“You still need a brain,” Xenos said. “Preston doesn’t need a mate without a brain. Then after he ensures you two are going to live, he’s going to look at Grain’s toe. He’s pretty sure he broke it when he fell in the woods. He shouldn’t have been out there at all, but I think his toe is reminder enough of that.”
“Are our babies okay? Are you sure you’re okay?”I asked Preston over our mating link. I managed to reach up and stroke his cheek with my thumb without moving my head enough to upset it more.
“I’m okay. I’m mad. I’m so mad at myself. I was so fucking close to catching her,”he thought back to me.“I’m mad that she…”he glanced around at the ice and then buried his face in my belly. Baby Andy copied him, sans the tears. I stroked Preston’s hair and wished I had the sort of magic that would set all of this right for them.
“Is it disrespectful if I sweep him up?” Mori asked.
“No,” I said. “Put him as together as you can. He’s gone but remember, Mori, that’s a corpse now,” I said as gently as I could manage.
“I’ll do it,” Xenos said. “I don’t want any of you in this blood.”
“Our baby’s first Yuletide shouldn’t be a funeral,”Preston cried.
“It won’t be,” I said aloud. “We can take all the gifts to your parents’ house and he can open them there. We can bury Venaltomorrow. No one gets buried straight away anymore, anyway. Plus, if he has friends.”
“Wess,” Xenos said gently. “We can’t tell his friends about this, hon. I hate that they’ll never know what happened but the outside world would blame you, not her. He was frozen. To them he was already dead. He might’ve been but since his door hadn’t shown up, I don’t think he was. All he has to lay him to rest is us and we’ll do right by him for the sake of the b-a-b-y.”
“That’s not a cuss word,” I said.
“No but he’s out cold and I don’t want him to wake back up because he thinks we’re talking about him. I’ll get this cleaned up. We’ll go home after we know you’re okay. He can wake up and have his Yuletide morning and then tomorrow we’ll bury Venal. Tomorrow, we’ll make it as right as we can. Just don’t spend eternity beating yourself up over this. Being dead doesn’t change who he was. He’s just him in another space now. He’s still a giant a-s-s.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Preston
Nightshade Bear Territory
Dad brought back a foul-smelling concoction that was the color of bog water and made Wess drink it. The only redeeming factor I could find was that it looked to have been frozen into some sort of icy drink. Wess did love icy things. He sipped it like a champ, slowly sitting up bit by bit, and not complaining when Baby Andy crawled into his lap once he was mostly upright.
I hoped our baby didn’t remember tonight at all. I hoped that he didn’t remember Venal going or Wess getting hurt. Sure, one day, he’d need to know the truth but that was far off into the future and I’d rather him remember it as a story than as events that unfolded before his eyes.
“Babies are resilient,” my carrier said, rechecking the floor for any blood he missed and picking up my thoughts over our family link. “They shouldn’t have to be but they are. He’s happy that Wess is okay. He’s happy that you’re back. It’s simple things with them.”
Before Baby Andy, I got so irritated whenever he did that. It was like he was tuned into me all the time if I was around himand sometimes even when I wasn’t. Now, I got it. I got it straight down to the core of my soul. Having Andy didn’t just show me how much I could love a person but how much I was loved as a person. And my parents loved Andy and his cousins as much as they love me.
“Come on,” my sire said. “Stretch out on the table. I need to get Grain’s toe set straight, if you’re okay.”
I started to say that I was fine but there was no use in arguing. So, I grabbed a throw pillow and stretched out on the coffee table. Unlike Colton, Dad made regular use of his small portable ultrasound. It only took him a few minutes to clear me and the twins as healthy and safe for regular life.
Part of me wanted to crawl back into bed but I knew from experience that would be a good way to wallow and sink into everything that had happened. I still had a baby to love and take care of and a family to celebrate Yule with. There would be time to cry about it all later.
Not long after my parents left to see to Grain and their own little ones, Baby Andy woke up. He patted around Wess’s head as gently as someone with his hand eye-coordination could.
“Kay,” he said. “Kay.”
“Yeah, I’m okay, buddy. Takes more than a thump on the head to keep me down,” Wess said, smiling at him. “Do you want to open your presents?”
“Zents?” he pointed at the tree. “Zents?”
“Yep. Your zents,” Wess nodded and the five of us, including Snowy, moved to the floor in front of the tree. Mori took down the shields, and we let Baby Andy have at it. After all everylast gift under the tree was for him. I had a sneaking suspicion that he’d have more fun destroying the wrapping paper and boxes than he would with what was inside of them. We could’ve wrapped up rocks and he’d have been happy.
“Why so many throw pillows?” Mori laughed.
“Those are his doing,” I said, jerking my head in Wess’s direction.
“Hey! His ends up in the pillow hospital a lot and he needs backups,” Wess shrugged.
“He’s not wrong, brother. He’s not wrong at all,” I laughed.
