The Bear's Secret Surrogate

by Amy Star

  She felt better afterwards. Clearer, as if the sun had finally come out on a foggy day. She still missed him—she suspected she would for a rather long time—but she could acknowledge that she had done what was best for her and for her family and that she didn’t need to feel bad about that.

  *

  There were so many doctors’ appointments involved with being pregnant. Casey had known that from a logical standpoint, but knowing it in theory and experiencing it in practice were two very different things. It felt like every day either Annie or Lydia were escorting her to a doctor’s office to make sure everything was going as it was supposed to be, to make sure there were no complications and that the baby was developing properly.

  None of it was helped by the fact that she was in the public eye. As soon as her baby bump really began to show, there were pictures. They weren’t even flattering pictures; they were specifically taken to make it look like she could easily be mistaken for having eaten a six-course lunch.

  Lydia patted her back and encouraged her to ignore it, and for the most part Casey did, though she did make note of the names of the particularly obnoxious photographers. She was sure she could do something to make them feel bad about it at some point. And she wouldn’t even regret it. Because honestly, if someone’s first reaction to seeing a pregnant woman was to think ‘how can I make her look unattractively fat for money?’ then she had no sympathy for them.

  There were good parts about being pregnant too, of course. Lydia, Annie, and Atticus fussed over her as much as they were allowed to as soon as she really began to show, and even Branson didn’t seem entirely immune, his already impressive protective instincts getting even more impressive.

  Casey was flattered, in a strange way. She knew the attention was technically directed towards her baby, but she was still the center of that attention. It made spending so much time in clinics almost bearable, knowing that everyone else cared so much.

  *

  Even with everyone at her beck and call, more or less, being pregnant was not a walk in the park. If she stepped outside, she was swarmed by cameras, but she refused to just sequester herself in the house until the baby was born (besides, she couldn’t do that even if she wanted to, considering her substantial amount of doctors’ appointments). She was garnering a reputation as an uncooperative bitch because she refused to answer any of the questions shouted at her from behind a camera.

  It felt like everything was swollen from the amount of fluid she was holding. Her day-to-day discomfort only got more intense as her belly got bigger and bigger. Even long after the first trimester, her bouts of nausea never completely went away. She already loved the baby growing in her belly, but the little tyke was not making Casey’s life easy.

  But she supposed that was just… parenthood. Parents put up with what seemed like an unending amount of shit for the child, and if the child was even aware of a third of it, then it would be impressive.

  She was slightly surprised that her sex life actually survived most of the pregnancy. She was pretty sure Atticus didn’t find her size in and of itself attractive (Casey certainly didn’t), but he was instead just so excited about what it meant that they never had any issues having sex, even if they had to cycle through positions to find which ones were still comfortable.

  THE FINAL CHAPTER

  It was winter when the baby was born. There wasn’t really anything painless about giving birth, but everything went as well as it could be expected to go, and afterwards, Casey was tired but unharmed and healthy. The baby, too, was healthy. A bit smaller than Casey had expected, but she was pretty sure that was mostly because she had expected the baby of a were-bear to be larger than average.

  She was a little girl, not too pale and with dark, dark eyes. And when she was clean and Casey could really get a look at her, the wisps of hair on her head were brown. Her name was Harmony, and from the instant her parents laid eyes on her, she had both Casey and Atticus wrapped around her tiny fingers.

  *

  Casey had expected to lose more sleep after having a baby. And to some extent, she did, but not nearly as much as she had expected. It wasn’t that Harmony was a particularly quiet baby, but rather that it took a village, and Harmony actually had one.

  Lydia and Branson were not spared her hypnotic effects, and they, too, were powerless to deny her anything. If she started crying, it was a tossup whether Casey, Atticus, Lydia, or Branson would get to her first.

  It was a relief, really. Casey’s daughter was about as loved and as safe as she could possibly be.

  And if it also meant that Casey could roll over and go back to sleep content in the knowledge that her daughter would still be tended to at three in the morning, well, she wasn’t above doing so every so often. She figured it was a respite she had earned.

  *

  Harmony was about two weeks old the first time she met her aunt Annie. Annie couldn’t afford expensive toys and she hadn’t wanted to ask Casey to buy toys in her honor—that had seemed to be rather against the spirit of the whole thing—but she had two working hands and she could follow instructions. So, when she showed up, it was with a plush, fluffy bat that she had made with instructions printed off the computer and supplies scrounged up at the goodwill.

  Harmony took to the little bat immediately, or at least that was what Casey assumed it meant when she stuck the end of the bat’s wing in her mouth and proceeded to drool on it. Annie seemed flattered.

  And for most of that afternoon, Casey did not have access to her child, as Annie asked to hold her and then simply refused to hand her back. Even when it was time for Harmony to eat, Annie held the bottle.

