Lacey's Luhpynes [Beyond the Veil 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage and More)

by Honor James

  “I know but still.” She sighed and shook her head. “As long as he is going to be okay. That’s my main and only concern. I just have to have him okay. I need for us all to get on with life, I need for us to have our happily ever after, dammit.”

  “And we will, now, happy thoughts. We are happy he is alive and he is receiving the best care available. We are happy because he will pull through and come home with us. We are happy because we will all be together and be a family with our little one to join us soon enough. Happy thoughts only, damn it.”

  “Good. Gosh blessed it all. I need to be able to have you boys all to myself for a time. I mean it. You two are my world, well you and our son that will come around in a few months. But I can’t lose you now.”

  “We’re not going anywhere, Lace. Not now and not for a very long time. You are stuck with us, period.” Dropping a kiss on her lips, he sat back in the chair and pulled her closer. “Now, let’s just sit here and hold one another while we wait.”

  “That’s a very good thing. I love you, Zhubin. Thank you for talking me down from my insanity,” she said with a smile. “I think that I needed that. I needed you.” Taking a breath, she moved, adjusting in his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck, holding onto him while they waited for the doctors to come out and tell them how Ansell was. “Should you call your mom and dads and let them know about Ansell?”

  “I will, but not until we talk to the surgeon. I want to give them comprehensive information and not just freak them out. I’ll have to get someone to likely go pick them up at the Veil. They’ll all want to come and be here, which is understandable. He is family to us all,” he said softly.

  “I think that they would like that,” she said softly. “Yes, it will be good to be able to have them here but only after we know the truth of his condition. Let’s just hope that they won’t find out about Ansell being here before we contact them. That would be bad. Very bad.”

  “Hopefully they won’t,” he said. Leaning his head back against the wall, Zhubin shut his eyes. “My mother will kill me if she finds out from anyone besides us. And I’m not being dramatic, that woman will beat me into a bloody pulp before stomping on my entrails.”

  “Well then I suggest that we call the moment that the surgeons come out. Perhaps call her while they are talking so that you can relay information to her while they are talking. That might be the best of ideas, don’t you think?”

  “No, I’ll wait until they give us everything. I want to know absolutely every detail before I call her. She’ll expect answers immediately and has zero patience for human doctors. Even with her being on the other side of the Veil, she’d have the surgeons in tears on the floor right quick.”

  “Damn, I didn’t know that. Are you sure? I mean really are you sure that you shouldn’t call her now just to let her know?” She sighed and then said, “Okay, you are right. Well let’s hopefully get some news soon.”

  “I am always right, remember?” he asked, shooting her a mischievous grin. Laughing softly when she poked him in the chest, he hugged her tight. “I’m serious though, I know the woman well and it’s best to have everything lined up so when she demands details I can just give her everything.”

  She patted his chest and laughed, “Good thing I love you as much as I do, Zhu, or else I might be a little frustrated with you.” She did, however, close her eyes and sigh. “I think I just need to be held. That’s all that matters right now is that we are together. Right?” That they were there for Ansell.

  Nodding, he pulled her in tight and kissed her nose. “Close your eyes and relax. We can’t do anything until the surgeons come to talk to us and, according to Connie, that could be a good couple of hours. Of which”—he looked at his watch and groaned—“we’ve managed to kill a grand total of twenty-three minutes.”

  “Woo.” She frowned and rubbed her cheek to his chest and sighed. “Crap, hours, really?” Dammit she would not be able to survive the wait. “We might just have to take turns pacing the floors or something.” Lacey muttered, right before she yawned and closed her eyes.

  He let out a snort and stroked her hair gently. “I doubt you’ll be doing much pacing, love. Just relax and let it all go,” he said quietly. “I’m right here and I’m not going anywhere for a damned long time. Sleep for a while.”

  “That’s good,” she said with a sigh and rubbed her cheek to his chest. This was amazing, she loved the way that it felt. Even knowing that Ansell was in surgery she still found herself relaxing, letting go, and then was sound asleep in his arms.

