The Monster at the End of This Pregnancy

The Monster at the End of This PregnancyM/M Fantasy Mpreg RomanceEdie Monte Copyright © 2023 Edie MonteAll rights reservedThe characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.Cover design by: Danielle Doolittle | DoElle Designs | www.doelledesigns.comContent Warnings:This book is a male/male romance between two consenting and versatile adults. It contains scenes that may depict, mention, or discuss abduction, bullying, childbirth (egg laying), infertility and prior egg loss, monster anatomy, male pregnancy, and violence. For a full list of content warnings, see https://www.ediemontreux.com/warnings. To the folks who don't feel comfortable in their own skin. Welcome to Ignitas. You're a kobold now. Contents Title PageCopyrightDedicationChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12EpilogueThank you!AcknowledgementAbout The AuthorBooks By This Author Chapter 1Punky I didn't need this dead-end retail job. That's what I kept telling myself as I sat at the picnic table outside the employee exit. It was still half-buried in the giant snow pile scooped from the parking lot beyond. The mud-covered mountain blocked the wind but radiated glacial cold.My adrenaline had worn off about halfway through the impromptu meeting with my boss. I started shaking about the time she told me it didn't matter what the customer had said or done, I shouldn't have reached for her. In my defense, she'd placed both hands on Clementine's protruding belly and asked if she was having a boy or girl. Thank fuck Clementine was nine months pregnant. If she wasn't, I would have decked the nosy customer for making assumptions.Clementine was my best friend at work. We'd bonded over our weird-as-fuck names. I was already on edge because today was her last day before maternity leave. They were inducing labor on Tuesday, and she and her on-again, off-again boyfriend didn't know the child's gender. They wanted to be surprised."Healthy," had been her answer to the handsy woman before all hell broke loose. I reached for the customer. Clementine hip-checked me, so my hand grazed the woman's arm instead. Then, Clementine did what I was going to do. She laid a hand on the woman's breast and gave it a little squeeze.Who knew being just as rude to a rude-ass-Karen would get me fired? Okay, I should have known. The woman had made eye contact with me first, and she saw the intent in my eyes before Clementine bumped me out of the way. I never laid a hand on her, but she screamed the fake name on my nametag to our manager.Even though I didn't touch her (not for lack of trying), I couldn't lunge for a woman's breast without a sexual harassment accusation. There was nothing sexual about my attempt to show her how uncomfortable she'd made my friend.Clementine got to tell her side of the story and calm everybody down before I was dragged into the office, but it wasn't enough to change our manager's mind."You have so much potential," she had said, "but you've got to work on that temper."My temper had vanished, thanks to the freezing fucking cold. I tucked into my hood and squeezed my arms around my chest to push more heat into my body. With all the rustling, I didn't hear the employee door open. When it slammed shut on a gust of wind, I jumped."Hey there, attempted sexual predator." Clementine sat with her back to the table, since her belly wouldn't fit between the bench and the scratchy wood surface. "How dare you try to steal my thunder!""I'm sorry," I muttered."I'm not. Our last shift together, and you manage to get us both fired. Saved me the hassle of quitting after my maternity leave was up." She squeezed my shoulder. I couldn't see her face, thanks to her chunky beige scarf, but her eyes crinkled at the edges from a smile. "Happy fucking birthday to you! I was going to sing to you at lunch, but then you got called to the manager's office.""Holy shit." I'd almost forgotten. Since graduating high school, the jibes of "Beware the Ides of March" had become ghosts of birthdays past. Yes, my birthday was today, March 15. And yes, I hated Shakespeare for that line and a high school full of kids calling me Caesar for a day until I realized it was marginally better than my real name.In years past, I'd wanted to be a teacher, so the kids had to call me Mr. Bell. No first name allowed. Today, my name tag read Puck, another throwback to Shakespeare. That wasn't my name, but it might as well have been. My biological parents must have been jokesters, and my adoptive parents still didn't get the joke I'd had to live with for the last quarter century."What are your plans for tonight?" she asked."My parents want me to hang out after work." I lived in their basement apartment with its own back door. It was the only place I could afford without busting my balls to work three retail jobs at a time. Now, I was back down to zero. That was a problem for future Punky, one I hoped I hadn't just blown by attempting to assault grabby-hands Karen. I'd been sitting outside trying to come up with an explanation fit for parental consumption, but I was still drawing a blank. Now it was time to go home, according to my cell phone.I scrunched my face into a hyper-frown, and Clementine laughed, assuming I was still thinking about my parents. "They're not so bad," she said.She was right. They weren't as bad as I made them out to be. They'd adopted me from Europe, some country with more white babies than they knew what to do with. Okay, yes, I had a