Chapter Eleven
Xav
Liatris apologized five times when he arrived right as the baby finished up his ground beef. Selatris wasn’t any worse for wear. He had shaken himself up a bit by coming through behind the dryer, but no harm had come to him. I opened my mouth to tell him it wasn’t a big deal but that wasn’t true. For us, it was a minor inconvenience but for them their baby had run away without leaving a clue to his whereabouts behind. That was the big fucking deal. Pondering it made me want a cigarette, but I held off on lighting up. I never smoked around the baby.
“I’m not even sure how to keep him from doing that,” Liatris said, leaning back against the edge of the kitchen table clutching his cub to his chest.
“I didn’t even know he could do that,” Selt said, his brow furrowed together.
Selt was a fighter at heart. He’d defend Liatris and their cub against the whole world if he had to but this was something no amount of pent up rage or fighting prowess would help.
“I never thought about it before,” Liatris sighed. “It does make sense that he can do it. It’s not like he hasn’t seen me do it a hundred times over. Hell, you can do it too now, alpha.”
“GPS bracelet or something,” Sequin offered up.
“If he’s within range of the measurable universe that would work,” Selt nodded.
“The older he gets the more places he’ll know,” Liatris frowned.
“Hey,” I said, bumping my shoulder against his. “It’s not like he’s going to be a baby forever. Sooner or later, we’ll be able to talk to him about it.”
“Until he’s a teenager and you can’t ground him,” Sequin said, and I shot him a dirty look. Now wasn’t the time to bring up future problems.
“Hey, that’s a you guys problem too,” Selt pointed out. “You’re learning how to cast them too.”
“Well, shit,” Sequin frowned.
“I’m just glad he’s okay. At least if he’s casting to go to people he knows, he’ll be safe,” I said, trying to steer the conversation back to the positive side of things. Liatris was in therapy for everything that happened right around the time he met Selt. I went for a while too but unlike Liatris, I expected people to be shitty. The council hadn’t done anything other worlds hadn’t tried before. They failed at it, but their tactics weren’t anything new.
“Me too,” Liatris said a long moment later.
“Let me make you guys something to eat. I know worry and magic both can drain you to the bone,” Sequin offered.
My ice groaned inside me. So much for getting some time alone with Sequin. Still, Selatris was worth postponing our matingmoon a few hours for.
Sequin’s invitation for a meal turned into an invitation to go down to the ocean. We hadn’t gone down there ourselves yet, but Sequin frequented the area enough that I trusted him to know whether or not it was safe for the baby.
Baby.
The world circled around my thoughts.
Baby.
Sequin and I would have a baby sooner or later if we weren’t careful. We hadn’t outright had that conversation yet, but we needed to soon. Kids were infamous for providing a break from heat cycles or for putting them off all together. Having a kid around set off a different set of biological responses that shifted resources to providing for the kids who were already alive. Still, it was nice to imagine our kid walking between us down to where the water met the sand.
“The sun is nice,” Liatris said, his words almost a purr as we neared the shoreline.
I squeezed Sequin’s hand to thank him for suggesting it. I wouldn’t have thought of it, though I really wanted him to myself and maybe in a shower at that. I’d stayed single and celibate for years before moving to the Starscale flight and discovering the purple district. I never imagined myself meeting my true-mate. I wasn’t against the idea, but it seemed almost foreign that someone would be willing to take on my baggage in addition to their own. Now, I knew, Sequin was used to drama and high stakes living. People were here today and dead tomorrow.
We all stood around in a semi-circle as Liatris squatted down and put the baby’s paws into the water. He pulled his furry feet up to his body before extending his legs again to test it.
“It’s like the bath, little man,” Selt said squatting down too.
A few minutes later, he was ‘kitty’ paddling around and chasing his own tail. Sequin and I left them to their play time and walked further up the beach.
“Never a boring moment, huh?” he laughed when we were out of earshot of the others.
I took his hands in mine and turned my face up toward the sun again. Liatris was right. The sun was nice. Sometimes even an icy guy wanted to sunbathe a bit.
“You’re great with Selatris,” Sequin said, squeezing my hands.
“I’ve had practice. My therapist said that Liatris and I had some survivor’s bond from both being outsiders on the world we met on but Liatris is more like family to me than my own family. That made Selt and the baby family too,” I shrugged. “I’d do anything for them.”
