Alex had to fight back a burst of hysterical laughter.  He so did not want to sound like a girl right now!  He stared at his son and for the umpteenth time wondered how they were going to handle this.  Sighing he decided the best way to do that was to learn more about this … whatever it was that Tyler could do.  And at the moment he was their resident expert.  Nothing better than getting it straight from the horse’s mouth was there?

“I guess the best I can do to help … me” Alex referred to himself as a question with a shrug, “understand all this is for you to tell me more about this ‘hearing’ people.”  When Tyler nodded he smiled at him crookedly.  “I think I would like to know when this all started, can you tell me?”

Tyler sat up straight and scrunched his forehead; much like he did when he was trying to figure out his homework.  “I think I could always hear Rebeccah and Audrey.  I can not remember not hearing them.  Ever.”  He looked at his father and when Alex nodded, he carried on.  “And I think it was the same with Ricky.  I can’t really remember that so well, you know; back then?”

Alex chuckled softly.  “Neither can I.”

Tyler accepted the assurance and carried on with his explanation.  “What I can remember was that I could hear other …” He looked at his dad nervously and immediately Alex reached out and put his hand on the small shoulder.

“Try and explain as best you can.  Tell me what you think and feel; if you think later that it is not quite right, we can always talk about it again, OK?”

Tyler smiled, grateful that his dad was so understanding.  He had been so worried about what his father and mother would think and say about what he could do.  Now he was just glad that he had someone he could talk to about all of this without them being mad at him.

“It’s not like I hear their voices, like you do, I think I just hear them.”

“OK, let’s figure this out together then.  If you don’t hear their voices, do you think you hear their minds?  Or what they are feeling?”

“I think it’s more than that dad.  When I hear them, I know if they are happy, I know if they are feeling well, and if I can put two or more people together like with mom just now, I can tell what they are doing.”

“You can tell if they are not feeling well?  How?”  Alex was just a bit surprised.  Werewolves did not usually not feel well.  They had iron constitutions after all.

“Yes; like when mommy was not feeling well when she had Ellie in her tummy; she felt all weird for a short while.”

“Hmm, perhaps it would be better if you told me what you hear when you hear mommy.”

Tyler smiled brightly.  “She sounds like a waterfall.”  His face shone with eagerness as he tried to explain what one of his favorite sounds sounded like.  “Mostly I hear the water falling down like it is a nice, friendly and small waterfall.”  He threw his dad a quick look as he tried to keep a straight face.  “When she is like very, very cross, she sounds like that giant waterfall … you know, like the one in that old superman movie?”

Alex tried to cover his laughter by coughing, but he soon saw that Tyler did not buy it at all.  “I can imagine.”  He said dryly.  Then he wondered; did he ever make her that mad?  “Does she get that cross like that with me?”

Tyler burst out laughing and after he had dried his eyes his shoulders were still shaking.  “No, mom doesn’t get that mad at you.  I actually only heard her like that once.  It was just after Uncle Ethan and Lucy left for good.”

Wincing Alex thought back at that time.  Ethan had been one of the last groups of newly appointed alphas to take charge of their new packs and to start fixing up the neglected pack grounds that had been assigned by the council.  The first few rounds of newbie’s had been given the grounds that were in a better condition than the others in the hope of them being able to salvage more that way.  Alex agreed with them.  There was no reason for those pack grounds to be allowed to deteriorate even further if they could be brought back to their original state with less work and less resources.  It had made perfect sense.

However, by the time the last round of pack grounds were released, those grounds were in a sorry state to say the least.  As Stan had taken the trouble to explain to the Grey family what the reasoning was behind their methods, Ethan and Lucy were well aware that they were going to have a tough job ahead of them.  What they had not expected was being appointed with an ‘overseer’ who did his best to contradict every decision Ethan made.

They only discovered this because Cassy had been worried about Lucy being in the final stages of pregnancy and therefore had stayed in touch more often than with the others.  Cassy was livid when she found out that someone from the council had thought Ethan and Lucy were not quite ready to function on their own.  She had taken the insult personally and had been ready to rip the council apart for their idiotic decision, but Lucy had told her very nicely not to but in.  She had more than enough confidence in Ethan to sort out the problem on his own.  Which he did in such a way that Cassy had walked around with a grin on her face for the next month or so.

