“I know. But you’re worried,” I say, and she huffs, her ears flattening and coming back up.
“My lion does not like seeing you in pain.” She says it like it settles the matter, and maybe it does.
We walk the rest of the way without another word, and I hate it, but I know my mate. She won’t set her worry down until I set mine down first, and I don’t know how to do that yet. It’s just that simple.
At least her lion isn’t holding it against her tonight. The whole way home that golden tail keeps finding me, brushing my arm, my chest, my cheek, soft little touches that ask for nothing, and Mother Fate help me, I love it more than I know how to say.
Our cabin comes up out of the trees, dark and waiting on the community lands, and she ducks out from under my arm and snatches the bundle back before we reach the steps. I start to fuss at her about carrying her own things and she talks right over me.
“I want to try it on again,” she says, already moving. “I’m wearing it to the festival in the market this weekend.”
That drags a real smile out of me, and I tell her yeah, go on, and she’s gone, up the steps and through the door.
I take my time following her. I shut the door behind me and stand in the front room before I climb the stairs. The decision I’ve been hauling around for a month sits heavy on me, and Ican’t put it down, even for her. I keep turning the same questions over the same tired way. Whether she’ll stay if it comes to that. Whether she’ll follow me into a dead realm I’m only just learning how to wake. Or whether she’ll look around one day at everything she gave up and go.
I get to the top of the stairs and stop. My mate is in there, happy about a dress. The least I owe her is to meet her there, not stand in the doorway drowning in everything I haven’t said. When I’ve got it down where it belongs, I go in.
She’s got the new dress laid out across the bed, smoothing it flat with both hands, and she glances up and smiles at me, easy and bright, and I drop into the lounge chair against the wall, bending to pull my shoes off. She reaches back and tugs the dress she’s wearing up over her head and tosses it onto the mattress, then reaches for the new one, and stops.
I’m not even watching her, not closely. My head’s still half in the Glen. It takes me a moment to catch that she’s gone too long without a word, that she’s stopped moving over the dress. I straighten up and clear my throat, already braced. A quiet Mara is usually one about to read me my own sins right back to me. I look up to take it.
She’s standing in front of the mirror in nothing but her bra and panties, her tail drifting slow behind her, her ears giving small twitches. One hand is splayed flat over her stomach. Her nose is working the air, and she tilts her head, catching a scent she can’t place yet. Then her eyes go wide in the glass, and she smiles.
I know that look. It’s the one she wears for other people’s happy news, the babies and the matings. And now she’s wearing it for us.
She drags a breath in through her nose, tasting it, her hand pressing flatter to her belly, and a laugh falls out of her, shocked and small and bright, her own scent telling her what’s true.
Mara’s pregnant.
My mate is carrying our cub. The knowing of it wipes every other thought out of my head. I don’t realize I’ve stopped breathing until my chest starts to burn. I breathe it out slow, swallow hard, and get to my feet without a sound. I am not going to break this, not for anything in this world.
I cross the floor to her one careful step at a time, come up at her back, until I’m there behind her in the mirror. She finds me in the glass and freezes.
“Oh,” she breathes, her eyes going round. Her hands drop from her belly, and she turns to face me. Whatever she means to say dies when she gets a look at my face, and she gasps, soft.
I can’t do anything but look at her.
“I didn’t even realize you got up,” she says, and lifts a hand to my cheek, her brows pulling together, that worry never far from her. “Is everything okay?”
“Are you pregnant, baby?” I ask her, and she gasps again, her hand stilling against my face.
“I—“ she starts, and I go down. I drop to my knees in front of her, get my hands around her waist, and pull her in against me. I press my face to her belly, to the warm soft skin of her, and breathe her in deep.
“Aaron.” Her voice wavers above me, her hand cradling the back of my head. “I was going to tell you, I?—“
“Are you pregnant, baby?” I ask it again, into her skin this time.
“Yes,” she gets out. Then again, smaller and shy, “Yes.”
I pull my head back just far enough to press my mouth to her stomach, and her hand tightens on my shoulder.
“Aaron, how—“ she starts, and I rise. I come up off my knees, and I don’t know what’s on my face, but it’s all of it, every year I’ve wanted this, every night I lay awake building a life I wasn’tsure Fate would let me keep. My skin’s gone hot all over, my hands won’t hold still.
“I’m going to be a father?” It comes out of me wrecked.
“I was going to say something,” she says in a rush, the words tumbling now. “I only just found out, I swear. I felt off all day, the scent’s been on me since this morning, I just didn’t catch what it was until?—“
She doesn’t finish, because I’m crying. It comes up out of me hot and fast, and I don’t fight it down. For so long I kept this very thing at arm’s length, every frightened, selfish choice of mine made to hold it off, because I was too scared of losing it to let myself have it. And Fate handed it to me anyway, the one thing I never let myself pray for out loud. I don’t deserve it, and I know that. But I have it.