“How’s the housing situation over there? I mean, I know there isn’t really a money-based economy but….” his words trailed off.
“I can go back and forth if I need to. I don’t want to take you away from your family and friends either,” I frowned. “I love the Starscales, but we belong together and I want you to be happy.”
“You’re my family too now, Xav, and for better or worse, that means my family is also your family. That baby loves you. He loves you so much he ran away to find you. You’re a big part of their family. I love Daliah and have some friends here and there but so many of them fell off the face of Earthside when Mum died. They didn’t know how to handle it. Dad and Teddy are over there. It seems so ridiculous that I almost quit talking to my sister over a house now. I know it was more than that – it was all of our mother’s stuff and needing my own space, but we really almost fell apart there.”
I wiped a tear from his cheek before he realized it had fallen.
“We all do stuff like that, mate,” I squeezed his hands. “We really do. It’s easy to lose track of what matters when life hurts us. You two made it right in the end. We’re even having a wedding with them.”
When he didn’t say anything, I pulled him into a big hug and held onto him. Never had I wanted to be inside his head so much. His thoughts were quiet over the flight link, and I couldn’t comfort and soothe what I didn’t know about.
“I hate my hormones,” he groaned, and I held off making a joke about how much I loved mine now. “I hate whatever causes heat because it always makes me so bloody emotional! I wanted to talk about having babies! Not come to cry all over you!”
“Do you want kids?” I asked, glad to have something useful to say.
“I do. I mean, I always did at some point,” he said, his forehead still resting against my chest. “Some point just got a lot closer. I don’t know why I’m such a mess! Pregnant people are supposed to be a mess not horny as fuck people!”
“Sexual frustration is weird sometimes,” I chuckled.
“But I just came earlier,” he said, rubbing his forehead against me. “If it weren’t for my heat, I’d think maybe I was pregnant. I’m not a saint. I had a hookup not long before I left London.”
We both froze. In the most logical sense it was very unlikely that he was pregnant. Pregnancy was one of the most sure fire ways to prevent and stop heat in its tracks.
“You want me to pee on a stick now, don’t you?” he sighed.
“We’ll wait until after our friends go home,” I said.
“Are you mad at me?” he whispered.
“No. Either way, no, sweetheart, I’m not mad. What you did before you knew is only my business in so as far as it affects your health now. If you got it from every guy on that app you love so much, good for you. Get yours!”
He chuckled and chanced a glance at my face.
“You smell like you actually mean that.”
“You’re making me regret it, though. When you look at me like that half of me wants to kick the ass of every alpha who might’ve made you feel bad about wanting to get laid and the other half of me wants to fuck you until you don’t remember anyone else ever knotting you.”
“Some people say violence is never the answer. So, I guess we’re stuck with the latter,” he laughed, a blush spread over his face. “Though, that’s gonna be a lot of romping. We’re really gonna have to clear our schedule and hide away better than we have so far. First my sister and then the baby found us. I’m glad no one’s hunting us for sport. We’d be dead.”
“No,” I said, brushing a stray lock of hair out of his face and meeting his gaze, “they’d be a block of frozen flesh. Not all ice melts and comes back to life.”
“You’re giving me chills,” he whispered, leaving his lips parted and inches away from mine when he finished speaking.
I glanced down the beach to where we left the others. Liatris and Selt had taken the baby into the waves. I glanced around in every direction before I stole a kiss. This wasn’t the most family friendly beach in the world, but Selatris had proven that kids are slippery little boogers and ended up in the last places you expected them to be.
At first, I kissed him softly, but as soon as my tongue found his it wasn’t enough. My hands slid from his back to cup the round, full globes of his ass. He groaned against my lips and everything inside me came to life. I wanted to drag him back up to the Scale B&B house but that would draw too much attention. Kissing him and holding onto his ass would have to be enough for now.
“I know a spot that’s not the house,” Sequin whispered between kisses. “It’s technically a place they set aside for an emergency storm shelter if you’re caught out and about by a sudden weather change but it’s sunny and that means it’s empty. They’ll know they can hang around, right?” he glanced back down the beach at our friends.
“I think they’ll figure out what we ran off to do. They know their way back to the house if they want to stick around and wait for us. The fridge is full after all,” I said.
“Come on,” he said, stealing one more kiss before tugging me off across the sand.