Ginger
“I mean, if you’re going to pass out, I suppose a hospital cafeteria is as good a place as any.” Glumly I stared at the vials of blood being taken from me. “But I’ll be honest. I’m seriously wishing I’d done this in the comfort of my own home so no one would have freaked out and carted me off to the ER.”
“Mm-hm.”
“I feel fine now. Really.”
“Mm-hm.” The tech wrote something on the vials, then went to fill another vial with my blood. Oh my God, more ?
“Just out of curiosity, is this really necessary? Because I’m feeling it’s not necessary.”
“We hear that a lot.” A sturdy-looking nurse of Asian descent, wearing navy blue scrubs and a no-nonsense attitude joined the vampire tech in my curtained-off cubicle in the ER’s Triage room. “We have to find out why you fainted.”
“I still can’t believe I fainted.” Carefully I felt around the loose bandage that had been placed on a goose egg above my left eyebrow. “I can’t even figure out what I hit my head on when I fainted. Maybe the coffee bar counter? Or maybe the wall? Ugh, this is so stupid, I don’t have time for this.”
“Too bad, that’s how it is when you faint in front of a bunch of Chicago’s finest medical personnel.” Clearly unbothered, the nurse reached for my wrist to take my pulse. “You have to understand, they see it as a challenge—who can figure out what your problem is first, and all that. They’re not going to let you go until you’ve been checked out in every possible way.”
“I could just walk out of here if I wanted to, though, right? Not that Tyr would let me do that… Oh, God. Tyr .” I gasped and yanked my wrist from the nurse’s hold. “Quick, tell me who is the most badass female nurse you have on the floor right now.”
She blinked. “I suppose that would be me.”
“Don’t suppose. I need a woman who has looked the meanest, most impossible patient in the eye and told them to stop screwing around and settle the hell down. Is that you, uh… Avis?” I asked, glancing at the ID hanging around her neck.
She drew herself up. “That’s me on a day ending in Y. Why are you asking?”
“Because I just texted my man that I’m down here in the ER, and I just realized he’s going to come tearing through here looking for me like a madman. He’s the leader of a biker gang, about six and a half feet tall and he’s chronically deaf when it comes to the word no, unless you’re a strong-willed woman who can plant yourself in his path, look him dead in the eye, and tell him to mind his damn manners. Can you do that, Avis?”
“Honey, I’m a nurse. You just sit back and watch how a pro handles tough guys around here.”
“His name is Tyr Colgrave, and he looks like a Viking, but he knows his place around strong women, because I trained him right,” I called after her. “You got this, Avis.”
Wide-eyed, the blood tech gathered up his things and took to his heels.
Smart man.
No less than two minutes later Avis, as calm as a spring breeze, came in through the curtain with Tyr nipping at her heels, looking highly freaked out but also strangely chastened, with his hands folded tightly together in front of him.
“Here is your Prince Charming, Miss Ginger. He’s going to use his indoor voice the entire time he’s back here in Triage, because yelling like a five-year-old to get what he wants is going to get him kicked out. Right, Mr. Colgrave?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Very good. By the way, honey,” Avis added, tipping me a wink on her way out, “you were right. You did train him well.”
“Told you,” I said pertly, then beamed at Tyr as we were left alone. “Um. Hi. Quite a surprise, this.”
“Are you okay?” Not at all inclined to return my smile, he surged up to the side of my gurney and carefully touched the bandage on my forehead. “What happened? Did someone roll up on you? Who did this? Did you recognize them?”
“Tyr, stop,” I finally broke in when he took a breath. “No one rolled up on me, okay? Calm down.”
“Woman, do not tell me to calm down when I am perfectly calm.”
Right. “Then how come you have murder in your eyes?”
“I just want to know who did this to you.”
“No one. If anything, I guess you could say that I did this to myself.”
He scowled. “What are you talking about?”
“I fainted,” I admitted sheepishly. Some badass biker chick I was. “I was getting us coffees at this cute little coffee bar set up in the cafeteria, just like I said I was going to do. Then someone walked by with a tray of food that smelled so utterly disgusting I got hit with a wave of nausea. Then I got dizzy, and then—lights out.” Seriously, this was so embarrassing I could hardly look him in the eye. “I must’ve hit my head on the coffee bar’s counter on my way down, but the doc who initially examined me doesn’t think I have a concussion. I’m just so sorry about this.”
“Baby girl, don’t be sorry.” Like magic, the murder in his expression turned to crushing concern as he moved in for a careful kiss, as if he feared I might shatter. “You just need to take it easy while they figure out what’s going on with you.”
“I’m hopeful that we’ve done just that.” The smallish, bespectacled doctor who had initially examined me when I first arrived in the ER appeared through the curtain with a beaming Avis by his side. “We still have a few more tests to run, Ms. Sisko, but for now you’re testing positive for pregnancy.”