  Chapter Twenty

  Two hours after they’d arrived at the hospital the surgeons came to speak to them. Ansell was going to be fine, there was some damage to an artery, thus the blood loss. But the rest was worse, he had torn ligaments and the joint had been damaged in the fight. They would need to do a secondary surgery for sure, possibly a third. They were going to do what repairs they could and then give him some time to let the swelling go down. He was fully out of danger and would heal well but they had to take things carefully because of his accelerated healing, which could put a damper on their efforts if they didn’t take extreme care.

  Once the surgeons headed back into the OR Zhubin called his mother. There was a lot of yelling, some shrieking and then there were questions after questions. He’d been right to wait and lucky, very lucky, no one else had called her. After getting off the phone he called one of the other Luhpynes to go and pick her and his fathers up from the Veil. They were indeed coming through immediately so they’d all be there when Ansell got out and woke up that first time.

  Finally collapsing into a chair again, he ran a hand through his hair and let out a breath. “Round one with Mother is out of the way. Round two will be in person. I really hope that she gets here just as they wheel him out, it’ll save me from taking the brunt of the next batch of questions.”

  “Well let’s hope that she will be easy on us because of me expecting and all that?” she asked hopefully. “And yeah, your mom will totally have a field day with us when she gets here. Let’s hope and pray that she will give us a pass,” she said with a smile. “But at least we know that he’s going to be okay. At least we know that he will pull out of this.” That was what was important.

  Nodding, he pulled her closer to him and kissed her. “He is going to be fine, I said he would be and, as I mentioned earlier, I am always right.” Grinning against her lips, he kissed her once more before leaning back in his seat. “And we have a little bit of time before they arrive to prepare for Hurricane Gennette to land.”

  “Oh, you are a bit of a brat,” she said with a grin. “And yeah, we do have a little bit of time before your mom comes. How about you take me and feed me? Now that we know he’s going to be fine, take me and feed me because I’m starving.” She was always either starving or sleeping. Wonderful.

  Laughing at that, he pushed back up from his chair and dragged her to her feet. “Damn, woman, you are just so demanding,” he teased with a grin. Wrapping an arm around her shoulders they wandered into the hall and, after only getting lost twice, found their way to the cafeteria.

  When they got into the cafeteria she inhaled the scents and sighed. “Oh lordy, this smells so good.” She felt her stomach rumbling. “Damn all I seem to do is sleep, eat, sleep, eat and sex,” she added with a grin. “There are times I swear that you boys hide from me because of my drive.” Which was the truth.

  “We don’t hide from you, we never would,” he said. Then he laughed softly. “Okay, so maybe that one time we hid out but it was the only time. I swear,” he added when she glared at him. “You were off your rocker crazy that day, Lace, it was hide out or possibly lose some part we were fond of.”

  “This is very true. I swear that day I don’t know what the hell came over me but I was desperate for you boys. I couldn’t seem to get enough of you two. But at least that’s a little better, right?” she asked with a grin. “Besides, you know you love my increased libido.” She sure di
d.

  “Yes, I love your increased libido, as long as it’s not at work in the most inconvenient of spots. Like Briar’s turf, that was damned embarrassing,” he said, making a face. “I still can’t believe she was laughing that hard, there was really no reason for that.”

  “Except for the fact that I shoved you into the corpse freezer so that I could jump you. I think that we should keep our office blinds closed from now on though because the cleaning lady the other night got far too much of an eyeful of us.”

  “Oh Gods, don’t remind me of that.” He groaned. Reaching the buffet line, he handed her a plate on a tray with utensils. Grabbing another for himself, he followed along with her as she started to choose food. “We’ll likely get nailed with her bill for therapy.”

  “Yeah, no freaking kidding there. I swear that everyone and their brother is making bets on when and where I will attack you boys next.” She giggled as they got into the line and she began to fill her plate up. “Oh god this looks good,” she said with a sigh and licked her lips. “Yummers.”

