Quickening, Volume 2

by Amy Lane

  “Yeah,” I agreed, sacrificing my own temper tantrum for what they needed. “It was a win. Good job, guys. Maybe next time, some warning before the vampires share blood and I get it close up.” I turned to Teague, shaking my head. “You drove home naked, you dumbass. Didn’t you remember to pack the sweats in the SUV?”

  Teague grunted. “By the time we felt like we could quit running, we were halfway home. My assprint was already on the seat.”

  There was a collective groan, and Teague turned to the room. “Yeah, think on that the next time one of you wants to drive, assholes.”

  I smiled because I had to. I’d committed. I wasn’t going to tell them I was hurt and left out, or that I worried they’d never let me back into the little club that I’d worked so hard to build. I wasn’t going to tell them that I felt cheated because I’d finally gotten used to leadership and now I had to give up the reins when my body—which I had always known was frail and human—had assumed a different purpose than I’d envisioned six months ago.

  But some of the sadness must have permeated my smile, because Green cleared his throat. “Now that this has been addressed, people…,” he said delicately. One by one they all filed out, sort of. Lambent was carrying Kyle like a groom carried his bride, and Teague and Max had Phillip and Marcus between them the same way.

  “It’s a shame these guys don’t show up on film,” Max chuckled. “I’d want this pic.”

  “I would so totally post that in the front room,” Mario agreed. “With captions and….”

  They disappeared outside and down the hallway, presumably going toward the darkling. Renny drew up the rear, her tail twitching as if to say “That was fun, let’s go kill rabbits now,” and I watched her leave with dark purpose in my eyes. If that bitch thought I was going to knit her another pair of socks….

  I welcomed the shift in the bed as Green sat on one side of me and Bracken sat on the other. I was still a little miffed at Green and sympathetic with Bracken, so I leaned on him and wound my hands through Nicky’s hair as he crouched on the floor next to us.

  “They left us behind,” Nicky said, the sulky hurt in his voice a perfect counterpoint to what I felt.

  “Yeah,” I whined, unable to comfort him.

  “You ordered them to do it!” Bracken stated, glowering at Green over my head.

  “I did,” Green said blandly. “But please note: I didn’t go with them. And did you notice who wasn’t in the room?”

  “Grace,” I said promptly. I’d taken her blood—she hadn’t even known about the run.

  “And Arturo,” Nicky said. “I knew he was pissed about something today.”

  “Indeed.” I looked up at Green and saw a slight smile on his lips. “They were sidelined too, children, like Mom and Dad, while the kids went out and took care of the young-people thing.”

  I thought about the dynamic in my room just a few minutes past and let out a small laugh. “Yeah. That there was… yeah.” I sighed. “God, I feel old.”

  “What are we, luv? Twenty-one?”

  I grunted, that “little bit tired” moving over into exhausted. “Twenty-two.”

  “In your dotage,” Green said, rubbing the salt in.

  “Good, boys. Grandma needs her nap.”

  Was anything resolved? Sort of. Apparently I wasn’t going on runs anymore, and someone had to. Apparently Green got to call some of those shots, and we’d all been reminded a couple of times that he was good at it. And apparently if I was getting sidelined, the entire A-team was getting stuck with me.

  Green moved to scoop me up into his arms, and Bracken stripped the covers off the bed. It was two in the morning, which was about two hours later than I’d stayed up all Christmas break. The men climbed in with me naked, even though I knew Green and Bracken would probably get up after I fell asleep. It didn’t matter.

  Yeah. We really were in this together.

  A MONTH later, we were in the home stretch.

  Green had let me off bedrest and okayed me to go back to school, which was a relief, and Hallow did his mind/administrative mojo thing and got me into a water aerobics class during my rather lengthy break.

  I was officially in my third trimester, and getting out of bed to go to the bathroom felt like an Olympic event. The thought of walking the campus this way scared the hell out of me. The idea of swimming was heavenly. The idea of pulling a swimsuit on over the thing my stomach had become, not so much.

