Raven didn’t fuss and worry. He held on and let Devon empty himself.
It was amazing to be quiet inside for a second.
He sniffled finally, patting Raven’s back. “Thank you. Seriously. I was feeling like a panicky idiot.”
“It happens to the best of us, seriously. Hormones are a bitch, and I have to tell you that I felt so much empathy for our clients. You can learn some of the things firsthand that everyone’s feeling.”
He was fairly sure that he could have gone without learning firsthand what everyone was feeling. But then again, he assumed that by the end of this whole project he would be happy.
“It’s all right to be scared too. It’s a weird situation—your body’s creating a new human being, and all of a sudden you feel vulnerable and—” Raven shrugged.
“Yeah, well, we’ll see. I’m sure everything’s going to work out. Right now it just feels huge.”
“It’ll feel okay, and then it’ll feel huge again, and then it’ll feel okay, and then it’ll feel huge again, because, you know, itishuge.” Raven waggled his eyebrows, and Devon cracked up.
“I guess it is. Even if you’re one of us, right?”
“Especially if you’re one of us.”
Right.
Raven was just back from maternity leave, leaving his new baby with his family for hours on end, and yeah… He needed to remember this and give his partner more grace.
They could really let Naomi shine. And Sparrow was really helpful; Raven’s sister could pick up some admin slack as well as do more exams and attend more births, darn it. “I love you,” he told Raven. “Thank you.”
“I love you too, you crazy pregnant man.” Raven chuckled for him. “Now, we need to get you on some prenatals, and I want to schedule an appointment. So we can actually, one hundred percent hear these heartbeats that you insist are there.”
He pursed his lips at Raven. “Well, the pregnancy test was absolutely definite.”
Raven started laughing hard, the sound filling his office. “You’d think, given that we know what causes babies, we wouldn’t be the ones with surprise pregnancies.”
“You’d think so, but we’re both so exhausted all the time from delivering babies that we tend to do stupid things like not plan our children.”
That had them both cackling.
Devon finally winked after the laughter died down. “I think it’s the alphas who come to Secret Springs, too. They’re so amazing that we forget ourselves and do dumb stuff.”
“Oh, I like that.” Raven waved a hand in the air. “Absolutely, we’ll blame it on them.”
“Okay, we have a plan.” He just had to get his shit together and figure out what the rest of the plan was. He had a feeling it was going to involve a lot of dealing with Laird and his family and doing alpha-omega-baby planning things. That too, but more like baby planning things.
To be perfectly honest, now that he’d told Raven andNaomi, and no doubt they would tell Sparrow, he felt much better about all that. It would be good to have people at his back that he knew he could trust while he and Laird figured out this whole situation.
Chapter
Ten
Laird packed up the last of his stuff and looked around the place he’d been renting, grinning at how sad it looked now that his homier touches were gone. He wasn’t much of a decorator, but he had gussied up some of the rental furniture with blankets and pillows his mom had bought him and that kind of thing. Now it just looked empty and a little worn.
“Is that the last of it?” Nick asked, coming back in from taking a load out to the truck. His partner was there helping him do the heavy lifting, and Devon was waiting for him at the house, cleaning out space, closets, and bathroom cabinets for his stuff.
“That should be it. I’ll come back tomorrow, clean, and do the walk-through so I can turn in the keys.”
“You think you’re ready for this?” Nick asked, shooting him a wicked grin. “I mean, this is a big deal. You’re living with your baby daddy. Being all official and shit.”
“I’m ready.” He hadn’t even told Nick yet about the idea that he was going to work until the baby was born and then go back to school. That way he could take care of their littleone. By the time their boy—or girl—went to school he’d have graduated with his degree, and he could go to work while their child was out of the house. It sounded like a great idea to him.
He hadn’t told everyone he needed to about all of this yet, but he would. They’d get it.