“Yeah, she was mad alright.”  He agreed with Tyler as they shared a smile.  “Alright, I know what she sounds like to you when she angry, can you explain to me better now how she sounds when she is not feeling to well?”

Tyler thought very hard, and then he spoke.  “It is difficult to explain what I hear.  Do you remember that bit we saw on the TV about the oil from that ship?”

“Yes.”  Alex said as he tried to imagine how that would sound like.

“Well, mommy sounded a lot like what the sea looked like.  Do you understand what I am trying to say?”

Alex frowned.  If Cassy had been feeling like Tyler explained, she had been feeling very bad when she was pregnant.  And unlike with her first pregnancy, she had managed to hide how bad she had felt.  He felt a sudden flash of anger and disappointment that she had not been honest with him about how sick she was feeling.  He was so worked up that he almost didn’t notice it when Tyler sighed next to him.

“Don’t be cross with her daddy.  She didn’t want you to worry about something that would go away on its own.”

“I should have seen that she was not feeling well.”  His bitter words directed towards himself.  What kind of a mate was he if he did not see that she was pretending to be alright?

Tyler smiled at his dad.  “Dad, mommy knows you very well.  She is OK with this, it doesn’t bother her.  It shouldn’t bother you.”

“I should have …” He ranted until Tyler stopped him as he looked at him with the same expression Cassy used when one of the kids had been naughty and they knew it.

“You told me that when I shift for the first time it will hurt a lot.  But you also tell me that it will be nothing compared to what I will feel after that.  It is the same with her when she is carrying a baby.  It is only for a short while that she sounds … sick.  The rest of the time the waterfall tinkles like in one of those silly Disney pictures the girls like to watch.”

His dad raised an eyebrow at him and he wondered if he would be able to do that.  It looked so cool.

“Serious!”  He said as he saw his dad was not ready to believe him.  “She sounds like that all day long.  I am sure if I could see what I hear I would go blind from all the bright and sparkly lights.  Daddy, she is so freaking happy then.”

Alex sighed in defeat.  What Tyler said made sense, but he was still going to talk to Cassy about hiding something like that from him.

“OK.  Let’s leave mommy out of the picture for now.  You say that you started out hearing your sisters and Ricky, when and how did that change?”

“First I could only hear kids as big as me, or smaller.  Then I started hearing bigger kids and know I hear the grownups too.  I could hear the big people just before Sean came.”

Sitting back Alex attempted to process what Tyler had said.  In a matter of three to four years he had started out hearing the younger children only until he could hear all the adults as well.

“Can you hear everybody at the pack grounds?”

Tyler nodded in response.

“When we go into town, can you hear the others, the normal humans?”

“Very softly.   And I can’t hear them for long if we come back.”

“If you can hear all the people at the pack grounds …” Alex saw Tyler squirm around slightly.  “What?”  He asked, knowing that there was something else Tyler had not told him yet.

Tyler looked at his folded hands as he replied.  “I can hear the babies in their mummies too.”

Alex choked.  “What!?”  He asked.  Not sure how he was going to be able to wrap his mind around that concept.

“Very softly.  Even softer than the humans.  And only if I am close.  But it sounds so nice.  Like when Lady is sleeping in the sun.  It is a happy and lazy sound all mixed up together.  And then, BAM!  When they are born they make such a racket it wakes me up if I am sleeping.  They are not very happy then.  At all.”

Understanding came to Alex in a flash.  “So that is why you are always awake when the babies are born.”

Tyler looked guilty.  “Yes.  I am sorry for making you wake up.  But if I go them, they get better and then they don’t make such a noise.”  Tyler looked a little upset as he sighed.  “I seriously can’t believe no one else can hear them when they make a noise like that.”

Alex sat back in his seat with a huff.  He understood now that it had been a restless Tyler that had woken him up every time a baby was born on the grounds.  And of course when the fathers had sensed him being awake, they would inform him.  And naturally he would go along to congratulate the parents and to admire the new baby.  And because Tyler was awake, he had always gone along.  He wondered why he had never paid any attention to that fact before.  Perhaps it was the way Tyler had about making everything he does seem so effortless.

Shaking his head he started the car up again.  If he wanted to finish up in town and be back in time for his meeting with Rudi, he had to get started.  “We won’t have time for milkshakes today Ty.”

Tyler flashed a happy smile at his dad.  “It’s OK.  We had our chat out here.  Besides, I still have that sum to finish.”