  The day before school started, Bracken—who had done this drill with me before—approached me cautiously, a two-piece lycra object in his hands.

  “It’s green,” I said suspiciously.

  “You look good in green.” The caution was well-founded, given the pile of other lycra objects already discarded at my feet.

  “I look like shit in everything, Bracken. Stop the bullshit and tell me why I should try on this particular thing.”

  Bracken straightened his massive shoulders, threw the top over his arm and held out the bottom. “Note,” he said, “the gusset that pulls out for the stomach, the lycra shorts meant to hide your—in your words—massive tree-trunk thighs. Also note the top is completely serviceable, with a fully functioning foam bra to house your girls, which even I know are in screaming pain, and an expando-apron to cover—again, your words—the entire other planet rising up from your body without your permission. Note the flattering color, a nice emerald green with little butterflies on the hem of the apron, and the way the apron buttons to the lycra shorts so that it does not—your words!—float up like a circus tent that will haul you down to the briny deep.”

  I tried. Goddess, I tried. But I couldn’t hold a straight angry-cat face—not after all that meticulous attention to detail.

  “Do they have it in burgundy?” I asked.

  He nodded, a flicker of hope in his pond-shadow eyes.

  “Then get both colors.”

  “You’re not even going to try it on?”

  I looked down at the dead soldiers at my feet, all of them presented with such hope, only to be thrown away in a hormonal burst of self-loathing.

  “No, beloved,” I said wearily. “I’m going to trust your judgment, sit down and knit, and try not to panic about getting through the next few weeks without Green.”

  Bracken sighed and ventured closer with the swimsuit. (He’d caught a bikini in the face early on in this endeavor—I didn’t blame him for not wanting to come near.)

  “Try it on,” he said, palming the small of my back. I was standing in a bra and underwear, my ginormous stomach exposed and drooping. “You will look beautiful, your body will be supported, and you’ll feel like you can do something for yourself that will make you feel better.”

  I smiled gamely at him. “You and Green gonna make out while I do?” The guys had made love almost nightly during the past month, all combinations of the three. The charge it gave the hill—and me—wasn’t nearly as big as when I was involved, and I was getting seriously backed up. Green and Bracken had become experts at… well, Nicky called it a “lick-me-up,” but that felt a little crude for their tongues between my thighs, and that hopeful way they looked at me as I arched in a gentle climax that didn’t overtake my entire expanding uterus.

  I missed being small enough to get thrown around between the lot of them like a fuck muffin. I just really did, and I was wondering if I would ever get back enough of my body to do that again.

  And Bracken was being so patient with the bathing-suit thing when normally he would have given as good as he got, and I couldn’t decide if it made me feel better or worse. On the one hand, I didn’t mind a good shouting match. On the other, it felt like if he really did yell at me, I’d fall apart. I think he was unsure as well—hence his serious work for the position of husband of the year.

  I leaned on him and sighed, letting him help me with the bottom and taking my bra off so he could slide the top over my head and do the catch behind my neck.

  I stared at it in the mirror behind the bathroom door
, feeling cumbersome and obvious and stupid. Then I felt his palm at my back again and his breath feathering my temple. I looked at him in the mirror and saw his eyes, overlarge as they were, shiny and besotted and luminous.

  He’s not just blowing sunshine. He really thinks I’m beautiful.

  My heart stuttered and my own eyes got shiny, and at that moment Green walked in. He looked at us in the mirror first, his eyes taking in my body at almost seven months along and the acceptance on my face, that rare moment when I felt unapologetically beautiful, and his mobile, full mouth softened into a sweet smile.

  He ventured closer and flanked me, putting his hand between my shoulder blades and leaning down so I could look at the three of us.

  “You look lovely carrying our future,” he said.

  I nodded, biting my lip. “Yeah?” So uncertain. I’d finally gotten a handle on how much they loved me, and then everything changed with the growing life in my body.

