Epilogue
Time had a way of moving strangely for us dragons. With lifespans of a thousand years or so, a single year often felt like barely a blip. But then I bonded with my mates, and I had a baby, and it all seemed to slow down enough for me to treasure the time.
Because, yeah, it was strange that our young developed at the same pace as humans.
I hadn’t really given it a lot of thought until Sunny came along, but then it was all I could think about.
His time as a baby would be so short, and he would be a fully grown adult before I could even blink.
And yet, I felt like I had the time to enjoy it —him— properly despite that.
Even so, he had grown like a weed. At nine months old, he was crawling like a pro, getting into all kinds of mischief the moment Serge, Dex, or I took our eyes off him.
Case in point; I had barely sat down on Ollie’s couch before I heard one of the twins say, “No, Sunny, this game is for big kids.”
I groaned and closed my eyes. “This. This is why you and Beck stuck to just the twins, right?” I slowly turned my head to grimace at Oliver. “He’s awesome, but exhausting.”
Ollie chuckled and got up, patting my shoulder as he made his way around the couch to rescue his kids from mine.
“Yeah, the exhaustion was definitely a big part of it,” he acknowledged, his voice sounding distant the further down the hallway he got. But he returned only a handful of seconds later, bouncing Sunny on his hip.
My son grinned unrepentantly, the dimples that echoed Serge’s making my heart squeeze the way they always did.
“Maaaaa!” he made grabby hands my way, as though he hadn’t just made his grand escape from my side mere minutes earlier, and I snorted.
“Papa,” I corrected him, taking him from Ollie with a grunt.
He was a solid kid, and every time I lifted him, I swore he weighed more and more.
‘A healthy alpha dragon,’ Dex would always say, probably the proudest parent of all three of us.
Of course, Dex was also the reason our son called me ‘Ma’ instead of ‘Papa’, which did not amuse me as much…and that only made him find it all the funnier. Typical Dex, really.
"Anyway," Ollie sat on the armchair kitty-corner to my seat on the couch and tickled Sunny's rounded belly, beaming when my boy squealed and squirmed in my hold, "I'm still looking forward to experiencing this again. It's worth the exhaustion. And there's no turning back now, anyway."
I felt my eyebrows climbing higher as a grin stretched my face, understanding dawning over me. "Get out. Are you—?"
Biting his lip, he nodded, brushing his palm over his stomach. "Eric confirmed it yesterday."
"That's awesome!" I cheered, bending forward to squeeze his knee. "Congratulations!" My smile turned into a smirk. "How's Beck handling the news?"
"I mean, we planned for it this time," Ollie's fingers danced over Sunny's tummy again, his eyes shining with delight, "but he's still a little stunned, I think."
I'd barely crossed paths with our pack Alpha on his way out the door for the monthly pack run, but he had seemed a bit frazzled. This explained it. "But he's happy, right?"
Sergio, Dex, and I had started to talk about expanding our own family some more, and I knew that both my mates would be ecstatic if I got pregnant again, but there were three of us and only one baby to manage amongst us.
Even though the twins weren't little terrors anymore, they were still a handful —inquisitive, energetic, sometimes destructive— and I could see why Beckett had been afraid to rock the status quo.
"He is," Oliver's green gaze softened and turned distant.
"We talked a lot about whether we really wanted another baby before I stopped taking the pill.
" Still holding Sunny around his waist, I freed a hand to run my fingers through the soft curls on top of my son's head while I listened intently. "It was his idea, y'know?"
Sunny kicked his chubby legs and babbled while I smiled gently back at Ollie. "And you thought he was only suggesting it because he knew it would make you happy?"
"At first, yeah. But Beck's always been honest with me —even when he's been freaking out or known that I might disagree with him— so I believe him when he says he's ready.
That he wants this. It's just..." Letting out a breath, Ollie shook his head ruefully.
"I don't know. The twins are probably going to start shifting soon, and the anti-shifter sentiment is picking up in the cities, plus all the European packs keep reaching out for advice now that they've started to tap into The Magic overseas, not to mention the mess happening in all the packs here.