I gasped, and the room went swirly like it had in the cafeteria. And then…
“…don’t understand, why does she keep doing this? I’ve known her since she was five, she’s never fainted before in her life. Is there something wrong with her? Or the baby. Oh my God, is the baby okay?”
Yeah. Tyr was going to be all sorts of fun for the next nine months.
“Mr. Colgrave, in all probability Ms. Sisko is just dehydrated, so we’ll get her on an IV to top off her tanks before sending her home. Basically her body is doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing—shunting all available resources toward the creation of a new human being.”
“Or human beings.” I opened my eyes and stared up at a seriously freaked-out Tyr. “Hi again.”
“Hi.”
Oh boy. His voice shook.
Gamely, I tried to smile. “There’s something I should probably tell you at this point, baby. Audrey was actually a twin, but her mother miscarried one of the fetuses. And Audrey’s mother was part of a triplet set, and a few generations before that, there was another multiple birth, though I can’t remember what it was. But since I was a single birth, that chain’s been broken, right? And since I’m older, I would think the chances of a multiple birth would go down.”
“You’d think so, but the opposite is actually true.” The doctor closed in on the other side of the gurney and picked up my wrist to check my pulse. “The older an expectant mother is, the higher chance there is for a multiple birth.”
Good grief, I almost fainted again. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. More to the point, if you come from a line where you’re genetically predisposed to such rarities, your chances of a multiple birth grow exponentially. So, I think at this point it would be smart to bring in our multiple-birth OB/GYN specialist to consult with the two of you before we discharge you, just to be on the safe side.”
“Definitely,” Tyr said at once, squeezing my hand so hard it was a wonder my fingers didn’t pop off and shoot across the room. “The safe side is where we want to be.”
“Excellent,” the doctor nodded and grabbed up his phone to thumb-type furiously, no doubt calling in the specialist. “We’re also going to get you started on prenatal vitamins right away, as your body is clearly telling us it now needs all the support it can get. Better safe than sorry.”
“Congratulations, you two,” Avis smiled before scooting off to get the IV.
An hour later, the IV bag was flat, the prenatal horse pills were down my gullet without choking me to death, and the OB/GYN specialist had come and gone, with a scheduled office visit two weeks from now already locked into my phone. A little bottle of orange juice was on a bedside tray table while Tyr got to drink coffee. No more caffeine for me, at least for the next nine months, but that was cool. Any sacrifice at this point was no sacrifice at all.
“How are you feeling, Snap?” He hadn’t let go of my hand throughout much of the time we were there, though thankfully the freaked-out look had slowly melted away while an expression of stunned amazement took its place. I had no doubt I looked the same way. A baby. An actual baby. It had been an abstract concept before, but now it was real, and all at once the excitement and anticipation of bringing our little one into the world and starting our family was so dazzling I couldn’t stop smiling.
“I feel like I could fly.” I just couldn’t stop beaming as I turned to him, dangling my legs off the side of the gurney while we waited for my discharge papers. “We did it, Tyr. We made a baby.”
“We made a family.” He set aside his drink to frame my face in his hands, and tenderly guided my lips to his. “What do you say we go ahead and make it even more official and get married?”
I caught my breath, shocked. Hopefully I wouldn’t screw up this perfect moment by fainting again. “Married?”
“Yeah. A quick civil ceremony or a hugely extravagant affair fit for a warrior goddess, you decide. I’m good with whatever.”
“But… people from our world don’t usually get married.”
“I know my parents weren’t married, and neither were Audrey and Hades. But Romeo and Shy are married. Misty and Lasso are married. Same with Zee and Ana-Sofia. Come on, say yes. You’ve already got my baby—or babies—so take my name. Take me as your husband, to have and to hold for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. Say yes, Snap.”
“Yes,” I whispered, while my eyes stung with all the burgeoning joy in my heart. “Yes, I’ll marry you, Tyr. But let’s make it a quick civil ceremony, if that’s okay. We’ve got a ton of things to do now that we’re pregnant.”
He blinked. “Like what?”
“Like, I don’t know… Get a house, maybe? All I’ve got is the loft. You’ve got your cinderblock bunker in the Gravedigger compound. Neither place has walls. Shouldn’t a kid have their own room? Shouldn’t we have our own room so we can have the privacy to make more babies? I wouldn’t know, I’ve never done this before.”
“Marriage first,” he determined with a resolute nod of his head. “Then a new house. Trust me, Snap, Come hell or high water, I’m going to find our new little family the home of our dreams.”
