be careful, stone crabs like to hang out under the tunnel,” the old woman cautioned.

  Winston swallowed hard and said, “Thanks for the warning. Those things are tough.”

  “Sometimes the behemoths go down for a crab dinner though. If you hear loud roaring and things breaking, just hang back, the brutes will be doing the dirty work for you.”

  Shawna’s eyes lit up. “So how do we get to Traz from the sewer?” she asked. She couldn’t believe she was that close to finally having a home.

  “That I can’t help you with,” Martje replied. “The boat Carl and I came in on was destroyed long ago by some monster or another, and you definitely don’t want to swim.”

  Shawna remembered the massive black shape they had seen swimming in the bay. “Yeah… that would be a really bad idea,” she replied.

  “Maybe you can build a raft, maybe you will luck out and find some dolphins who can take you over. They don’t talk to me because of Carl’s bullshit. They hold a real grudge,” Martje replied. “Don’t mention we’re related,” she said as she pointed a crooked finger at her grandson.

  “Not a problem,” he replied. “So red, yellow, then green, right?”

  “Yep, and if you hear a commotion, stay inside until it’s over,” the old woman said as she put the map away. “So did you bring me any food? Stay for dinner, supplies here are a little slim, unfortunately. You two can leave tomorrow; it’s been so long since I’ve had some sane company.”

  Shawna and Winston smiled at each other. “Sure! We can share our food with you,” Shawna replied as she pulled out some dried pig mole jerky. “It’s just some dried jerky but it’s better than nothing.”

  “Pig mole?” the old woman asked as she took the pale red strip of desiccated meat.

  “Yes,” Shawna replied

  “Oh, it’s been so long since I’ve had pig mole. Been eating scorpion and stone crab meat for so long,” Martje said as she tore into the strip of jerky. “Oh this is so good,” she said as she closed her eyes.

  Winston smiled at the small pleasure they had brought his grandmother. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much room for all three of them to sleep in the small, cramped room. “Are you sure it’s okay for us to stay the night
? There really isn’t much room.”

  “It’ll be fine,” the old woman replied. “You two can just curl up on the floor, there’s enough room there.”

  “At least it isn’t out in the open,” Shawna replied as she sat down on the dingy old carpet.

  Winston smiled. “You’re right,” he said sitting next to her.

  “So, tell me all that happened with the old tribe,” Martje asked. “I need to know if they are still doing okay.”

  Over the next few hours, Winston filled Martje in on all the happenings of the tribe since she had been gone, some of which were just stories told to him by the elders, some he actually lived. As the two chatted into day and through the night, Shawna curled up on the floor, closed her eyes, and went to sleep. For the first time in what seemed like forever, she felt genuinely safe.

  CHAPTER 14

  Winston and Shawna woke up to Martje kicking Winston in the rump.

  “C’mon get your lazy tail up; you have to get a move on,” she snapped.

  “All right, all right,” Winston said as he scrambled to his feet.

  “The tunnels aren’t tall enough for you two to walk through, you’ll have to be tigers for it,” the old woman cautioned.

  Shawna sighed. “Great… just what I need.”

  “It’s not for anymore than a couple of hours, tops; you’ll be fine and the child won’t get stuck,” Martje reassured the scared woman.

  “I’m glad,” Shawna replied. “Freyna said that if I stay in my animal form for too long…”

  “Oh, she’s just a Nervous Nellie. Just change back as soon as you get out of the tunnels and you’ll be fine,” the old woman said as she pulled aside a curtain. “Go through here. Remember: red, yellow, green.”

  “Thank you, grandmother. It was nice to finally meet you,” Winston said.

  “Don’t forget to tell them my message. I’d like to get out of here one day.”

  Winston nodded as he stepped through the open curtain into the dark sewers, almost hitting his head on the low ceiling.

  “I told you to go as a tiger, you idiot,” Martje laughed from her room. She rushed to her trunk and pulled out an odd contraption and put it on Winston’s head and turned it on, illuminating the dark tunnel ahead. “Here, it’s a flashlight and there’s enough juice to get you through the tunnel. Don’t worry, I have more,” she said.

  Winston shrugged his shoulders sheepishly as he shifted into his tiger body.

  Shawna followed suit and started walking behind Winston. She looked over her shoulder at the old woman who was watching them, hoping she could be granted her final wish.

  Winston looked at the red tunnel and started walking forward. He hoped there were no scorpions living in here, but he doubted it. The scuttles he was hearing were in the dirt just above them.

  The couple walked in silence until they encountered a junction. One yellow, one blue. Winston turned down the yellow tunnel as his grandmother advised. The silence was punctuated by the sound of dripping water further down the tunnel and they both hoped that it wasn’t excrement.

  After another fifteen or twenty minutes, Winston came to another junction. On one side the tunnel was collapsed, and the bricks were covered with orange paint, on the other, the tunnel was painted green. With no other way to go, Winston and Shawna turned down the green tunnel, hoping that the old woman wasn’t so senile that she gave them the wrong directions.

  After walking for approximately an hour, Winston smelled the salty tang of the harbor up ahead. He felt his pace quicken and his heart lighten as they finally reached the final leg of their journey.

  Shawna’s pace quickened too as she smelled the ocean as well. She couldn’t wait to see the sparkling water for the first time.

  They saw the sunlight streaming from the opening onto the beach and Winston stopped and looked down toward the beach. The massive shells of dormant stone crabs lay nestled in the sand. Shit, he thought. There’s gotta be at least two dozen of them down there.

