26
MEGAN
I back?”
’m chopping and dicing roots to add to the boiling water over the fire when the front door flap opens
and Cashol ducks in.
“Did you find Haeden?” I turn back to my cutting, standing at the “kitchen” counter slab. “Is he
“He was returning. I carried Joden and he carried Joha and we ran the entire way back.” He comes up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist, nuzzling my neck. He’s cold and icy all over, but his skin is flushed hot and sweaty, and I squirm out of his grasp. “What, you do not like wet kisses from your mate?”
“I like wet kisses,” I grump. “Not sweat kisses.”
Cashol laughs, then drops to his knees and wraps his arms around my waist, nuzzling my belly with the same attention. “I think your mother is mad at me, Casegan.”
“I’m gonna be mad if his name is Casegan,” I mutter. I’m not really mad, though. Just a little irked about the pet. “I’m going to feed our new little friend and then see if Josie needs anything.” I glance over at him. “Okay with you if we watch Joden and Joha tonight? I imagine she can use the free time.”
Cashol gets to his feet again and nibbles on my ear, and it’s hard to stay mad at him, not when he’s so damn handsy and affectionate. I pause in my root chopping and tilt my face up for a real kiss, and for a long moment, the world fades away and it’s just me and my perfect, funny, exasperating, handsome mate, who kisses me as passionately as he did when we first resonated. “If Joden and Joha are here, I will not get to wake my pretty mate in the way she is accustomed.”
I brush a sweaty lock of hair back from his brow. “You won’t get to anyhow, because you’re going to be staying out in the hut behind the house with our son, who wants to sleep with his new best friend.”
“Caught in my own trap,” Cashol says ruefully. He kisses me again. “I did not mean for it to happen, you know. We came across the dvisti tracks in the snow and I was showing Holvek how to follow them when we found the little one in the snow. She had been abandoned by her tribe for not being able to keep up. Did you see the leg?” He twists his hand, as if to demonstrate what I’ve already learned.
I nod, and apparently I’m a bigger softie than I knew, because just hearing that the colt was abandoned is enough for me. “You’ll have to help Holvek set up a stable tomorrow. It can’t stay in the house. Not unless we can train it not to relieve itself inside.”
“Farli trained hers,” Cashol muses. “I will talk with Salukh and Teef-nee and see what they suggest. Teef- nee is good with animals, yes?”
“Tiffany is good with everything,” I agree. “And the dvisti is a girl?”
“It is. Very mild mannered and sweet. It tried to follow Holvek the moment it saw him.”
Aw. My son must be so thrilled. I smile at that. I want my baby to be happy above all else, and if it means putting up with a pet, I’m gonna put up with a pet. “You should have seen the look on his face earlier. It was like the sun had come out. Do you think he’s ready for all this responsibility?”
“I do,” Cashol says seriously, and then rubs my belly. “It will keep him busy when our little treasure arrives.”
Treasure. It’s not the first time Cashol has told me that I’m his treasure…and it makes me think of names.
I’m going to mull on that for a bit. “Will you finish making the root mash?” I ask my mate as he takes the knife from me and begins to cut. “I’ll go get Joden and Joha.”
He nods and leans over for a final kiss, and the movement is so easy and natural that it takes my breath away. I get to kiss this man every day of my life for the rest of my life and we’re making beautiful children together.
God, I really am the luckiest. I kiss him back fiercely, stroke his back, and then head over to Josie’s with a smile on my face.
H J mats, humming as if nothing in the world bothers her. Meanwhile, Haeden looks as disheveled and sweaty and off kilter as if he’s the one giving birth. He hovers around Josie, offering her a cup of water, and I gather up Joha and a change of clothes, and entice energetic Joden with the idea of sleeping out in the storage hut with the new foal tonight.
