“Because I keep saying my family is hexed?” Crilus asked, arching a brow and reaching out for another piece of the blood orange I peeled for him.
“That and imagine – a vampyress with a cloak made from her own crow feathers enchanted so that she can fly without her wings, sashaying into a room. No one’s going to fuck with her.”
“So… She’s either the main character or the villain.”
“Well, we’re not going to have a boring kid,” I laughed.
“We don’t know that she’ll be a vampire either. We don’t know what sort of magic she might have.”
“We know she’s a crow because her egg isn’t growing. That rules out dragon sneaking into our genetics and giving us a surprise draconic hatchling,” I smirked, handing him another slice of the blood orange.
“I sort of like it. Hex. Though, everyone will ask her what it’s short for.”
“Hexanna,” I teased him, but his eyes lit up.
I grinned to myself, satisfied that I found something he looked excited about.
“Is it bad that I like it?” he asked, his eyes misting over. “Are we gonna curse her to be the kid with the weird name forever?”
“No,” I shook my head. “And if she really doesn’t like it, she can go by Anna or change it when she’s older. I mean, she could change it even if we gave her a boring name like Mary or Jane.”
“Hex,” Crilus whispered to the egg in its little hanging pouch around his neck. He kept it there most of the time now. Only taking it off to shower, sleep, or romp. The latter happened here and there but nowhere near as often as it had during our matingmoon. I missed our alone time but loved the new layers of relationship that kept revealing themselves. Sometimes, happiness really was eating a whole large pizza while making funof the names your friends suggested for your baby who hadn’t hatched yet.
Which was exactly what we were doing when Baby Hex decided to drag her beak along the inside of her egg. The first scrape sounded through the living room when we were sitting across from each other on the floor on either side of the coffee table. At first, I thought Crilus had broken a tooth when he bit into his slice piled high with meat and cheese. Only pizza wasn’t exactly known for cracking teeth in half.
“Hex!” he said.
“Yeah,” I grinned. “I’m glad you like the name. Is your tooth alright, mate?”
“No! She’s pecking on the egg,” he said, dropping his pizza onto the corner of the box he was using as a plate. He wiped his hands on a napkin and gently fished the blue-green speckled egg out of the pouch that lived around his neck. I glanced at the counter on my phone. Eighteen days, seven hours, fifty-three minutes. Well, since I started the timer anyway. It was a few hours more than that since Crilus had laid his egg on his own during the party.
“Missing a piece,” Crilus said, holding up the egg and trying to peer through it.
“Don’t get pecked!” I said as my heart did a summersault and landed in a handstand. “You might drop it!”
“I’m not going to get pecked,” Crilus laughed as I rounded the table and sank back onto the floor next to him. Holding the egg up to his nose, he sniffed it. “She’s a girl. Mori was right about that much.”
Every second that our daughter took to break free from her egg was a second that I swore my heart would stop beating and no amount of blood would ever make it pound again. The bird inside was tiny and sort of bald with feet that looked too big for a little body. I was afraid to touch her as Crilus stroked her andrubbed her little wings, checking that everything felt as it should. It took her nearly an hour to come around to the idea of shifting into her human form. Still, she was the tiniest baby I’d ever seen. Her hair was raven-colored. So black that it was almost blue and green. It stuck up in every direction as if she’d slept the hardest sleep of her young life. Her eyes shined blue but sometimes little crow eyes didn’t stay that color and I wasn’t sure how much of that would translate into her human form. Her little ears were pointed
I slid behind Crilus, wrapping my arms around his as he held her up to his chest. I rested my cheek against his soft hair and marveled at the little girl who was born despite everything that might’ve kept us apart. She was perfect and new and for a little while we were the only ones who knew she’d arrived. Soon, Teal would come to check her over and our friends and parents would pour into the house but for now, we were keeping her all to ourselves.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“It’s not like I was just in labor,” he teased.
“You don’t have to be feeling bad for me to ask,” I said and kissed the top of his head.
“I’m in awe of her and how I know I’ll do anything to keep this new little person happy and safe. I’d rip out SC’s heart with my bare hands and eat it, if that was the only way to save her.”
“Hey, leave the heart eating to me. I’m built for it.”
“So am I,” he said and a second later his wolf ears snaked out of his head to brush against my face. “Maybe it’s the best tasting part of a bear.”
“Baby Hex,” Crilus cooed her name as I slid up onto the sofa and lifted my mate and baby with me. Labor or not, a nap with our newly hatched baby felt appropriate. Besides, once she realized how much we loved her, she’d be running the whole house, and no one was going to get much sleep.
Epilogue
Mori
