Out of Smoke and Ashes

  Zack leaned in. “Meaning Lina’s on the bottle again, too.”

  She playfully smacked him on the arm. “I only had one beer last night. Holy crudzola, you make me sound like a lush.”

  Elain unbuckled George from his car seat and stepped out of the way with him in her arms so Lina could get Luke. She carefully stepped down and out of the RV.

  As she turned, she spotted Mai coming out of the house with BettLynn nestled in her arms.

  Suddenly, George began kicking and screaming, squirming as if trying to get free.

  “What’s going on?” Elain asked as she tried to keep her grip on the writhing boy.”

  Jan frowned and walked over to take him from her. “I don’t know. He’s never acted like that before.” But the baby continued doing that for his father, too. As Mai approached, it appeared George wanted to get closer to her.

  Elain frowned. “Hold on.” She took the baby back from Jan and walked over to Mai with him.

  George reached out to touch BettLynn and began smiling and happily cooing.

  For her part, BettLynn seemed happy to see the little boy, too. She widely grinned at him, taking his hand and pulling it into her mouth to gum, which made the boy laugh.

  As soon as Lina emerged from the minivan with Luke, he began doing the same thing his brother did until they took him over to BettLynn.

  “Huh,” Lina said as the little girl gummed both boys’ hands. “That’s odd.”

  Mai, who was now flanked by Micah and Jim, looked puzzled. “It’s like as soon as they saw her, they wanted to be with her.” She met Elain’s gaze. “What do you think?”

  “Dam—darned if I know,” she muttered, mindful of her language around the babies. “Odd.”

  “Do you…you know…feel anything?” Mai asked.

  She shrugged. “They all seem perfectly happy, but beyond that, no.”

  They went inside and the women put the babies down on a bedspread Elain had freshly washed and laid out on top of a thick, soft area rug in the living room. They put BettLynn into her special reclining baby seat on the bedspread and set the two boys down on their backs.

  Both boys immediately began trying to roll onto their tummies, Luke managing it first. Then he crawled over to BettLynn, only relaxing once he had hold of one of her feet, the only part of her he could reach. His brother took a little longer, but was also soon happily gazing up at the little girl, who’d started falling asleep.

  The adults stood around them, staring.

  “Um, wow,” Lina said.

  “Wow is right,” Zack agreed. “That’s the first time they’ve ever rolled over, much less crawled.”

  “You don’t think they’ll try teething on her feet, do you?” Rick asked, his tone only half joking.

  Lina glared at him. “No, I don’t think that. They haven’t bitten anyone in a couple of weeks.”

  Elain had a glimmer of a notion. “Hey, pick them up and move them again. Put the boys at the other end of the bedspread.”

  Both boys noisily protested the forced separation from their new friend. As they had before, they both rolled over onto their stomachs, faster this time, and crawled over to BettLynn, happy only once they each had a foot in their hands.

  Rick looked at Elain. “What does this mean?”

  She slowly shook her head. “I have no fu—fecking clue.” She in turn looked at her mom. “How old was I when I started rolling over and crawling?”

  “Ahead of schedule, according to your pediatrician, but a lot older than that,” Carla confirmed. “And you were a full shifter baby.”

  “I mean,” Kael said, “yeah, dragon babies, like other shifters, develop faster than full human babies. But that…” He drifted off.

  Everyone stared at the three babies. Now the boys had started dozing off.

  “Do you think it’s okay to leave them there like that?” Mai nervously asked. “I’d hate for the boys to crawl off.”

  Ain snorted. “I think a bigger concern is how the hel—heck you all are going to separate them later without them screaming your ears off.” He draped an arm over Elain’s shoulders. She snuggled against him. In his soul she felt wistful yearning, loving envy over his friends’ children, and hopefulness.

  Elain used their silent mate connection to speak with him without anyone else, not even Brodey or Cail, hearing. “We need to go talk.”

  He frowned, but nodded and they headed to the back porch.

  “I…have a confession to make,” she whispered once they were alone by the pool.

  “What?”

  She took a deep breath. “I went off the pill and didn’t tell you.”

  Now his frown darkened. “What?”

  She couldn’t meet his gaze any longer. She looked down at her feet. “I’m sorry.”

  She flinched when she felt him gently take her chin and tip her face up to his. “How long ago?”

  She shrugged. “Before the wedding.”

  He sighed. “Elain, I promised you six months.”

  “It’s been six months. More or less. Almost. Besides, it was my choice, not yours.”

  “Exactly. It was a decision you should have clued us in on. I told you, I’m a man of my word, and it wasn’t fair of you to unilaterally make that decision for me—for us—without talking to us first.” He went silent for a moment. “Are you pregnant?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure I’m not.”

  “Is this really that important to you?”

  “I know it’s important to you, and Brod and Cail.”

  “That wasn’t my question,” he quietly said.

  “I thought it was important to me. I mean, it is important to me. Yes, I do want at least one child. But then all the shit hit the fan with Abernathy and everything and…” She shrugged. “Now I’m thinking maybe it’s not such a great idea. We still have to deal with the cockatrice, and three babies in the family are going to make us vulnerable enough.”

