“Uh, no to the beer, but I’ll take a soda or just water if that’s okay?” He joined me on the porch. There was a comfortable swing which sat three people easily. It was somewhere I imagined spending a lot of nights with Sully, if he was okay with what came next.
“Sure. I’ll just go grab them. Back in a sec.” I took a deep breath, letting it out slowlyonce I was inside the house.
“Doing okay?” Mama clapped a hand on my shoulder, startling me as I rooted around in the fridge for drinks.
“Yeah. A little overwhelmed, but Sully needs to know it all.”
“You’ll make it work.”
I found Uncle Malik’s letter to me and took it outside with the drinks. Opening his, I handed it to him. He muttered his thanks nervously.
“It’ll be easier to explain things if you read this letter first. Is that okay?”
Sully took it, his fingers shaking with his nerves. “Um… alright.” He began to read, his eyes widening further with each paragraph. “Oh, no! Poor Malik.” His head snapped up, his eyes wide. “They came from the woods?”
“Yeah. It’s all they’ve known.”
He returned to reading. “They stayed behind? They weren’t with you?”
“I didn’t know about them until I came here.”
Tears ran down his face. I kneeled in front of him, taking his hands. “You just took them in without question,” he finally got out.
“They were meant to be mine. Ours, if you’re willing.” His smile was a trembling, beautiful thing. More tears fell from those pretty blue eyes.
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Someone… Rowan… told me there should be no secrets between family. The main reason I fought what we have is because I needed to get paperwork for the kids. It sounds so mundane and pathetic when I say it out loud.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Yeah, it does. Here I was, a stranger to the town, a predator shifter, with three kids who clearly aren’t blood related. The last thing I needed was someone questioning us and me having no proof they were mine.”
“I wouldn’t have said anything.”
Kissing his fingers, one by one, I couldn’t help but be awed by Sully. “I know. You wouldn’t have needed to. The people of the town will. There’s plenty of scrutiny still to come, once we go public with this, if you still want me.”
“Of course I do.” He made a pained expression. “I’ve got a confession of my own first. You deserve to know before we do anything else.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, exactly,” he hedged. His eyes lifted to look directly at me, his fingers tightening around mine. “I’m pregnant.”
Eighteen
Sully
Therewasaheartbeatof silence following my announcement. Following Imri’s example, I wanted to go into this mating secret free, and I’d been keeping something incredibly important from him. Something that could make or break our mating.
Imri’s eyes widened. “Are you serious?” he asked in an incredulous tone. I didn’t quite know what to make of it, but answered with a nod.
I’d never understood the expression about a person’s eyes lighting up until I watched it happen to Imri. Except it wasn’t just his eyes, it reached every inch of his body. He was delighted! Relief made my limbs feel like rubber.
He launched into movement, grabbing my hands and pulling me with him to the front door, which he threw open.
“Sully’s pregnant!” he yelled as he towed me into the kitchen.
Everyone stopped what they were doing to stare at us, then erupted into congratulations. All except the little boy, Sandy.