*
Six months later
“Three heartbeats. Three babies. Three boys. And no house.” As Tyr and I sat together at the kitchen island, I stared at the listings on my laptop in growing despair. “I’m beginning to think this is hopeless. But hey, the loft is fine, right? Five people, no bedrooms, one and a half baths. It’ll be fine, yeah? What could go wrong?”
It had been a wild ride since I conked my noggin in the hospital cafeteria. Creating brand-new humans was a big deal, and it took a ridiculous amount of my energy as I’d worked on redoing the interior of Vixen’s Den with Roxie’s invaluable help. Somewhere in there, Tyr and I had also exchanged vows in the County courthouse, with all my girlies, his brother Loki, and all the Gravedigger officers in attendance. Come to find out, the judge who officiated our civil ceremony recognized Ashtray as someone he’d sentenced to three months in jail for a bar fight he’d had several years ago, and they hit it off like two old high school buddies. Loki brought his entire family, and his kids—Cyrus, Alexander and Catherine—were as rambunctious as any ten children under the age of six. My favorite photo of our ceremony was the moment Tyr and I sealed our union with a kiss, with Roxie, Misty, Shiloh and Mabel beaming, Loki clapping and Romeo and Ashtray cheering, and Loki’s boys playing chase while Loki’s wife Alice tried to catch the boys in the foreground. It was a moment of pure chaos, so naturally I had it blown up as large as possible and had it framed.
Now I just needed a freaking wall to hang it on.
“Snap, listen to me.” Taking my hand, Tyr pressed a kiss first to my knuckles, then the cup of my palm. “I don’t want you to stress about this, all right? Remember what the doctor said—at this point, the most important thing for you to do is avoid huge mood swings and upheaval, especially stress.”
“See, that’s why I wanted to have us moved by now. The third trimester is supposed to be the most difficult for multiple pregnancies, so stress was one thing I was trying to avoid.”
“Okay.” With the air of a man determined to just get shit done no matter what, Tyr turned to my laptop, read a few listings, then clicked on one. “What about this one? Central location and it’s a good price, well within our budget.”
“I liked that one, too,” I said, smiling. It was good that our tastes were so similar. “It’s on the eastside approach to O’Hare. Go on Reddit and you’ll find it’s the noisiest neighborhood in Chicago. Also, I don’t like being that close to where the old Chicago Gravediggers used to be.”
“Department of Chicago Aviation bought up all that land from Red Flag to make it into airplane hangars and possible expansion for O’Hare. Rooster Juice, the Chicago Gravedigger hangout, the Rumpus Room… all of it is gone now, baby girl. Done and dusted.”
Not in my mind. “The noise level is something I’d like to avoid, though, so maybe another neighborhood?”
“How about this?” He clicked on one, and another familiar listing popped up. Seriously, I loved being so in sync with my man. “Check it out, it’s got four bedrooms, two baths—we could always look into installing a third bathroom as the boys get bigger—and it’s built on a half-acre lot. And it’s in Hyde Park, which is where Loki lives, so he and Alice would only be a shout-out away.”
“My biological father moved to Hyde Park about three years ago. I’ve made sure I know where that asshole lives, so I never run into him on accident,” I added when he looked to me with raised brows. “After all, that bastard did warn me to stay the hell away from him or he’d call the cops on me, and since he called me a mistake to my face literally minutes after I told him my mother was dead, I never want to see that guy again.”
“So we’re just never going to go to Hyde Park?”
“We can visit Loki and Alice, sure. But I’d never stop to get gas there or go into a neighborhood grocery store on the off-chance I’d run into Brody McSwain. He’d call the cops on me in an instant, pissy little bitch that he is.”
“Brody McSwain.” Tyr’s upper lip curled. “Fucking guy even has a douchey name.”
“Yeah, so Hyde Park is a no-go for me.” I yawned suddenly, then rolled my eyes. Ever since I got pregnant, it was insane how often I just straight-up fell asleep wherever I was. When I’d literally fallen asleep at the kitchen island while chopping vegetables for dinner, Tyr made me promise to get horizontal whenever I felt the need. “Babe, I think it’s naptime. I’m sorry, but can we talk about this later? I’m sure there’s a house out there that’s big enough, has the right amount of bathrooms, is in a good neighborhood with the right schools, and in our price range, but right now I can barely keep my eyes open.”
“Sleep is good, stressing is bad. You can’t stress when you sleep, so I’m all for you napping.” He got to his feet, then took my hands to help me slide off my stool. My baby bump—which was seriously impressive even at just six months—brushed his torso as he leaned down to kiss me. “I’ll keep looking while you snooze. Don’t worry, Snap, I’ve got this.”
My man always had it, I thought with a smile as I carefully headed up the stairs. As I did, Tyr’s voice drifted to me.
“Hey, Loki. You busy?”
*