What if" —he licked his lips, his Adam's apple bobbing roughly— "What if this was the wrong time? "
I thought about Brandt and Micah and the five toddlers they were happily wrangling, and about Brandt's unapologetic admission that he wanted to try again while he was still in his prime, even though dragons usually spaced their kids out by centuries. Then I thought about Damon, who knew without a doubt he didn't want to have more kids, and about the various couples in town who visited Sergio because they were struggling to conceive at all. (And Micah’s dawning horror when he’d considered how Sergio had ‘helped’ his parents conceive, though Sergio assured us all that he would only be offering tonics and rituals going forward.)
"You can't let whatever is happening out there" —I waved towards the window vaguely— "prevent you from living your life. From being happy."
"But—"
"Would you question anyone else in the pack for wanting more kids right now? Or for not wanting them at all, even?"
He frowned. "What? No. Of course not. But their mates aren't the Alpha. They don't have the same responsibilities."
"If I've learned anything over the past years since my brother dragged you and Beck out here, I'd say it's that we all share those responsibilities as a whole.
As a pack." Saying the words out loud settled something inside me every single time.
I'd realized that it was a similar sensation to when Serge spoke about The Magic guiding him.
It only enforced my conviction that we were on the right path.
"Yes, Beck is our Alpha, but he set up the council to share the weight of that role.
And, in turn, the pack works to keep the council supported, too.
This is how The Magic wants it to be. This is why Morstein's hold on shifterkind here in America is slipping; because other packs are starting to see it, too. "
In fact, over the course of the past six months or so, there had been a noticeable change in the shifter political atmosphere in general.
Packs which had been notoriously devout Moonmusic supporters were reaching out via phone, email, and even social media, genuinely wanting to know how Shifters Sanctuary was making things work.
Our pack was also living up to its name, with a handful of omegas and betas seeking sanctuary from their Moonmusic-based packs, the most recent of whom was a weasel shifter who had arrived only a week earlier.
He was a beta named Weston, and his arrival had caused a stir, mostly because he had come directly from Moonmusic’s home pack, and neither Beckett or Rex (or even Dexter) wanted to trust the weasel shifter for that reason.
Still, his pleas had seemed genuine enough, so the pack had taken him in with the rest of the asylum-seeking shifters searching for a better life.
Anyway, all of this seemed to be a direct reaction of word spreading that alphas were returning to Europe, and even spontaneously in other places around the world. Not in droves, at least not yet, but enough that people had noticed.
This was part of ‘the mess’ Ollie had just referenced, I guessed.
Ollie’s attention shifted back to Sunny and when his lips curled upwards, the expression was less strained.
“You’re right,” he said, toying with my baby’s socked foot, “we can’t just stall while we wait for things to get better or worse.
I’m just…anxious, I guess. More than I was when I got pregnant with the twins which, y’know, seems weird considering how everything was up in the air back then, but I can’t help it. ”
Shrugging, I drew on the confidence I felt anytime I thought about my mates, and about the life we had settled into as a family.
“Honestly, the world is starting to change at a faster pace,” I said, repeating parts of a conversation I’d had with Sergio only recently.
“What that means for us in Shifters Sanctuary is anyone’s guess, but whatever happens, I know one thing.
” I met his gaze solemnly. “We will face the changes together. As pack. As family. Because that’s what we do here.
And you and Beckett have set the tone for that. You know that, right?”
“And if it weren’t for you and your brothers, we wouldn’t have any of this.
Beck would have been taken and…” Ollie’s voice turned thick and choked, and he blinked back tears.
“Stupid hormones,” he complained with a watery laugh, before clearing his throat and giving his head a shake.
“You’re right. We’re a pack. Family through magic and experience.
You’ve built this place as much as we have.
I mean, hell, your alpha brought us the magic to really expand and rebuild shifterkind. That’s huge, Sage.”
Honestly, we could have gone around in circles on the topic, but it sounded like we had made it to the same page, so I nodded.
“It is. A lot of change in such a small amount of time, really. But it just proves we’ve got each other’s backs.
All of us here. So don’t feel guilty that you and Beckett are taking some personal time away from pack business.
Revel in your pregnancy. Celebrate it. Be happy.
We’re all going to be happy for you, too. ”
He swallowed again, eyes still moist. “Thanks, Sage.”