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Another blue bear, this one slightly smaller than the first, with a lopsided grin stitched onto its face that made it look mischievous.

"Two boys and a girl," Danny announced to the room, his voice cracking on every word. "We're having two boys and a girl."

The noise that followed was deafening. The bears roared—actually roared, a sound that rattled the windows and made Dimitri nearly drop his plate of quiche. The wolves howled. Stella burst into full-body sobs and had to be supported by Gemma. Emery was crying and laughing simultaneously while trying to set off a confetti cannon that jammed twice before showering everyone in blue and pink paper.

And Danny—my Danny, my mate, the center of my entire universe—stood in the middle of all of it with three stuffed bears cradled against his enormous belly, tears running down his face, laughing so hard he could barely stand.

I caught him, scooping him up as gently as I could manage with three cubs between us.

"Put me down, you ridiculous man," he said, but his arms went around my neck, and he buried his face against my throat. "Two boys and a girl. Bayer, we're having two boys and a girl."

"I heard," I said, my own voice shot to hell. "I was there."

"They're going to be so beautiful," he whispered. "They're going to be so loved."

"They already are," I told him, and set him down carefully in his throne of cushions while the celebration roared on around us.

The next hour was a blur of gifts and laughter and more food than even a room full of shifters could consume, though they gave it a valiant effort. Stella's honey cakes disappeared in minutes. Danny opened presents with running commentary that had everyone in stitches—tiny bear onesies from Maya and Sylvia ("Oh good, in case I forget what species my children are"), an elaborate mobile of carved wooden animals from Matthew that made Danny go quiet with emotion, matching blankets from Isla in the softest wool I'd ever felt.

Dimitri's gifts, when Danny unwrapped them, turned out to be three small silver medallions on delicate chains, each engraved with protective sigils that I recognized as ancient craftsmanship. The room went quiet as Danny lifted the first one, turning it so the fairy lights caught the intricate lines etched into the metal.

"Those are ward-marks," Rhys said softly, leaning forward from where he sat beside Ben. "Old ones. Protective."

Dimitri inclined his head. "Forged in the old way, by the coven's master smith. They will offer the children protection from...unnatural threats." He paused, choosing his words with the delicacy of someone navigating a diplomatic minefield. "Consider it an investment in peaceful relations between our peoples."

Danny looked up at Dimitri with an expression that made the silver-skin visibly uncomfortable—open, genuine gratitude without a trace of suspicion. "Thank you, Dimitri. Really. This means more than you know."

Dimitri's composure cracked for just a fraction of a second, something almost warm flickering behind those ancient eyes before he reassembled his diplomatic mask. "It is...the coven's pleasure."

"The coven's," Rhys repeated with a knowing smirk that Dimitri pretended not to see.

Danny handed me the medallions, and I turned them over in my palm, feeling the subtle hum of old magic against my skin. Three medallions for three cubs. The reality of it kept hitting me in waves—not the abstract knowledge that I was going to be a father, which I'd been carrying for months, but the visceral, bone-deep understanding that these were real people. My sons. My daughter. They would have names and faces and personalities, and they would look up at me the way I'd never been able to look at my own father—with love and with trust.

I blinked hard and tucked the medallions carefully into my pocket.

The gift-opening continued. Emery presented an elaborate set of books he'd curated for the nursery, each one annotated with notes about childhood developmental milestones. Kaylan gave us a hand-tooled leather journal with the pack's crest embossed on the cover—"For recording their firsts," he explained, and Danny had to take a full minute to compose himself before he could speak.

Estrelle's gift was a small wooden box that, when opened, played a melody I didn't recognize—something haunting and ancient that made the hair on my arms stand up. "It's a lullaby," she said quietly, her eyes moving to Ben and then back to Danny. "My mother sang it to Esther and me when we were small. Before everything." She swallowed. "I thought perhaps your children might like it too."

Danny reached out and took her hand, squeezing it once. No words. None were needed.

Ben watched the exchange with an expression that cracked my heart wide open—longing and love and grief all tangled together, the face of a boy seeing his mother be someone's mother for the first time.

Danny winced and shifted on his cushions. "Ugh. Your daughter is using my kidney as a punching bag."

"That's my girl," I said, and earned myself a glare that could have peeled paint.

Stella emerged from the kitchen with yet another tray—this time some kind of pastry that smelled of cinnamon and brown sugar—and the crowd surged toward the food table with the single-minded focus of predators scenting prey. Even Dimitri accepted a pastry, holding it between two fingers like a specimen he was considering for scientific study before taking a cautious bite. His eyebrows rose fractionally, which from a centuries-old silver-skin was the equivalent of a standing ovation.

"Your mother is a sorceress," he told Danny with complete seriousness.

"You have no idea," Danny replied.

The party settled into a warm, easy rhythm after that—clusters of conversation, laughter, the constant movement of people between the food table and the living room. Raven and Isla were equally thrilled with their gifts. Raven was expecting a boy, but Isla and Matthew didn’t want to know. Isla said as they already had two boys and a girl, any other child was a gift and they didn’t care. Rhys’s eyes were very bright after that pronouncement.

I watched Danny hold court from his cushioned throne, one hand always on his belly, the other gesturing as he talked about the school curriculum with Emery, or the festival plans with Maya, or his mother's recipe for honey cakes with anyone who'd listen. He was luminous. The pregnancy had softened him in places and sharpened him in others, and I couldn't stop looking at him.

Phoenix dropped into the chair beside me, handing me a plate piled high with food I hadn't asked for. "Eat. You look like you haven't slept in a week."