“And all the peaches.”
Chapter Sixteen
Joshua
Today was officially move-in day, which meant I would no longer be going back to the B&B, nor would my items be stored there. Not that I spent much time there, now that Corvus and I were mated. How did I get so lucky for the Goddess to send me a mate? Not only that, but she had paved the way for me all those years. If I hadn’t befriended a crow as a child or been fascinated with them all along, I might have been scared of him when I saw his true form. And then what? I’d have lost my one chance at true happiness.
“Hey, what are you thinking about?” Corvus asked, taking my hand. His warmth spread up my arm.
“I was thinking about the first day we were at this house and you stood in the doorway.”
“Thinking about how everything changed that day?”
“No, everything changed the day you saved me from that creeper. I knew you were special the second you intervened, and not because you did but because being near you felt like exactly where I belonged.” At the time, I hadn’t understood those emotions, but looking back, I got it. I recognized him as my mate long before I knew fated mates were real.
“When you were standing there that day, you turned slightly, and I thought it was the light playing tricks on me at the time, but I got this feeling like you were wearing a mask. I brushed it away. I think that’s the first time I saw you. It didn’t fully register, your face. I mean,” I said, reaching up to put my hand against his beak, “I could see through your glimmer for that split second even then. It was the first time I saw the real you.”
I loved it when my mate didn’t have to hide in his glimmer. Obviously, there were times when he had to. We couldn’t exactly go to the diner with him sporting his true form, but here at our house, that was the him I wanted to see.
“You’re amazing,” he said. He pulled me in for a hug, and then his body froze.
“Something wrong?”
“No,” he broke into laughter, but not a funny laugh, a joyful one. I’d never tell him this, but it was almost like a Santa kind of laugh, all jolly and happy and bright, which made sense, given what he said to me next.
“You’re pregnant.”
“I’m what?” My hand went straight to my belly, wedged between the two of us. “Why do you think that?”
“Because I can scent it on you.”
“You can’t scent pregnancy. Oh, wait, that’s me. I can’t sense pregnancy. Can you sense pregnancy?”
“Yes.” He fell to his knees and nestled his head against my belly. “I can and you’re growing our baby.”
It shouldn’t have caught me off guard—we’d definitely been doing the things you need to do to get pregnant—but it did. Not in a scared kind of way but with a sense of wonder and happiness I couldn’t express with words, tears already forming in my eyes.
I was going to be a father. We were going to be fathers. We were going to have a family.
“Hey, hey, hey.” He took both my hands in his. “Are you okay with this, mate?”
I nodded, still unable to speak. When I did manage to, the only word that came out was, “Baby.”
We were having a baby.
“Did you want to go to town and take one of those human tests?”
“No, no, I can sense it now too.” And I could now, now that I was trying. “We’re gonna be fathers, which means we have a lot of work to do and not much time.”
“No, no, we don’t. We have a lot of time.”
He had a very different definition of “a lot” than I did, especially given how long he’d been on this earth.
“How about we just enjoy this moment and enjoy getting the rest of everything put away so we can start our new life in our new home?”
“And the baby! We need to make a room for the baby.”
His hand cupped my cheek. “We do, and we’ve got months to do that. Now, take a deep breath.”