  While part of Casey was anxious, the rest of her was just thrilled. Harmony was in safe hands, and it wasn’t as if Annie was actually taking her anywhere.

  *

  Harmony was about a month old on a night when Atticus was in the woods for the night, wandering around as a bear. While ordinarily Casey would have joined him, she didn’t really want to go stomping through the brush with an infant in her arms. So, she supposed her full moon excursions were over for a time.

  It was on that night when Harmony turned into a small, fuzzy brown bear cub and squalled as if she were being slowly skinned alive until Casey scooped her up to sooth her. She had no idea how she was supposed to go about holding or comforting a bear cub, but Atticus wasn’t exactly there for her to ask, and even if he had been, he wouldn’t have been able to answer.

  Casey made it work. It took some coaxing, but she still got Harmony to take a bottle, and finding the proper way to hold her only took a little bit of trial and error.

  When Atticus came back inside shortly after sunrise and found Casey curled up asleep on the couch in the downstairs living room with a bear cub fast asleep on her lap, he laughed so hard that Casey snapped awake.

  She blinked at him sleepily until everything that was going on caught up with her, and when she asked slowly, “What were you saying about the low, low odds of this happening?” Atticus only laughed harder, until he was melting down the wall to sit on the floor.

  It took most of the day, a great deal of squalling, and some more hysterical laughter from both Branson and Lydia before Harmony figured out how to change back again.

  *

  Casey probably should have expected it when Harmony’s reaction to that knowledge was to change shapes all the time, every day, as often as she pleased. It was a tossup whether she would be bear-shaped or baby-shaped at any given moment in the day.

  Atticus assured Casey that she would grow out of it eventually, and in the meantime, it was a fairly harmless quirk.

  Casey had never actually asked him if his household staff was aware of what he was, but after that she rather suspected that they were in on the secret if he was that laid back about the matter.

  *

  There were a few stranger occurrences after that. Like waking up in the middle of the night to hear a noise like a stampede, and to see a bear cub come tum
bling into the room, followed shortly by a very large wolf. Branson offered Casey a brief glance before he carefully herded Harmony out of the suite again and gently picked her up by the scruff of the neck before carrying her back towards her room.

  As Casey rolled over to go back to sleep, she made a mental note to replace the current crib with one a bit harder to escape from. No one needed a bear cub racing around the house at three in the morning.

  *

  Not surprisingly, it was rather hard to keep anything an infant did a secret when infants had no sense of secrecy, propriety, or avoiding doing certain things in public. It took about a week before Annie stopped by to visit and found Casey chasing a bear cub in a diaper and a jumper around the kitchen table.

  Annie nearly fainted when that bear cub turned into her niece. And after a half an hour of staring at a wall and a very strong cup of coffee, she apologized profusely for not believing Casey’s story about Atticus.

  When Casey mentioned the incident to Atticus that night, worried that he might be annoyed that someone else knew about her being a were-bear, he mostly seemed slightly put out at himself that such a turn of events hadn’t occurred to him before. It didn’t look like it even occurred to him to be annoyed about it.

  *

  Casey watched as Lydia swooped down from the roof of the mansion to land in the grass. The actual yard around the mansion was small and the grass was patchy from the trees blocking so much of the sun, but it was still enough space to let Harmony crawl around without worrying about losing her in the woods. (Maybe it was a slightly absurd concern, but it was a concern of Casey’s nonetheless.)

  The crow jigged back and forth from one foot to the other, spreading her wings and rustling her feathers as part of her impromptu dance. She waited until Harmony was giggling before she launched herself into the air once again, spiraling higher and higher into the air until she dipped into a dive.

  Harmony squealed out a laugh, brighter than sunlight, as Lydia swooped low over her head. When Lydia came in for another dive, Harmony reached up, giggling all the harder as her fingertips brushed Lydia’s belly as she passed.

  Sitting cross-legged in the grass just a few feet away, Casey smiled quietly as she watched. She had never been particularly good at making friends. For the longest time, her only friends had been her sister and Jason. To think that she had Atticus, Branson and Lydia, Casey could hardly believe it. She had a family again, and for once she didn’t need to worry about anything happening to it. Her family was healthy and happy and safe.

  Lydia dove two more times before she came in for a landing on Casey’s shoulder. She still barely fit, but she didn’t care about such trifling details. With a low, crooning croak that sounded mildly curious, she bonked her head against Casey’s temple.

  Casey snorted. “Just letting my thoughts wander,” she replied. “I’m being a sentimental sap.” The last was added in an almost conspiratorial whisper.

  Lydia croaked quietly, as if to promise not to tell a soul. She leaned over to close her beak around a strand of Casey’s hair that had come lose from her ponytail, preening it absentmindedly.