  “Yeah,” he confirmed. He put his hand on my taut belly and smiled. “They’re awake, but quiet. What do you think they’re thinking when they’re like that?”

  I thought darkly about everything I didn’t know about babies, elvish or otherwise. “Mischief,” I said succinctly. “How to drive me bugshit when they come out.”

  Bracken smirked, and Green smiled delightedly. “I suspect so,” he agreed. “Bracken was a lovely baby, though. Curious, and his mother was terrified once we realized he was vulnerable to bleeding out. He could barely walk, and you know the first place he went, don’t you?”

  I smiled and couldn’t stop the stupid tears, because it had been seven months of pregnancy and seven months of not even seeing his eyes watching us, remembering us, yearning for the time when we could touch. A part of me wished he would just stay gone, because… because peace, right? He would be at peace. But a part of me was holding on to the moment when he would come back, and when the child I’d been before I’d conceived children of my own could live again.

  “Adrian’s,” I whispered, heartbroken.

  Their arms wrapped around me, and for a quiet, communal moment, we missed him together. But I didn’t have any more time to dwell on his absence than I’d had since he’d last been seen in the garden. I had newer, more immediate griefs to tend.

  “So you leave tomorrow?” I asked, trying to keep my voice brisk. We’d been facing this ever since we’d first come back from San Francisco flush with victory, expanding Green’s holdings and his measure of safety.

  “Yes,” he said, voice aching. Of course he ached. He’d had to leave a pregnant wife before—and it hadn’t turned out well, had it?

  “I’m not helpless,” I said, making my voice as sturdy as I could, considering I was talking against his chest. “I’ve spent a couple hours in the common room for the last two weeks, and I can keep doing that.” We’d discussed this before. “Bracken’s like… like the maiden aunt I never wanted, so he’ll make sure I don’t get too tired, and Nicky can pick me up and take me to bed if Bracken gets busy.” We’d actually had a trial run of this, because even though I understood magic shape-shifter strength, I still didn’t believe a falcon could lift a Volkswagen. Apparently, one could.

  “I know,” Green said patiently. He understood that I needed to reassure us all, so he let me keep talking.

  “And Hallow is at school too. LaMark and Mario are… are they really doing nothing but following Bracken and me around all day?”

  They didn’t even have classes. LaMark had apparently taken enough to graduate, the lucky fucker, and Mario had decided he didn’t want to graduate—he was happy enough being on the new A-team with Teague and Max and Lambent. I was trying very hard not to hate them all.

  Speaking of which—“Renny’s coming too,” I remembered. “She and Nicky have the same classes this semester, so they’re together.” Jack was taking the Monday-Wednesday-Friday track this semester along with Cami, Dylan, and Connor. I realized that I was going to miss Jack—not least because he was finally proving of use to us and no longer being one big passive-aggressive ball of hatred-o’-Cory. But I would also miss the chance to see Teague when he dropped Jacky off, and the fact that our little A-team was being all secretive and doing something that none of the parents were supposed to know about had not escaped my notice, not with the blooding of a couple of vampires every other night. (I found if I had them bleed on a saltine and then ate that, I wouldn’t get nauseous. Fucking saltines, they were the superpower of food.) It had just been nice to know that I’d have an excuse to see Teague and maybe get him to confess what the kids were up to, since Mom and Dads had all agreed to let them play.

  “You will be well taken care of,” Green said, pulling back and kissing me on the forehead. I looked into his beautiful green eyes and felt the same magnetic pull I’d felt almost three years ago, when I’d thought Adrian would be my first and my one and my only. Funny, I didn’t feel older and all grown up when I saw Green like that. I was just as young and just as starstruck as I’d been when I’d realized Green and Adrian were lovers, and I wanted them to remain so, and I wanted to be with them too.

  Bracken pulled me against his back, and I closed my eyes, stupid in love with him too.

  “We’ll be fine,” I said, still melancholy but also feeling better. I was older. I had dealt with his absences before. We had a routine now, and I had survived all sorts of shit I hadn’t known about then. I wasn’t sure if I was going to handle being a parent, but I had this.

