"What?" Dominic's hand tightens on mine.
"Wait." Amos' head lifts from my stomach. "Did you just say yes?"
"He said daughter." Dominic is staring at me. "You said our daughter."
"He said yes to the ring." Amos looks at Dominic. "He put the ring on and he said our daughter, which means he's saying yes and he's saying—"
"Is it a girl?" Dominic's voice cracks on the word.
"Are you saying yes?" Amos says it at the same time and their voices collide over my lap. I have never seen them like this. Dominic's composure is gone and Amos' careful analytical calm is gone and they're talking over each other like two people who have forgotten they know how to take turns.
My laugh comes out wet and wrecked and I have to press my hand over my mouth because the sound of these two Alphas tripping over each other is the funniest thing I've ever witnessed in my life.
"Yes, I'm saying yes." I hold up the hand with the ring. "I put it on, didn't I? And yes, it's a girl. I had a doctor's appointment this morning." I press my free hand over Amos' on my stomach. "I was going to tell you after dinner but then the condo happened and the argument happened and the ring happened. I forgot Iwas holding an entire piece of information because my fiancé decided to propose by slamming jewelry on the table."
Dominic's face finishes coming apart. His eyes fill and his jaw trembles and his hand on mine tightens until the ring digs into my finger. His scent cracks wide open, the leather going soft, the smoke thinning into something warm and unguarded that makes my own eyes sting all over again.
"I told you." His voice breaks. "I told you it was a girl."
"A daughter." Amos says it from beside my chair, his hand still on my stomach. "We're having a daughter." He pulls his glasses off and presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. "I'm going to need a bigger file."
Another laugh pulls from me as Dominic rounds the table and drops to his knees beside Amos on my other side. Dominic's hand covers mine on my stomach and Amos' covers his. The baby kicks against all three palms and the timing is so perfect that I'm convinced she planned it.
"She kicked." Dominic says, mild surprise coating his words.
"She kicks all the time." I wipe my eyes with my free hand. "She kicked me in the bladder four minutes ago while you were proposing, which was very romantic."
"Our daughter has opinions about timing." Amos presses his ear against my stomach. His pine and cedar scent is warm and steady beside me, mixing with the leather and smoke from Dominic's side, and my own scent has gone sweet and heavy between them. "At this gestational stage she can hear external voices. She's been listening to this entire conversation."
"Great." I look down at the two Alphas kneeling on my kitchen floor. "Our daughter's first memory is going to be her father proposing by slamming a ring box on a table and her other father calculating response times for nighttime needs."
"And her third parent was making a joke about wearing a dress." Amos lifts his head. "She's going to be fine."
"She's going to be impossible." Dominic presses his mouth against my stomach through my shirt. "She's ours. She doesn't have a choice."
Epilogue 2
ThreeMonthsLater
Amos
A cry at three fourteen in the morning pulls me out of sleep but Dominic is already moving. His side of the bed is warm but empty by the time I've oriented myself in the dark, the Alpha crossing to the bassinet against the far wall. I track his shape inthe gray light from the window as he bends to lift the baby out of the bassinet.
"Hey." He says, his voice low and rough with sleep, softer than I've ever heard him use with anyone else. "Hey, come here. I've got you, Soleil."
The crying drops to a whimper as he settles her against his bare chest. She's two months old and has already learned that Dominic's chest is the fastest route to silence. His scent wraps around her the way it always does, the sharp edges of it blunted into something that exists only in this room at this hour. He's been scent-marking her since the day she was born. She smells like all three of us now, coconut and pine layered under Dominic's leather, her own scent still forming underneath, something sweet and floral that doesn't have a name yet.
I lie in the dark and watch him sway beside the bassinet. His hand covers her entire back, his thumb tracing small circles against her spine.
Niah is asleep on my other side, his face pressed into my shoulder. The switch to formula two weeks ago was harder on him than the pregnancy. He's sleeping now because his body finally overrode the guilt, and I can smell it on him even in sleep, the coconut warm and settled instead of the bitter edge it carries when he's spiraling.
The guilt still surfaces. When Dominic takes the three am shift Niah mumbles "I should be doing that" against my shoulder before falling back asleep.
Dominic carries Soleil to the window and stands in the thin light with her against his chest. The swaying has settled into a gentle rock, his weight shifting from foot to foot, his chin resting on top of her head. She weighs eleven pounds and two ounces as of yesterday's weigh-in because I track these things and someone in this household needs to maintain the data.
Just like I track the fact that Dominic hasn't been sleeping. The circles under his eyes have deepened over the past two weeks and his responses in meetings have slowed by fractions of a second. He takes every night feeding and changes every diaper between midnight and six and then he surfaces at dawn already dressed with the baby bathed and a bottle warming up.
"Dom." I sit up in bed, careful not to jostle Niah. "You need to sleep."
