86. The Size of A Well-Fed Badger
the size of a well-fed badger
Two weeks later—
“Winnie made a few things for Vaelína,” Lucifer murmurs. “Tiny, soft velvets worthy of notre petite princesse.”
I look up from where I’m resting in the massive nest in the living room. A smile spreads across my face as he steps inside. He’s carrying a small basket lined with tissue paper, his pale eyes softening as they drift to the swell of my stomach. Ashán’s shadow shifts protectively beside me.
“She’s been sewing for days,” Lucifer continues, his voice warm with adoration. He lifts a tiny pink velvet gown from the basket. It’s so small in his grasp that it looks like it would fit a mouse.
I slap Sage and Ashán in the chest. “Looooook! Look how teeny!”
Sage pinches the sleeve between two careful fingers.
“... She’s supposed to fit inside this?”
Lucifer smiles. “Eventually.”
“You mean she’s going to be smaller than this?” Ash panics.
Lucifer’s smile widens. “Quite a bit.”
Ash slowly turns to look at my stomach.
Sage reaches into the basket and pulls out an impossibly tiny sock.
Ash stares. “... That’s fake.”
“It’s a sock,” I giggle.
“...For what?”
Lucifer chuckles. “Just what size did you imagine she’d be?”
Ash swallows hard. “I thought…” he rumbles, his shadows trembling around my belly. “Well, I knew she’d be tiny. But seeing those clothes…” he shakes his head. “It’s a whole different experience. I was hoping for at least the size of a well-fed badger.”
Sage studies the sock with growing concern. “How are we supposed to hold her without breaking her leaves?”
Lucifer lets out another low chuckle. He folds his hands neatly over his chest, watching the two monsters he was once terrified of losing their mind over a piece of pink velvet.
“You will manage, my friends,” Lucifer murmurs, his pale eyes twinkling. “Though I do suggest you begin practicing a lighter touch. Winnie has started on a matching bonnet, and I assure you, it is even more… microscopic.”
“What is a bonnet?” Genuine terror spreads across their face.
Droot hops over without a care in the world. He plucks up the tiny sock from Sage’s fingers and casually slips it over his own head.
I burst into laughter. “You can practice dressing Droot.”
Lucifer watches Droot proudly wearing the sock as a hat, then glances back at Ash and Sage, who are still staring at him like a deer in headlights.
A fond smile tugs at his lips. “Que les dieux les aident.”
“Absolutely not, Jean-Pierre,” Ashán barks. “Don’t pull your French shá now.”
Lucifer smiles innocently. “It was a blessing.”
Ashán narrows his eyes. “... Was it?”
“Mostly.”
I bury my face in my hands, my shoulders shaking as my laughter echoes through the living room. Vaelína gives a tiny wiggle as if she’s dancing along to the sheer absurdity of her fathers and uncle.
“Don’t believe him for a second, Rahnové.” I manage to choke out, looking up through my fingers. “He’s absolutely making fun of you.”
“I knew it,” Sage mutters.
“I assure you, mes chers frères, my sympathy is absolute,” Lucifer says smoothly, though the elegant tilt of his head suggests quite the opposite.
He reaches down, using one finger to gently adjust the tiny pink sock on Droot’s head.
Droot lets out a proud chirp, puffing out his little chest. “But watching two ancient beings become paralyzed by a handful of yarn is a poetry I could not have anticipated when we first met.”
“You’re getting awfully comfortable, aren’t you, Jean-Claude Van Damme?” Ashán hums.
Lucifer doesn’t so much as blink. “Mon cher… c’est un Belge, pas un Francais.”
“Did you just switch languages halfway through correcting me?”
“I felt it was appropriate.”
“How do you know so much about babies, anyway?” Sage asks.
Lucifer’s expression changes. He looks down at the tiny velvet gowns in the basket, carefully smoothing one thumb over the sleeve.
“I spent a very long time believing I would need to know someday.”
I glare at Sage and Ashán.
“I’m sorry, Lucifer.”
“Don’t be.” He glances at my belly. “It seems I simply had to wait for the right little girl.”