Joden, the child hurricane, of course loves the idea and has ten thousand questions. I immediately put his jacket on him, hand him a snack, and send him over to Cashol and Holvek. Unlike her brother, Joha is a cuddly little joy of a child. She has fat chubby cheeks and Josie’s little chin and a sweet—if noisy—personality kind of like her mama. I get out Holvek’s favorite toy when he was her age—colored bone shapes that fit into a
carved box—and she spends most of the evening babbling to herself and pushing an orange peg into a round green hole. Definitely her mother (and her father’s) kid. I busy myself with making hot broth drinks for the boys out in the “stable.” Lukti joins them after Tiffany and Salukh stop by to offer tips, and then my poor mate is watching three boys and the dvisti and I feel just the teensiest bit sorry for him.
Holvek races in just before his regular bedtime to come give me a kiss, and I snuggle my boy before sending him back out with his father. “How is he doing? Your new friend?” I ask, worried that it might die on him and then we have to have a conversation about pets and death that I am so not ready to have. “Did he eat?”
“It’s a girl, Mama.” Holvek gives me an exasperated look that is entirely his father as I smooth his hair back.
“Papa says it’s a girl.”
“Oh, I’m very sorry,” I say solemnly. “Have you decided on a name?”
“Not yet. It has to be just the right name, Mama.” His serious look returns. “Names are important.”
“Yes they are.” I give him one last hug. “Go on and rejoin your papa before Joden talks his ear off. I love you.”
“I love you too, Mama!” He hugs me impulsively. “Thank you for letting me keep her.”
My eyes fill with silly emotional tears. “Of course, baby. You know I love you.”
“I know,” he chirps at me, and then bounds back outside, and I feel like I was just handed some sort of Greatest Mom Award.
I curl up around Joha in the furs at bedtime, dreaming about baby names and treasures. Pearls. Jade.
Ruby. Gold. Silver. Jewels. Jewel , I muse as I smooth Joha’s wispy hair back from her horn nubs. Maybe Jewel. I like that.
I must fall asleep, because when I wake up, the fire is nothing but coals and Cashol bends over the bed, stroking my face. I roll over, notice that Joha’s still asleep, her thumb stuffed in her mouth, and keep my voice to a whisper. “Everything okay?”
Cashol nods, tracing my jaw with a tender caress. “Jo-see had her baby. A girl. She has named it Shae.”
He grins. “Strange name.”
“It’s a beautiful name,” I say defensively. “How’s she doing?”
“Haeden says it was the easiest birth yet, and Shae is the biggest of their three kits. Big and fat and entirely too big for someone as small as Jo-see to carry.” He chuckles low. “We will keep Joden and Joha until later tomorrow, if that is all right.”
“Of course,” I murmur. “They need time to rest.” We can keep them for weeks if needed. Josie’s just right next door and I don’t mind. I know she’ll do the same for me when my baby comes. “How’s Holvek?”
“Asleep with Thunder tucked safely under his arm. He is in love already.”
I squint up at my mate in the darkness. “He named that shy little thing Thunder? After he told me it had to have the perfect name?”
Cashol chuckles. “You should have heard the noises it made when it smelled the root mash. She thundered at Holvek mightily until he fed her.”
Thunder. I shake my head. Kids are weird. “Are you going back out there?”
He nods and his thumb skims over my lower lip. “I just wanted to check on my treasure. You know I do not like being apart from you. Not even this far.”
My heart squeezes. “I love you.”
“I love you as well.” He gets up to leave, nothing but a shadow in the dim light of the house.
I grab his hand, thinking. “Wait. Speaking of names.”
“Hmm?”
“How do you feel about Jewel? In my world, it’s a type of treasure. I’d like to call our baby Jewel if it’s a girl.
What do you think?”
He smiles down at me. “I like it. I like everything you like.”
“That’s why we’re perfect together,” I whisper, yawning.
“Among many reasons. Now sleep, my mate. Tomorrow is a new day.” He pulls the blankets higher around me and Joha, leans over and kisses my brow, and tends to the fire, stoking the coals just a little before heading back out to sleep in the stable with our son.
Jewel, I muse, touching my belly. Cashol, Megan, Holvek and Jewel. Oh, and Thunder. It sounds like a wonderful family to me. It’s perfection.
Just like everything else in my life.