  He snickered. “You should know that we’re in that betting pool too. I won’t share what our bets are, yes ‘bets’ as in multiple, but know that so far we’ve been cleaning house on each and every one. So far we haven’t been kicked from the pool but we’re waiting for it.”

  “Oh dear lord, seriously?” she asked with a laugh. “That’s too funny. I cannot believe that you boys are in on that pool.” She hesitated and asked, “So how close have you gotten to winning the bets? And how many times have you pushed me to jump you when it was close to time for one of you winning?”

  He popped a grape in his mouth and chewed, a smug look on his face. “Darling, we’ve won every pot since we found out about it. We’re up nearly four thousand dollars, just to give you a clue how hardcore this all is. And we have never once had to push you into jumping us. Though, I will admit, we may have mildly influenced you once or twice into hurrying up your decision to jump our bones.”

  “Holy hell, are you serious?” she asked with a laugh. “Wow. I’m just so shocked that there is so much cash on the line. I mean for real? Four grand?” She laughed and then added, “You guys are so taking me on an amazing vacation before our child is born with that cash.”

  “Like we need it, we were actually just winning to ensure the others didn’t. We didn’t really have any plans for the money. If you want though, you can use it to get all the baby items you need to get or start his college fund or something of that nature.”

  “That sounds like a plan to me. I really think that we should do that. I look forward to being able to outfit our baby’s room with everything that he will need, on both sides of the Veil. And sadly with Ansell being hurt, he will be home with me so I will pester him and make him sorry that he ever got hurt in the first place.”

  “Better him than me,” he said. But with him stuffing more grapes in his mouth it was a little hard to be sure. Though the smirk on his lips definitely led her to believe she’d actually heard right.

  That had her laughing. God, she couldn’t help herself from laughing. She knew that was horrible, she shouldn’t be feeling this happy with Ansell being hurting but she was. Weird, she knew. “I love you, Zhu, thank you for taking my mind off of all of this.”

  “It’s better to laugh than to cry,” he said with a shrug. “Besides, Ansell wouldn’t want you being sad, he’d want you to laugh and be happy that he’s just gotten stuck with you at home for an indeterminate amount of time. A time where you can boss him around.”

  “This is very true.” She sighed and shook her head. “And yeah, he’s going to be ready to kill me by the time he’s able to go back to work. I’m sure that he’s going to be begging to come back to work after a short time, won’t he?”

  He tipped his head slightly and then nodded. “Yeah, I’d place bets on that.” He grinned. “He’ll either be calling me by day three to let him come into work or he’ll have settled his fate and ride it out. I think it may depend on what you do to him the first couple of days.”

  “See, exactly. And I plan on withholding sex from him until the doctors say that he is back to one hundred percent, so you can count on those calls,” she said simply. “Poor guy will have a hell of a case of blue balls, but with what he pulled on us by getting hurt, he deserves it.”

  “I seriously doubt he planned it, darling. It happened though and we’ll get through it,” he said softly. Putting a hand on her back, he leaned in and kissed her. “Don’t be too hard on him, please. You know that he wouldn’t get hurt on purpose, not with you in his life and Junior on the way.”

  “I know that. Believe me I know that. And I won’t be hard on him. Well, not too hard. I am going to be a little hard on him though because I want him to recall that jumping into a dangerous situation like he did was just plain silly.”

  “Yeah, but he probably had no clue what he was dealing with and was trying to keep the mission on the rails. Any noise would have been bad in our books,” he said softly. He stopped and dug out his phone, putting it to his ear. “Hey, Ax, what’s going on?”

  Nodding a few times, he made grunts in his throat and snorted a couple of times. “Well aren’t they just idiots,” he muttered. “No, he’s doing good. We spoke to the surgeons and they’ve stopped the bleeding and are getting to work on his shoulder now. The doc wasn’t completely sure but it sounds like there’s at least one more surgery in his near future. Yeah, I know, so glad it’s not my ass being put through that. Especially considering Lacey’s stance on it and the hell she’ll be putting him through soon enough.” He grinned at her and mouthed an “I love you” to her.