  Casey watched as Harmony crawled into a small patch of sun and transformed. The cub kicked her way out of her clothes—Casey dreaded the day that her bear form got considerably larger than her human form—and curled up, falling asleep in the sun in no time.

  Shaking her head slightly, Casey resigned herself to being stuck outside for a while. She stopped moving when Lydia croaked in affront and prodded the side of Casey’s head with her beak.

  At least it was a nice day out, and she had good company. And she would be willing to bet that she would have even more company before long. That almost made up for the knowledge that Harmony would most likely be up for half the night.

  (If she was lucky, she could con Branson into dealing with that little problem for her. He probably wouldn’t mind.)

  *

  “So, she just… turns into that whenever she feels like it,” Annie observed slowly, watching as Harmony romped in a circle in her bear form, pausing occasionally to chew on one of her toys with tiny, needle-sharp teeth.

  “Not just whenever she wants,” Casey corrected. “She does it when she’s upset or startled sometimes, too. Or in her sleep, occasionally.”

  “How are you ever supposed to get a babysitter or a nanny for her?” Annie wondered faintly, as if she was still convinced that she was actually stuck in the middle of some elaborate dream and had no idea how to wake up.

  Casey shrugged, unconcerned. “It’s not like I need to go to work anymore, and we’ve got friends. Besides, I’m pretty sure the staff are aware of the whole… thing. Plus, I’ve got you, too.” The last was added very matter-of-factly. If Annie thought she had a choice in the matter when it came to occasional babysitting duty, she was incredibly mistaken. She didn’t seem to have any objections. (Granted, based on the slightly spaced-out look on her face, it was entirely possible she hadn’t noticed that Casey had volunteered her for babysitting duty. Either way, Casey was willing to take it as agreement.)

  Annie nodded slowly, but she still looked like she didn’t fully comprehend the situation. Cautiously, she asked, “So, are you going to turn into a bear too, now?”

  Casey snorted. “Ah, no,” she replied, and she cleared her throat behind one fist. “That’s not the way it works, apparently. If you aren’t born a bear or another animal, then you don’t become one. You can just… help pass the genes along.” She gestured to Harmony with a flourish.

  There was silence for a moment, save for the sounds Harmony occasionally made. She turned back into a human, rolled about for a moment, and decided she didn’t have nearly enough fine motor control that way before she transformed once again.

  (Thinking about it in those terms, Casey supposed she could understand why Harmony was so fascinated with her ability to transform; human infants could do basically nothing while bear cubs were comparably remarkably capable at a reasonably small size.)

  “This is so surreal,” Annie observed, reaching down to pat the top of Harmony’s head. Harmony latched onto her wrist with both front paws and proceeded to chew on her aunt’s watch. It was cheap and easily replaceable, so Annie saw no reason to stop her. Besides, the tooth marks added character.

  Casey leaned over to pat her shoulder. “I thought so too,” she replied. “Especially considering Atticus stressed how unlikely it would be for this to happen.”

  “For what to happen?” Annie asked, most of her attention still focused on Harmony, even as she relinquished the watch again and instead turned in a circle, getting comfortable on the floor and curling up to go to sleep.

  “Her being a were-bear,” Casey elaborated. “Apparently, the odds of me giving birth to someone actually capable of transforming were really slim, since I’m not a were-bear, and as far as we’re aware, I’m not related to any.”

  “You always did have a thing for standing out,” Annie returned dryly, tracing the tips of her fingers over one small, rounded ear.

  Casey stuck her tongue out at her. “You’re getting us confused again,” she protested. “You were always the attention whore.”

  Aghast, Annie brought a hand to her chest as she scoffed, “Me? Oh, no, no. It was definitely always you swinging from the chandeliers and banging pots and pans.”

  “Oh, please,” Casey snorted. “As if we could ever have afforded a chandelier while we were growing up.”

  Well, it was a valid point, at least.

  *

  “Not quite how I expected things to go,” Casey remarked casually one night, pacing back and forth across the dining room with Harmony cradled against her shoulder. She was shaped like a human for a change and nearly asleep, though she burbled out a few nonsense noises every so often.

  Branson leaned against the table, a cup of coffee cradled in his hands despite the late hour. Casey had learned not to expect anything resembling sense from his sleep schedule.

  “No comp
laints, though?” he wondered over the edge of his mug, and while he sounded casual enough as he asked it, Casey wasn’t fooled. She knew Branson would chase her off in a heartbeat if he thought she was going to be bad for Atticus. Considering Harmony would stay with Atticus in such a situation, even his love for the little girl wouldn’t prevent him from doing something if his protective instincts were triggered.

  It was, on the whole, a trait of his that Casey appreciated.

  Smiling crookedly, she shook her head. “Nope,” she answered simply. “None at all.” Because really, what else was there to say about the topic?