  He took her hands in his. “Tell me what you want to do.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. Part of me says it’s the worst possible time for a baby, and part of me says maybe there never will be a better time and I need to stop worrying and just let nature take its course.”

  Brodey stuck his head out the sliding glass doors. “Everything okay?”

  Ain tipped his head, indicating for him to come out. “Get Cail,” he said.

  “Roger.”

  The two men quickly joined them. Worry filled Cail’s brown gaze. “What’s up?”

  “My question exactly,” Brodey said. “This looks serious, you two.”

  Ain stared down at her. “Tell them what you did.”

  Heat filled her face. She couldn’t look either of them in the eye. “I went off the pill before the wedding without telling any of you.”

  Their silence was deafening. She finally found the courage to look at their faces. Both men wore concerned expressions equal to Ain’s.

  “Are you pregnant?” Cail asked.

  She shook her head.

  Brodey ran a hand through his hair. “What do you want me to say? That I’m upset? No, I’m not, but I am disappointed, babe. I’m not going to lie.”

  Anger she could handle.

  She didn’t want to disappoint them. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “Why didn’t you talk to us?” Cail asked. “Why not tell us?”

  She shrugged. Falling back on the “trust her instincts” mantra felt kind of silly now when faced by the disheartened looks on the faces of her men.

  Ain crossed his arms over his chest. “I thought,” he quietly said, “that I’d made it clear you could talk to me—to us—about anything. What did we do to lose your trust?”

  All she could do was stare at him and blink, shocked by that statement. When she finally found her voice, she said, “No, it’s not that. It’s not that at all. It wasn’t you.”

  “Then what was it?”

  ??
?I don’t know!” She hugged herself, wishing now she’d never done it. Especially since she hadn’t gotten pregnant anyway. “I just…did. It wasn’t you guys, it was me.”

  “Obviously we did something if you felt you couldn’t tell us.”

  “No.” She couldn’t come up with the words for her thoughts. “Look, I’m flying as blind here as Lina is with her Goddess gig. Lacey can’t even tell me very much about being a Seer, because everyone’s different.”

  “This,” Brodey said, “has nothing to do with you being a Seer. This has to do with you being our wife and our mate. Our partner.”

  “I thought you guys would be happy I wanted to have a baby.”

  “But you aren’t,” Cail said. “If you were, you wouldn’t have hid this from us.”

  The other two men nodded.

  “This is,” Ain said, “something we decide together, as a family, because it affects all of us. We promised you we weren’t going to force you to have a baby. Likewise, you can’t just decide you want to get pregnant without talking to us first.”

  “So what do you want me to do? Go back on the pill?”

  “That’s my point,” Ain said. “We need to have a discussion about it. It’s your body and we’ll never force you to get pregnant. But if you don’t trust us enough to include us in the decision, I don’t know what to tell you.”

  Now she felt like a real shit.

  She also knew they were right.

  “I don’t know what the right thing to do is,” she admitted.

  “Well if she’s not pregnant,” Brodey said, “then it’s not her fertile time of the month anyway, so it’s a moot point for a while, at least.”

  She frowned. “How could you possibly know that?”

  He arched an eyebrow before pointing to his nose. “Wolf, babe. I have a lot of years sniffing around tail of the shifter and human kind.”

  “Oh.” She hated that her men looked dejected, and that it was her fault. “What can I do to make this up to you?” she asked them.

  “What’s done is done,” Ain said. “The more important issue is that before we decide to have a baby, together, you need to be able to answer to our satisfaction the question of why you kept this from us. Because if you can’t trust us, we obviously did something wrong to break that trust and bringing a baby into the equation isn’t fair to it or you, much less us, with that hanging unresolved over our heads.”

  “But it wasn’t your fault,” she protested. “You guys didn’t do anything wrong.”

  He reached out and pulled her to him, hugged her, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Brodey nailed it,” he said. “I’m not mad, I’m disappointed.” He released her and went inside.

  She turned back to Brodey and Cail. They each hugged and kissed her and followed Ain inside without comment.

  She didn’t have the heart, or the guts, to follow them right then. She didn’t want her foul mood and disposition to put a damper on the happiness inside.

  Instead, she found herself walking, heading toward the wooded section directly behind the house. She threaded her way through the woods, along trails, without a destination in mind. It wasn’t until she reached the small pond hidden within the trees that she stopped walking.

  Finding herself a relatively dry fallen log, she settled there and stared out over the placid water. She remembered the day she thought she’d followed a shape here, and now understood that had been Maureen’s spirit.

  She still couldn’t think of her as her “mom.”

  Her mom, in her heart and her mind, was Carla. Maureen was someone whom Elain knew had loved her, had wanted her, had given birth to her, and had willingly let her go to someone else.

  Guilt, not a lot, but a noticeable twinge, still gnawed at her over her inability to reconcile Maureen with a flesh-and-blood person.

  It was easy to think of Liam as “Dad.” Especially since his mating and subsequent marriage upon their return to Florida to her mom.

  Although, she really didn’t want to think about her parents “doing it.”