Alex frowned at Tyler.  “You should spend more time outdoors.  Studying is good and all, but you should not spend all your time on it.”

Tyler looked at his dad in surprise.  “I don’t.  In the mornings I play with Sean and Ellie and in the afternoons I work and play with the Becky and Dri.  And just before dinner I …”

“Ok, Ok!  You win.  Just promise me that you will take a break if you feel you need one.”  Alex asked as he concentrated on the traffic as the rode into town.

Tyler nodded his head.  “Are we going to drive past the school and wave at the girls?  They are on break right now.”

“Yeah, we might as well.”  He said as he realized that his son would know perfectly well when the girls were on break.

When the two of them got back home, Alex kissed Cassy in the way that she knew she was in trouble before he rushed of to meet with Rudi.  Cassy turned her eyes to Tyler but he smiled an almost smirk at her as he left to finish his school work for the day.  She rolled her eyes.  Tyler was becoming so much more like his father every day.

After all the kids were tucked into their beds that night Cassy was brushing her teeth.  By now she knew that Alex had been stewing all afternoon long and that she was in for it; even if she was not too sure why she was in trouble.  After putting of for as long as she could she walked back into their room.

Alex let his eyes linger on her body as he appreciated the way his t-shirt hung around her curves.  He stared at her hips as she swayed towards the bed.  Hearing her heart stutter he lifted his eyes until he stared into hers.

“Alex?”

He patted the space next to him and watched as she crawled into bed next to him.  Hiding his smile he turned towards her, she knew she was in trouble.

Cassy gasped as his hand curled around her thigh and glided up her hip, under the shirt until his hand was resting on her stomach.

“If you ever want to have another baby Cassy, you are going to have to learn to tell me the truth.  Do you understand?”

She frowned; concentrating was not so easy to do when his hand was stirring up a run away fire within her.  “Hmm?”

“Tyler said you were not doing so well when you were pregnant.”  He did his best to keep the accusation out of his voice as he spoke; but some of it still leaked through.

So that is what they were talking about, she thought.  “It wasn’t that bad.”

“That is not the way Tyler described it to me.  Cassy, I am your mate; this is the type of thing you should be sharing with me.”

“It only makes you worry.”

“It is my job to worry about you and the kids!  Even if there is nothing I can do about it.”

In a sudden move he twisted their bodies around so that he was half covering her body with his, purpose and intent shining brightly in his eyes and face.

“If you are going to learn one thing tonight woman, it will be to tell me everything you feel.”  His hand traveled to her side and drew lazy patterns on her skin as he brought his face closer to hers, his breath fanning against her neck.  “How does that make you feel?”

“It feels good.”  Her words were no more than a whisper in his hair as he gently kissed her neck.

He clicked his tongue at her as he shook his head in disappointment.  “I honestly think you can do better than that Cassy.”  His hand moved up a bit and then a bit more.  “Tell me how that feels!”  He demanded through his kisses.

“Your fingers are burning me!”  She gasped as she arched her body into his touch as he suckled at her neck.

“Better, much better.”  He said.  His hands wandered all over her body and with every caress he demanded she say how it felt, what she was feeling until they were breathlessly holding onto each other, spent and satisfied.

“Please don’t hide how you are feeling.  I need to know, even if I can only feed you crackers in the morning so that you don’t have to get up straight away.  I know it doesn’t last long; alright?  Just please let me do something for you!”

“OK.”  Cassy whispered as she wormed her face into his neck.  Ashamed that she had not trusted Alex to understand how she detested being pampered when she was not feeling well.

“Good!”  Alex declared as he held her tightly.  Loving the way their hearts beats and breathing were synchronized.  They were both quiet and thoughtful while they waited for their bodies to calm down.

“What else did that little traitor have to say?”

Alex laughed silently at her choice of words and debated telling her how Tyler had defended her earlier that morning.  He quickly explained what Tyler had told him about hearing the other shifters.  As he had no real opinion on the matter yet they discussed how they could try and help him come to terms with all of this.  In the end however, they decided that he did not really need any help at the moment; but that they would keep their eyes open for any indication that he did need help.  And for once Cassy did not say she would be contacting any other packs or the council to find out if there were any other incidents like this when someone could ‘hear’ the way Tyler did.

Without saying it out loud, Alex and Cassy agreed that they would take care and handle this as things changed.