Aaron #2
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 I can’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’t sure 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.
Her nose twitches, reading the salt in the air, and her face crumples sweet. “Ohhh,” she breathes, half a laugh in it, “these are happy tears.”
I take her face in both my hands and bring my mouth down on hers. She opens under me with a small broken sound. Her tail goes loose, drops flat to the floor, all that lioness fight gone soft under my mouth, and her knees start to go the second I lick into her.
I catch her up against me and don’t stop. The kiss goes deep, slow until I can’t stand it anymore, and I drink down every sound she makes. She clutches the front of my shirt just to keep her feet, and when she finally tears her mouth off mine she’s gasping, wrecked.
“Aaron...” she manages, breathless, but I’m already dragging my mouth down to her claim mark, and she shudders so hard her words fall apart. I bend and scoop her up. She yelps and throws her arms around my neck. I lay her down on her back in the middle of the bed.
Before I climb up after her, I catch the new dress crushed under where we landed. I want it somewhere safe, and that’s all it takes now. The dress slides out from under her and lifts off the bed on nothing, drifts to the chair against the wall, and settles folded careful over the back.
Mara’s head whips around to follow it, her eyes huge. She hasn’t seen me reach for magic like this since the Glen. “How did you...” she starts. I look back down at her and grin, and the rest of what she’s wearing vanishes the same way, leaving her bare and stunned under me.
“I’m the happiest man alive right now, Mara,” I tell her.
My own clothes go with the next thought, gone the second I want them gone. I climb onto the bed and brace myself over her. For the first time in a month, there’s nothing in my head but her.