  It would all be good.

  Bracken: Pop Goes the Weasel

  IT WAS so not good that Green was gone.

  For one thing, he had apparently been unconsciously fixing her acne since she’d first developed it with pregnancy. The day he left, she started to develop blotches. By the next day, they were spots. She was too proud to ask anyone to fix them, so I talked to Lambent and Hallow, and they started taking her arm as they walked by just so they could cure her of spots before she realized she was getting them. Such a small thing, such a human-vanity thing, but it was one more thing she didn’t need.

  Her ankles started to swell by the time she walked across campus the first time. She complained because her shoes were too tight, and when I realized how swollen she was, I scooped her up and took her to Hallow, ignoring her protests that we had a class and Hallow had his own office hours.

  Hallow was as invested as the rest of the hill in making sure she survived this pregnancy. He didn’t even wait for us to knock, already very sweetly asking the undergrad in his office to leave as I drew near.

  He actually took Cory from my arms in the hallway, then brought us both into the office and sat with her on his lap, monitoring her breathing and heart rate.

  “Elevated,” he said after a moment. “Cory, your blood pressure is elevated.”

  “Should exercise help that?” she said hopefully. “I mean, the walking, the swimming—”

  “Yes, and I recommend both things. But no running through campus to get to your next class. Let Bracken help you.”

  She half laughed. “But aren’t people going to notice when he’s carrying….” She gestured to herself. “You know, me?”

  “They already think he’s freakishly strong,” Hallow dismissed, and I tried not to take offense at the word “freakish.” “The thing is, Lady Cory, you can’t get winded, not with high blood pressure after such a long time off your feet. Walk until you can’t, then let Bracken help you. Swim and exercise that way, and make sure you walk, just up to the garden or around the house, on your off days. But don’t push it too hard. Your muscles are stretched to the limit right now, and your heart is laboring with the extra people. Please listen to me and take it easy.”

  I was almost alarmed when she nodded meekly and sighed. It wasn’t until later that I realized that, for once, she really did plan to follow all of Hallow’s instructions without fighting him.

  When I broached this with her, knowing my eyebrows were doing that “suspicious Bracken” thing she complained a
bout so much, she looked at me with a little bit of fear chasing across her features.

  “Green’s gone, Bracken. I’m not going to tempt fate now, when he’s not in my bed every night to cure me!”

  Nevertheless, I told Green at his phone call that night, and watched in relief as he ticked two days off the electronic calendar he’d had installed on all our phones.

  The one good thing I could tell him was that swimming seemed to be a success. I had not been allowed into the all-women aerobics class, but I was allowed to sit in the bleachers on the side. I’d spent much of the time watching her perform the water calisthenics, deciding that the exercises really were good for her, and part of the time smelling… sensing… the air.

  There was a strange werewolf in that class.

  At the end of class, I stayed at my seat and pretended to read while the women grabbed their towels and walked toward the locker room.

  The chlorine confused me—strong human chemicals really did interfere with a sidhe’s sense of smell—but by the time the women were done filing by, I’d narrowed it down to three or four of them. I wished I could say more, but they’d all been eyeing me with suspicion and irritation, and their hostility definitely threw off my sense of smell. Apparently Cory wasn’t the only woman who didn’t like being seen in her swimsuit.

  LaMark and Mario had agreed to break for lunch while she was in the pool, and Renny had the same class. I almost welcomed the time alone, something we didn’t get too much of at the hill. I used it to do homework—we had a class in warfare that employed a war game model. For that first day of class, I sat and plotted three ways to defeat Napoleon. Cory said I was awesome, and I told her that if humans had been meant to wage war, they wouldn’t have been mortal. The fey could regenerate limbs and come back swinging—they got serious about their war games. It was easily my favorite class after the engineering courses that had taught me how to help break into the jail. Not that I missed hurtling through the air and busting a hole through a concrete prison, but it had been nice to use those skills.