  She picked up a small stick and hurled it out into the water. It hit the surface with a splash, sending ripples expanding out until they reached the shore all the way around.

  “Why don’t you hit yourself in the forehead with an even more obvious metaphor,” she muttered to herself. Her actions, no matter how small, rippled outward and affected her men.

  That was something she had to get used to. Ain had stayed true to his word, that he wouldn’t force her to get pregnant.

  She, however, had not held up her end of the bargain. A bargain she had, admittedly, wanted at the beginning.

  She slowly walked back to the house and slipped into their bedroom through the sliders from the lanai. She heard her men out in the living room, talking with everyone, but she didn’t miss the undercurrent of tension in their voices that only she as their mate could pick up.

  She washed her face and went back to the living room to rejoin her family.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  After they said good night to everyone and headed to their bedroom, she couldn’t avoid the subject any longer, or let her men avoid her. When she had the three of them corralled in the bedroom, she sat them down.

  “I guess I have an answer for you,” she said.

  Ain nodded, but none of them interrupted her.

  She took a deep breath. “No, it’s not an excuse. Yes, you’re right, I should have said something. I shouldn’t have decided on my own without getting your opinion. But it wasn’t because I didn’t trust you guys. It’s because I do.”

  Cail leaned forward. “No offense, babe, but I consider myself a pretty smart guy and that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Glad it’s not just me,” Brodey snarked.

  “I know I’m going to spend the rest of my life with you three. I know this for a fact. I love you and know you all love me. I kept having these…visions or dreams or whatever they are of us and kids. I went to take my pill one night and I stood there thinking about those visions. I thought about the three of you and how much I love you. And I knew that whatever happened was meant to happen.”

  “So why didn’t you tell us?” Ain quietly asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t honestly know. It wasn’t,” she quickly added, “me trying to hide it from you. I mean, not really. Yes, in part I knew you’d probably stick to your guns on the six months. But I wasn’t consciously trying to override that. Lacey kept telling me to trust my instincts. My instinct was to let nature take her course. Apparently I wasn’t meant to get pregnant yet, ironically.”

  Ain held out his hands to her. She stepped forward and took them and let him draw her close so she stood between his legs. He looked up at her. “If you want to have a baby, we’re okay with that. By tradition, it’s supposed to be the Prime brother who fathers the first pup, but frankly after everything we’ve been through, I couldn’t give a shit. Any baby we have will be our baby, all four of us, regardless of which man is the biological father. I think Brodey and Cail will agree with me there.”

  The other two men nodded but didn’t interrupt.

  “We are just beyond happy that we found you in the first place and you wanted to be part of our lives.” He squeezed her hands. “So we’ll leave the decision totally up to you. As Brodey said, it’s not your fertile time right now, so it’s moot. If you do decide to stay off the pill, or you decide to go back on it, we’ll support your decision either way. All we’re asking is to be part of the process. I won’t edict you on this. This has to be you making a decision of your own free will. I told you we won’t force you, and I meant it.”

  She nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  He stood and pulled her in for a hug. Brodey and Cail also stood and flanked them, their arms around her, too. “We know you are,” Ain said. “Let’s call it a night and a fresh slate and kiss and make up.”

  She wanted to cry. Did she really deserve these three gorgeous, caring hunks?

  Proba
bly not, but she’d kill before she’d give them up.

  She nodded. “Okay. Thank you.”

  “No more secrets? I mean, relating to us. I’m not talking Seer stuff.”

  She nodded, her cheek rubbing against his shirt. “No more secrets. I promise.”

  “And you’ll let us know what you decide?”

  “Yes.”

  He kissed her. “Thank you. That’s all we ask.”

  They undressed and he sat on the edge of the bed. She crawled into his lap, facing him, his cock growing hard between them. She looked down at it and smiled. “I’m glad I’m forgiven.”

  He kissed her. “We love you. There’s nothing we can’t work out by working on it together.”

  She rubbed herself against his cock as her body responded. “I’d like some together right now,” she said with a smile.

  “We can oblige,” Cail said from behind her.

  She looked over her shoulder at him. “I mean really together.”

  Brodey yanked open the bedside table. “I got the lube!”

  She giggled as he ran for a towel.

  She let Ain raise her up enough she could impale herself on his now fully engorged cock. A satisfied sigh escaped her as she felt his entire length slowly fill her.

  Brodey returned and jumped on the bed as Ain leaned back, pulling her down with him. That left her ass open and ready for Cail, who took the lube from Brodey. She licked her lips at Brodey. He wasted no time getting into position so she could suck on his ready cock.

  Standing behind her, Cail slowly worked lube into her while Ain made her hold still, her need ratcheting up with every slow, probing stroke of his fingers stretching her tight rim.

  Once he had her ready, he pressed the head of his cock against her. “Do it!” she begged through their mate bond.

  “Oh, we’ll do you right,” Cail promised. Slowly, achingly slow, he pressed forward. It felt like it took him forever to get the entire length of his cock buried inside her ass.

  Her clit throbbed, aching as the muscles of her cunt grabbed at Ain’s cock. Only Brodey was taking slow thrusts between her lips.