  “No, that’s great, let me know if you find out anything more. What?” he asked and then laughed. “Yeah, I have Byrne picking them up at the Veil. I did warn him about my mother but he said it would be fine. That boy’s got balls of titanium on him to actually think he’ll make it through that drive without wanting to kill her at least twice. Yup, keep you in the loop,” he said and hung up.

  “They got the other two from the sewers and put them into interrogation. They started babbling a mile a minute as soon as Artaxias flashed a little fang their way. They were paid to go underground and wander around toward the warehouse. They had a map and were told just to get into place and say a few key phrases. Their bank accounts support that, they each got fifty thousand for a couple hours of work.”

  “So they were the ruse to keep us from noticing the change in our guys? Has anyone found him, by the way?” She just hoped that he wasn’t dead, but sadly she wasn’t holding her breath on that one. Sad but true facts.

  “No, the teams have been searching along the route he was supposed to take and expanding out. They only know of one stop he was supposed to make, which was our last contact from him. So they’re working from that point in and from the warehouse out.” Swiping his wrist over the scanner he nodded to the worker who had tallied up their meals. Walking with her to a table, he pulled out a chair for her and then settled at her side.

  “I really hope that they find him alive,” she whispered. “But I have a feeling they won’t. Which is just downright sad. But unfortunately that happens far too often in our field, doesn’t it?” She looked down at her food and took a bite. “Oh this is actually good.” Surprisingly good for it being a hospital, actually. “And you are damn right I’m going to give Ansell hell. Gosh blessed it all.”

  “Jumping topics again, oh goodie, my favorite type of dinner conversation.” At her look he just smiled and batted his lashes a couple of times. Picking up the sandwich he’d chosen, he began to eat and nodded. “Not bad at all, for hospital food that is.”

  “You know that right now my brain is jumping topic to topic and I’m just trying to grab them as we go along. I can’t seem to help it. I don’t like jumping topics, but I swear it’s like pregnancy has sucked every single ounce of my brain power from me.” Because it seemed as if she couldn’t hold a thought longer than a minute and was like a bu
nny on crack when it came to things like sex, or her men. She was seriously going through some weird shit with this pregnancy.

  “Not touching that one with a forty-foot pole even on a dare for a large cash prize.” Turning in his seat he looked at her, brushing her hair back with a light finger. “Baby, don’t worry about it so much. Yes, it’s more than likely the pregnancy, it makes sense along with all the other changes. This fits right in. Try not to fret about it though, that just causes stress that you don’t need.”

  “I swear if pregnancy is going to be like this every single time I think that, we will have words. Many words. Not all of them nice ones.” She touched her belly though and grinned. “But they will be far from this little one and any other little ones we might be blessed with. I’m a lucky woman.” She was bipolar at this point with her pregnancy and hormones running amuck.

  Rolling his eyes at her, he leaned in and kissed her, hard and fast. “Eat your dinner and then we’ll go back up and wait for Ansell to come out of surgery. Besides, you know you are loving being pregnant, even with all the weirdness you have associated with it.”

  “Oh I am totally loving it but there is an assload of weirdness associated with it. I wish I would have known about all this weird before the pregnancy so that I could have at least warned you guys. Right?”

  “Darling, as I’m sure any woman out there will tell you, every pregnancy is different. What happens in one may not happen in any of the others. So I wouldn’t be going into round two thinking that you’ll have these same weird things to deal with. You’ll likely have a whole whack of new ones.” He smiled at her, big and toothy.

  “Wonderful. You guys are going to be ready to kill me by the end of this one, what makes you think that there will be another one?” Oh she wanted more than one child, she wanted a large family and with Ansell and Zhubin she would have one, thankfully.