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That doesn’t make sense—and, wait a second, yes. Yes, it does. A certainty pops into my brain—this one courtesy of my mate—and I know that, on the night of the gold moon, bonded couples tend to nuzzle and snuggle but don’t actually fuck unless they want to add to their immediate clan.
That’s something hedoesknow. And he had every intention of reminding me during our first gold moon as bonded mates… but then I laid out on our bed, hiking my dress up high before inviting him to go down on me. Too distracted by my taste, he thought giving me pleasure was all I wanted. But then I begged him to fill me, to fuck me, to mate me… and Loki took that to mean I wanted him to breed me.
Because I’m his mate, and I have his essence. Everyone knows that rutting on the night of the gold moon guarantees spawn.
Everyone, it seems, except for Kennedy Barnes.
Shannon watches my face as I work to process all of my emotions. I’ve never been the type of woman to hide what I was feeling so I’m betting she got a full play-by-play of everything I was thinking as I thought it.
When she gives me a sympathetic smile and says, “Don’t feel bad, Kennedy, I didn’t realize it myself until it was too late,” and I’m sure I’m right.
And then she adds, with a soft chuckle, “At least you didn’t think something was seriously wrong with you before someone with a big mate blurted out you were carrying your mate’s spawn. The first time my hand turned to shadow… that wasn’t cool.”
I blink. “Your human hand turned to shadow?”
“Oh, yeah. Freakiest shit ever. I was convinced I was going a bit demon myself, but it seems like it’s common when the baby is part-Sombran, that happens. Even when the mother is a demoness.” She tilts her head a little, eyeing me closely. “That hasn’t happened to you?”
I shake my head.
“Weird. Maybe it’s because you’re here already. You know, with the clan healer living close by. I stopped by right after the new year so he could look me over, make sure everything’s okay. Not like I can see a human doctor on Earth, right? Anyway, Azazel… he’s the healer… he made it so my hand stopped turning to shadow on me. It lasted until a couple of days ago, so we came back for a tune-up.”
“Azazel,” I echo. “I know Azazel. He’s the demon who traded a spell from my mate for these little candies for me and, holy shit, they’re some kind of demon prenatal vitamin, aren’t they?”
Shannon digs into her back pocket, pulling out one. “Depends? This the candy you’ve been eating?”
I nod.
“He gave these to me, too. I don’t know if they’re magic or some kind of demon juju, but you’re right. They taste pretty good so I eat them, and Azazel said they’ll make it easier for me to give birth when the times does come.”
That’s a small blessing. One of the reasons why I didn’t really mind it when I thought that me and Loki couldn’t have kids was the lack of any kind of hospital in Nuit. We have a healer but, not gonna lie, the idea of giving birth without an epidural freaked me out a little.
But, unless I’m wrong, Shannon’s telling me that the healer is kinda like her demon OB/GYN? Maybe I’m not supposed to worry about that at all.
Small mercy, I guess.
“I still don’t get it, though,” I admit.
“That’s part of living in Sombra. Time… it doesn’t move the same here as it does back home. Let me guess: every time you see the gold moon, you think it’s been another month, right?”
The demons refer to it as a cycle. When I stopped keeping track myself, it made sense to judge time by the moon. “That’s right.”
Shannon winces. “Thought so. And, except for me and Mal popping in to see Azazel, there aren’t any humans in Nuit. So you wouldn’t know.”
“I’m beginning to think there’s a lot I don’t know,” I mutter under my breath.
“Well, did you know that one cycle of the gold moon is really closer to three on Earth?”
No. No, I did not.
That explains why Shannon’s convinced a year’s passed while I’m still thinking it’s October back home. It’s not. It really is May again.
Not that it matters. I’m as immortal as Loki. Time doesn’t mean anything in a world like this, something I accepted soon after I bonded myself to him.
Shannon gives her hand a flippant wave. “It’s all right. After one hell of a case of jet lag, your body will adjust once you take a portal back home again. You’ll be fine in no time.”
What? “Home? What do you mean? This is my home.”
“Is it really?”
