"Would she have?"
"At first. I think you’d have grown on her." I stop. Swallow.
Later, we wash the dishes together, another slice of domesticity that feels surreal in its ordinariness. His shoulder brushes mine as we work, a casual intimacy that sends warmth spreading through my chest.
"This is like an arranged marriage," I say, handing him the last plate.
He glances at me. "What do you mean?"
"We didn't choose each other. Not really. The prime match, the heat, all of it. And now we're stuck together, trying to build something out of it." I set down the dish towel. "My grandmother had an arranged marriage. She used to say the love came later, if you were lucky. If you did the work."
"Are we lucky?"
"I don't know yet." I turn to face him fully. "But I think I want to find out."
Carter is very still. The kitchen is quiet around us, just the tick of the cooling stove and the wind outside.
He kisses me then, gentle and slow. When we break apart, he's smiling. "Are you ready for bed?"
I answer by taking his hand and pulling him toward the bedroom door. "We've already made a baby together. I think we can handle sharing a mattress."
The bedroom is warm, the bed softer than I remember. We undress in the lamplight. My body has changed so much since the last time we were here. I'm self-conscious about it, about the rounded belly and swollen everything, but Carter looks at me like I'm something precious.
"You're beautiful," he says.
"I'm huge."
"You're carrying our daughter." He sits on the edge of the bed, pulls me to stand between his knees. His hands span my belly, warm and reverent. "You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
I want to argue. I want to deflect with a joke or a sharp comment. Instead, I thread my fingers through his hair and let myself believe him.
We don't have sex. We're both exhausted, and my body isn't particularly interested in anything athletic right now. But we lie tangled together in the dark, Carter's front pressed to my back, his hand resting over the baby.
"We should talk about names," I murmur.
"Not tonight."
"Soon, though. She's going to be here in three months. We can't keep calling her 'the baby.'"
"She'll have a name when she needs one." He presses a kiss to my shoulder. "Right now, I just want this. You and me and her, together. Everything else can wait."
I close my eyes. The baby kicks against Carter's palm, and I feel him smile against my skin.
"Carter?"
"Mm?"
"I'm glad it was you too."
His arm tightens around me. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to.
I fall asleep with his heartbeat against my back and his hand over our daughter, and for the first time in months, I don't dream about anything at all.
24. Carter
Jamie's hand closes around my wrist in the early hours of the morning.
I'm awake instantly. Three months of sharing a bed with a heavily pregnant omega has trained me to sleep light. The room is dark, just the faint glow of the city through the curtains, and Jamie is very still beside me.
