“You started the nest? When?”
“A few hours ago,” I explained. “Our pokey eggs shifted around, so of course I had to pee. One look at myself in the mirror and another errant poke and I knew it was time to make the nest. Our eggs will not be going on the bed to suffer a Humpty-Dumpty moment!”
“No, absolutely not,” he said. “But you must be exhausted. Why didn’t you wake me to help?”
“Not tired at all,” I declared. “I’ve been napping in between batches, waiting for enough of your scent to get on them before I took them back to the nursery. Your only task is to lie there and pet the blankets. Then could you please make breakfast?”
“Of course,” he replied, still stroking the blankets, that warm, sunshiny scent filling my nose with every pass of his hand. “Something sticky and sweet with a side of meat, huh? Is that what you’re craving this morning?”
“Yes, and before you even think about it, I do not mean your cock slathered in syrup. I’ll take that for dessert, if you don’t mind.”
“Really?” he purred. “I’m sure I can arrange something to your liking.”
“I know you can.”
We snuggled with the blankets while I caressed his face and felt him nuzzle my hand. I never would have thought my mate, with the reputation he had around town, would respond to my touch that way, but there he was, actively seeking affection. I was more than happy to give it to him, too. My brain couldn’t even fathom centuries. The short time I’d spent missing my mother and brother, longing for a sense of family and home, seemed pathetically short in comparison to how long he’d spent waiting for his fated mate to appear.
Waiting for me.
I rubbed noses with him and peppered kisses along his cheek and jaw, stroked his hair, and lay there enjoying the stillness of the morning with him. Before too long, my growling stomach and the knowledge that he’d catch an earful from Ionus if he was late to patrol, forced us from the warmth of the bed. He headed downstairs to make breakfast, with a promise to carry me down when it was ready, while I made another slow trip to thebathroom, then back to the bed to gather the sunshine scented blankets and add them to the nest while he cooked.
He found me curled up in the middle of it, still incomplete, but there would be no finishing until he put his scent all over the rest of the blankets. I was reading to my belly, rubbing over the eggs, which had settled into a less pokey position than they’d been in last night. He stepped into the nest beside me, but instead of scooping me up, he sat down next to me and rubbed my stomach while I read to our girls.
“Your feast awaits,” he said, but only after the story was over.
A giant waffle covered my plate when he placed me in my chair at the kitchen table. Sliced strawberries covered them, with a can of whipped cream sitting right beside a bottle of syrup. Sausage links sat on a smaller plate beside it, and I grabbed one and took a big bite, chewing as I covered my waffle in a swirl of whipped cream.
“Mmm yum,” I hummed, biting off another piece of sausage before adding syrup.
“I’m glad you approve,” Odem said as he sat across from me to dig into his own plate.
We’d come a long way since that first night, when I’d insisted on eating and sleeping alone. His patience had shocked me, but it was his loving nature that had rapidly stolen my heart. I knew our girls would never have anything to fear from him. Unlike the home I’d grown up in, where the presence of an older male brought dread and fear, ours would be filled with light and laughter. Knowing that I no longer needed to think of that man as my father or worry that any piece of his linage would be passed from me to our eggs had lifted a burden off my mind. It was a fear I’d secretly begun to harbor as the memories of him returned. Upalo’s revelation had erased that in an instant, though it had left me with plenty of questions about who our father was, and how much about him Upalo remembered.
As if thinking about him was enough to draw my brother to the kitchen, he appeared, freshly showered, hair still dripping as he stood in the doorway in his t-shirt and jeans. Kes was beside him, eyes skimming the room, something that looked almost like disappointment welling up in them when he saw that we were the only ones there.
Oh.
Ohh.
“Shocked to see you here,” Odem said, raising an eyebrow at him. “But there’s more waffles in the oven. Help yourselves.”
“Thank you,” Upalo said, while Kes hesitated for a moment, before following him to the stove.
“Mattias was called away to the ocean in the middle of the night,” Kes explained. “I guess a part of me was hoping to see that he was back.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I get it. I went to work the morning after Odem and I mated and I spent the whole day dropping things and telling people off when they couldn’t make up their minds about what to order.”
Upalo turned away from the oven, two waffles on a plate, to stare at me with his mouth half-hanging open.
“What?” I asked as I nibbled on another sausage.
“I’m just trying to picture you working in a restaurant,” he said. “Is the place still standing?”
“Yes, it’s still standing, funny man,” I said, waving a sausage at him. “I was very good at my job, when the customers weren’t getting in the way.”
Odem pressed a palm to his face, laughing from behind it, which didn’t muffle it in the slightest.
“I was in there one afternoon and he threw jelly cups to a customer instead of carrying them to the table.”
