He nodded and sipped. It was yummy, citrusy and sweet. “Pregnancy is weird, it’s wonderful, of course, but weird.”
“It is. I was all over the damn place with it.” Kami winked. “Oh, I hope this one goes with cupcakes!” He looked a little stricken, and Mercury shook his head, daring to tease.
“No, no, it needs to contrast to break up the sweet.”
“Okay, okay, thanks! I don’t know if you can tell, but I really feel bad that I hurt your feelings.”
“I can kind of tell.” Mercury grinned a little bit. “Have a cupcake. We’ll talk about what friends do.”
“Well, we eat together and chat. A lot.” Kami grabbed a cupcake, obviously pondering. “Do you like to play games?”
Mercury shrugged. He wasn’t really trained on those. “I don’t know any.”
“Well then, I think we should learn to play some games. Talon loves to play cards. This would be something you two could do together, or we could do with three or four of us. You can play cards with all number of people.”
He nodded. He could learn things, in fact, he loved it. And he was good at math. “All right, that sounds like fun.”
“We should make a list—things that friends do. Hold on.” Kami went to a desk and found supplies and then he handed Mercury a pad of paper and a pen. “Do you know how to write?”
The question seemed honest, not mean-spirited.
Mercury nodded. “Yes. I went to school. I can write and read and do math.”
“Good. Good deal, then you’re doing better than a lot of people.” Kami’s wink was almost naughty. “Let’s start a list. We’ve got play games, go flying—although probably we should wait until you’re not pregnant. We could go flying, andswimming is also something we could do. We could have a book club.”
Mercury tilted his head. “What do you do there?”
“We read a book, each of us on our own, and then we come together and we talk about it.”
“Oh, I like to read.” He explored the library often. Eyv was generous with the titles there, but it might be interesting to share books together.
“I do too, so let’s put ‘book club’ down.”
Mercury wrote that down, blushing as Kami complimented his handwriting. “Do you think other people would like to read a book and talk to us?”
Kami shrugged. “I don’t know. I know that Lake likes to read, but I also know that he has something like twenty-four children.”
That made him giggle and he clapped a hand over his mouth to hide the sound. “It does seem to be a popular thing to do around here, having babies.”
Kami rolled his eyes. “That’s because we have so many damn alphas. They really like this whole baby thing. Seriously. They want to carry on their legacy or whatever. Maybe it’s just because they like knotting their mates too. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I like being knotted.”
Listening to Kami say that word so casually in conversation made him blush a little bit, but Mercury had to just keep grinning because it was true. Talon loved doing that to him as well.
And he certainly wasn’t opposed to it.
“You know it’s true. It’s—” Kami rolled his eyes. “It’s wild.”
Mercury nodded. “It’s like being as close as you can be, and yes, it is wild and wonderful and magic. Do you think you’ll want more babies?”
Kami shrugged, nodding, then shaking his head. “I didn’t think I wanted this one, but I love her. And I love how she changes all the time. There’s so much magic in her. I have to tell you I was scared when I first met her.”
Mercury leaned forward because this was one of the things he wanted to know, maybe needed to know. “Was it scary? I mean, the giving birth part. Was it terrible?”
“It wasn’t fun. It was hard work, and it hurt, but it wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened. And it had a reason. I was working for something.”
Mercury licked the frosting off his cupcake. “I’m worried that I’ll be a bad soffar. I don’t know how to do so many things. I’m so different. Dex, Lake, Elowyn, and Eyv are so brave and natural. Not like me.”
Kami reached out and touched his wrist. “You and I are way more alike, huh?”