  Suddenly, the tunnel was shaken by a mighty roar and the thundering steps of many giant feet. Winston hastily backed up as Martje cautioned while the massive behemoths destroyed the stone crabs down below.

  Bellows and screams echoed through the sewage tunnels while the giants ripped apart and devoured the mutated crustaceans. Both tigers stayed hidden deep in the shadows while the carnage carried on down below. The behemoths didn’t even bother cooking their prey; from the sound of things, all they did was rip them limb from limb and ate them in that fashion.

  The hunt went on for hours. Each behemoth eating its fill of stone crab while the survivors scurried back to the depths from which they came.

  Winston and Shawna lay on their bellies for a good while after the whole thing ended, to make sure there were no more mutants on the beach, then they slowly crawled forward. Winston surveyed the area and was appalled at the carnage the behemoths left behind. At least there were no more stone crabs.

  He leaped down onto the rocky sand and changed into his human body. “All right change back and I’ll help you down,” Winston said to Shawna.

  She did as he asked and was glad he was there to catch her with his strong arms. He gave her a quick affectionate kiss on the nose and let her go.

  “All right, let’s see what we can use to get over to Traz,” he said.

  The two looked around for logs, metal, anything that could be shaped into a boat to no avail. Eventually, Shawna had a plan.

  She walked up to one of the bowl-shaped shells that belonged to one of the unfortunate stone crabs that were made into sushi by the massive mutants that plagued the area.

  “Hey, this should work, right?” she said as she dragged it into the water. “Like if we find a way to paddle it?”

  Winston watched the bowl shaped vessel bob in the water.

  “That just might work! You’re a genius!” he said as he gave Shawna a warm hug.

  “Eh, it’s nothing,” she said. “We still need to find some oars or something.”

  “Right!” Winston said as he looked around.

  He saw a couple of pieces of flat stone crab shell and picked them up. “These should work,” he said. “These are on their bellies and it helps them swim through the water.”

  Shawna picked up the flat shell and examined it. It looked like a paddle with a feathered edge. “Yes it will work nicely,” she said. “All right no better time like the present,” she said as she grabbed one. “Let’s go.”

  Winston sighed, unsure of the vessel, but they had no other choice. He climbed in next to Shawna and swallowed his anxiety as the unstable bowl bobbed in the waves.

  “We need to paddle together in order for it to go straight,” Shawna instructed as she pointed them at the large hulking island in the distance.

  “All right,” Winston replied. “In a normal row boat it usually takes about an hour tops to get from here to Traz, but this thing, I would give it two, maybe three.” He looked to the eastern horizon and saw black clouds brewing. “And we can hope the weather holds,” he said.

  “It should,” Shawna said as she dipped the shell paddle into the cold water of San Francisco harbor.

  Winston and Shawna paddled in tandem, but the progress was slow. The bulky, unwieldy bowl shape of the stone crab shell handled poorly in the choppy water of the bay and the wind was beginning to kick up. Water started to slosh over the edge and into the bottom of the boat as a radiation storm began to blow in from the desert.

  Ice cold water began to numb Shawna’s feet and she felt a contraction grip her. She gritted her teeth and powered through it, knowing she was nearly to the island. Better just be pre-labor again, she thought.

  “I knew this weather was too good to hold!” Winston shouted as the water caused the shell boat to bob up and down dangerously.

  “Well, it was now or never right?” Shawna shouted back over the howling wind.

  “Whatever. Just paddle! We’re almost there!” Winston shouted, as he noticed the wind
was actually carrying them toward the hulking rock island.

  Suddenly, a massive black shape arose from the depths.

  “Oh shit!” Winston cried out as the black sea creature smacked the boat with it’s dorsal fin, causing it to capsize.

  Shawna let out a scream as she hit the ice cold water of the harbor and she dipped under the water. She surfaced again, spluttering, while treading water.

  “What the hell was that?” she screamed.

  “I don’t know, but we’d better swim for it. We’re closer to Traz than where we came from so we gotta go,” Winston said as he swam as fast as he could toward the island.

  Shawna wasn’t as good of a swimmer as Winston so she floundered around behind him, struggling to keep her head above the choppy waves that the radioactive wind was whipping up.

  Another contraction gripped her as she struggled through the water.

  “Oh no, not now,” she said quietly as she paddled fearfully to shore. “What a shitty time to go into labor.”

  Winston was next to her. “What? No!” he said as he heard her express her concerns.

  “It might not be it. Let’s get our asses over there,” she said as the pressure in her abdomen let off.

  Winston helped Shawna as she struggled to stay above the surging waves as the wind howled around them. His blood ran cold as he felt something big brush against his foot.

  “Whatever knocked us into the water is back!” he shouted over the howling wind.

  Shawna didn’t hear him, she was too busy trying to breathe through another contraction and not drown at the same time. Stupid radiation making my stupid pregnancy progress stupid fast, she thought as she struggled in the stormy sea.

  Another wave came and knocked Shawna out of Winston’s arms and down into the depths below.

  “Shawnaaaa!!!!” Winston shouted as he dove into the murky water to find his love.

  A giant gray and white monster saw him and began swimming toward him. Oh god, a shark! he thought as he made his way to the surface. It must have eaten her and now is after me.

  The giant mutated shark was at least the size of one of the wrecked oil tankers that littered the harbor. Its mouth could swallow a person whole without even needing to bite. This thing was meant to hunt the giant whales, but wasn’t averse to eating a few light snacks now and then.