My chest aches. I want to hug him. I can feel grief, old and new, twisting through his heart. But I know better. For all their healing, they still can’t bear the touch of anyone but their mate. “She is going to be incredibly lucky to have you.”
He looks up from the basket, the melancholy in his eyes giving way to warmth.
“The luck is mine, ma chère,” he murmurs. “Now, if you will excuse me, I must return to Winnie before she decides to knit an entire wardrobe.”
With one last incline of his head, he turns and glides from the room.
None of us says anything for a long moment.
Ash watches the doorway long after Lucifer disappears. “He would have been a wonderful father.”
I rest my hand over my stomach. “Who knows,” I murmur. “Something tells me there’s still a chance.”
Ashán extends a single skelva toward the edge of the tissue paper.
“What are you doing?” I ask, an amused smile tugging at my lips.
“Practicing,” he rasps, his gaze fixed on the tiny pink sock Droot left on the cushion. He pinches the tiny scrap of fabric between the tips of his bony fingers. He looks so terrified of tearing it that a bead of sweat forms at his temple.
“Left side, Ash. Your claws are sharper on the right,” Sage points out. “Ease the pressure. You are handling a nestling’s sock, not anchoring a boulder.”
“I am easing it,” Ashán growls under his breath. “The yarn is… defying me.”
“You guys are ridiculous,” I giggle, wincing as Vaelína rolls against my ribs. My lower back aches. The size of my stomach makes it impossible to find a comfortable position for more than a few minutes at a time.
Instantly, the sock is abandoned. Their focus snaps to my face. The lashing shadows morph into a warm, undulating blanket of pure comfort. Ashán and Sage slide their hands beneath my hips, lifting me an inch off the cushions to ease the pressure on my spine.
I let out a long sigh. “Ohhh, God. Don’t move. Stay exactly like that for the next month and a half.”
“If you keep talking like that,” Ash murmurs, burying his face into the crook of my neck, “there’s going to be a lot of movement in this nest real soon.”
A helpless laugh escapes me.
“You’re terrible,” I whisper, though I arch into his touch, my fingers tangling in the thick smoky strands of his hair.
His fangs trace over my skin.
“Sage—”
“Do not look at me to restrain him, ílyara.” Sage’s vines creep higher along the edge of the cushions, white blossoms bursting open in a wave of sweet, intoxicating fragrance.
“My roots long to be tangled deep in your soil. If the reaper wants to worship our little human, I will gladly hold you steady.”
“Oh, so it’s a conspiracy now,” I rasp. “Has it gotten hotter in here?”
Ashán lets out a low growl. “The fire in your blood calls to ours, ash’kaela.”
Sage’s vines tighten their grip, the blossoms along my ankles dripping a thick, sticky nectar.
“I am heavily pregnant, Ashán,” I breathe out, my fingers tightening in his hair as his tongue sweeps along my jawline.
“We know,” he growls, tilting his hips so I can feel how hard he is. “If it were up to me, you’d be much fuller.”
Droot lets out a deeply offended chirp and hops out of the living room.
“Are you two for real right now?”
“If I recall correctly.” Sage gives a lazy thrust, “one of us was begging last night, after four intense orgasms.”
“Any guesses who that was, ash’kaela?”
A blush rises up my neck. I squeeze my eyes shut, burying my face into my hands.
“That was a medical necessity,” I mumble. “The baby was pressing on a nerve. You both agreed it was… therapeutic.”
Ashán lets out a bark of laughter, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. “Therapeutic? Is that what we’re calling it now? I don’t remember a doctor prescribing the way you wrapped your legs around my waist, mí’maru.”
“Nor the way you sobbed our names into the dark when we stretched you open.” Sage chimes in, his voice laced with wicked satisfaction. “We were merely dedicated to your wellness, Saevúra. We are very thorough healers.”
“You are monsters,” I wheeze.
“We are your monsters,” they correct, “and until our nestling is ready to meet the world, you are our captive. And we will soothe every single ache you have,” they promise. “Starting right now.”