Page 36
“I’ll buy you ten.”
“I want twelve.” Her smile gets wider. “One for every egg.”
I laugh into her neck so hard my knot shifts and she yelps.
My mate. My smart-mouthed, glitter-throwing, egg-counting, bad, bad girl.
Nobody’s ever touching her again.
Chapter Twenty
NIK
I’ve never celebrated Christmas in my life. I’m Krampus. Christmas is the other guy’s holiday. For three hundred years, December twenty-fifth has meant nothing to me but the day after I’m done with my list and the night before I start a new one.
This year, I bought a tree so big we had to take out a fucking window to get it in.
It’s standing in the living room right now, twenty feet tall, covered in so many lights you could see it from the bridge. Under it, there are forty-two presents. I counted. She doesn’t know about any of them. She’s still asleep upstairs in our bed, curled in the middle of it in one of my shirts, her hair wrapped in the silk scarf she makes me wait for her to tie every single night. I’ve been awake for two hours, waiting for her to come down.
When she finally does, she stops on the bottom step and stares.
“Nik.”
“Merry Christmas, Red.”
“Nik, what did you do?”
“Open them.”
She walks to the tree slowly, like it might bite her, sits down on the rug in my shirt, and picks up the closest box. I sit on the couch and watch her open it. It’s a pair of diamond earrings, the ones she stared at for a full minute at the jeweler’s last week before she put them back. She looks up at me with her mouth open.
“Next one,” I order.
The next one is a first edition of the first monster romance she ever read, signed by the author. She hugs it to her chest. The one after that is a set of keys to a black Range Rover parked in the driveway with a bow on it as big as she is.
“You can’t buy me a car!”
“I can.” I lean back on the couch. “I did. Next one, baby.”
By the time she gets to the bottom of the pile, she’s sitting in a mountain of wrapping paper with tears running down her face, and I’m so pleased with myself I could set the damn tree on fire.
Then she reaches behind it and pulls out one more box. It’s small and wrapped in red paper, and it’s not from me.
“This one’s for you,” she says, and holds it out to me with both hands. They’re shaking.
I take it. I can hear her heart pounding from across the room, and I can feel her through the bond, nervous, scared, and so full of something else it makes my chest ache. I open it.
Inside, on a bed of tissue paper, is a pregnancy test with two pink lines.
The whole world stops. I stare at it. I don’t breathe. I fucking can’t. Three hundred years, and I never once let myself think about this. I never let myself want it, because wanting a mate was already too much, and wanting more than that felt like asking to get my heart ripped out.
I look up at her. She’s on her knees in the wrapping paper, wiping her face with the back of her hand.
“I took it this morning,” she whispers. “Before I came down. I’ve been feeling weird for a week, and I didn’t want to say anything until I knew. I’m pregnant, Nik. We’re having a baby.”
I’m off the couch before I know I’m moving. I drop to my knees in front of her and pull her into my lap. I bury my face in her neck and breathe her in, and I smell it, there under her scent, so faint I missed it: something new and small and mine.
My shadows explode out of me and fill the whole room. The lights on the tree flicker. Every window in the house rattles.
