She rubbed a hand over her stomach, and despite the way she frequently and loudly complained about the trials of pregnancy, she already loved her child with a ferocity that should warn anyone meaning it harm to stay far away. She wasn’t the only one, either. Shadow was downright scary these days, and when this baby was born, I had a sense that he might turn into the literal beast he was named after.
This child would be the most protected being in the Solaris System, and I’d be the first in line if any came at us with ill intent. For Mera, Shadow, and the baby—my family—I would fight the gods themselves… and even put up with a sand-weaving asshole.
An asshole who looked really good tonight, his huge warrior body clothed in a black shirt and pants. He wore his usual scowl as he watched us approach, but it didn’t take away from his beauty. Reece’s skin shone dark bronze in the low, twinkling lights strung around the snow-tipped Christmas tree. The blue of his eyes was searing, and what had once been my favorite color was now my least, no matter how pretty those dark lashes framing pools of cobalt were.
“Mera, you’re not supposed to run off like that,” he admonished, removing his glare from me to glare a touch less at her. “Sticking us with stringing up the lights was a terrible distraction, but lucky for you, I knew you didn’t leave the library.”
She poked out her tongue, hip-checking him gently. Their relationship was so easy and caring, and I had no idea how she’d achieved that with this dick. But that was Mera’s way, her superpower. Taming angry souls.
It was a power I did not possess, but that was okay. I made up for my lack of people skills with exceptional blade skills, and I had no doubts about which were more important. Only one would protect my family when the time arose. And it would arise.
There was always something evil lurking in the wings.
“Angel, come on,” Mera called, dragging me further into her winter wonderland.
She’d gone all out for the library’s first Christmas. A huge fir tree dominated the space with its glistening, dark green, needlelike leaves liberally coated with snow on the higher branches. There was nothing below since we had a strict no-present policy for this event. This Christmas was about coming together as a family and celebrating the fact that we were all still alive, and oddly enough, I even felt some swirls of anticipation about experiencing this Earth holiday.
Around the time Mera started to hand out “ugly Christmas sweaters,” as she dubbed them, Shadow’s energy entered the library. He was back from the Shadow Realm, the world he was supposed to be ruling but instead was training and overseeing the new rulers. The realm had been corrupted for thousands of years, and while they were on the path to a brighter future, their issues could not be fixed overnight.
It would take decades to mend the scars, but the new Supreme Being was already bringing life and prosperity to her people. Shadow had chosen his successor well… or should I say Mera had, since it had been her wish to appoint one of the leaders from the Samsan Grove outlier island as the Supreme Being. And what Mera wanted, Shadow made happen.
Such was the power of a true mate bond and the obsessive nature of their relationship.
A second after I felt his energy, Mera’s head snapped in the direction of her mate. When he appeared, her face lit up, and she was moving at her too-fast-for-pregnancy speed again. They came together in a way that was hard to watch—not because I wasn’t happy for them but because their pure love was the same sort of love my parents had shared.
The Honor Meadows was famous for its warriors, but what many didn’t know was that it was also built on true-love bonds. Soul bonds.
A bond I knew nothing of and, after this many years, doubted I ever would.
“You weren’t long,” Mera said to her mate when he was done kissing her senseless. She dragged him back toward the snow-covered tree. “Where’re Inky and Midnight?”
“They’re still in the realm, keeping an eye out for us and frolicking in the mists,” Shadow said, somewhat distracted as he looked around. “I wasn’t gone long, and somehow you found the time to completely redecorate the library.”
Mera lifted an eyebrow at him. “You don’t like it?”
Shadow’s lips twitched. “It’s perfect, Sunshine.”
Her face lit up, and as she was leaning in to hug him, she paused. Tilting her head back, she started to sniff, then snarled. “Hand it over,” she snapped, and this time, Shadow actually laughed out loud.
To see that stoic bastard tip his head back and rumble his mirth was super unsettling. Sometimes I wondered if Mera was the fabled witch of the Solaris System.
“Shadow,” Mera growled. “You do not want to fuck with a pregnant woman.”
“You really don’t,” Len said from where he’d wedged his huge body into a small corner to hang more lights. He was dressed in his usual silver, duster jacket and all, and he was wearing a strand of red tinsel that Mera had clearly strung around his collar. His white hair was kept short and styled these days, the only length falling across his forehead, and his silvery eyes looked wilder than usual. “Can someone seriously tell us how much longer she’ll be pregnant?”
Mera, who was too focused on her mate to bother with the fae, was all but wrestling Shadow in an attempt to search his pockets. The beast could have broken free, of course, but he was occupied with staring at her in a way that was dangerous to any of us standing nearby. Finally, she found what her nose had sniffed out, pulling a white paper bag from inside his jacket.
Her hands trembled as she hugged it to her chest. “You found one,” she sniffed. “Aw, mate, I love you.”
Shadow pulled her close as she opened the bag and removed a weird green… stick? “What the hell is that?” Reece asked in his usual tactless way.
“Deep fried pickle,” Mera said, still sounding tearful. “I swear to fuck I’ve been desperately craving these, and no one in the dining hall has a clue what I’m talking about.”
She took a bite and then moaned, and as flames sprang into Shadow’s eyes, I knew my friend was about to disappear from the room. Sure enough, after Mera’s second bite and moan, Shadow’s energy whipped through the space, and by the time I blinked again, he was gone, taking his Sunshine with him.
“The only surprise there,” Alistair said, letting out a warm laugh before he ran a hand through his blue and green curls, “is that she didn’t get pregnant the first day they met.” His blue eyes, which were a few shades darker than his skin, softened as he stared after his friends. Alistair was one of the only ones so far to pull on a sweater, and he’d chosen a green one with a sequined tree and the wordsMerry Treemason it.
“Those two stubborn souls had a lot of shit to sort out,” Len said, shifting around to twirl more of the lights across the tree using fae energy. “But, damn, it makes me happy to see them like that. I think Shadow’s turning us all soft.”
