“You’re not Aidan,” Barric announced walking into the living room.
“He’s back in bed. Sit down we need to talk.”
“Can’t I get coffee first, Magi Montero?” He yawned.
“Make it snappy. We have a lot to discuss before Aidan wakes up.”
Once Barric was caffeinated he joined me on the sofa and reached out for his baby brother. I handed the baby off and narrowed my eyes on him.
“What did I do now?” He sighed.
“Your little brother is running my mate ragged at night,” I crossed my arms.
“I can’t help when he cries. Babies cry. That’s what they do.”
“Okay. What’s the deal how are you sleeping through the night with the baby wailing four foot from your bed?”
“Shit!” Barric hissed under his breath.
“What?”
“Crap!”
“Enough scat. What the hell is wrong with you?” I growled.
Baby Max wailed and I cringed. Barric and I both watched the ceiling ready for an angry Aidan to stomp down the stairs and scoop the baby up again. The baby fell quiet and Aidan stayed asleep above our heads.
“When I first moved in, I wasn’t used to hearing servants scurrying around. They kept waking me up. So I charmed my pillows to block out the noise. I’ll reverse the spell before bed tonight, I promise,” Barric said and bit his lip.
“Good, because I have a sneaking suspicion Aidan’s pregnant.”
“Does that mean Max and I are getting the boot?” He didn’t look at me as he asked the question.
“No, it means, you and I have to start picking up some of the responsibility. We should’ve been all along. Aidan never woke me up, so I assumed he was enjoying taking care of Max or at least okay with it. I was wrong. If you want to raise this baby, you have to get with the program. Your parents are coming to the tree trimming party this weekend. I’m going to get to the bottom of this and we’ll go from there. Max can’t live like this forever. He doesn’t know his fate is uncertain, but tension isn’t good for a pup.”
“I’m not letting them give him away to strangers.”
“No one wants that, Barric,” I said.
I opened my mouth to ask if the baby belonged to both of his parents but realized he might know the truth. Until I knew for sure there was no reason to sully his respect for his parents.
“Here, give me the baby and you go uncharm your damn pillows and be quiet about it. If you wake up Aidan, I’ll have you scrubbing every inch of the house without magic.”
“Sorry, Magi Montero,” Barric said as he headed upstairs.
“We’ll get this all worked out, Max, I promise,” I whispered to the baby.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Aidan
My dreams were broken fragments of real life and my deepest fears.
Barric slept on the kitchen counter and Luc was down in his lab. Baby Max wailed from Barric’s bedroom, but I was too fat to get up and tend to him.
“Honey? Barric? Can someone get the baby? Please? He needs help?”
No one called back. Grunting, I rolled to my side and swung my feet to the floor. My ankles were the size of dragon legs and my pregnant belly hung down over my knees eating my lap. I pushed against the mattress trying to rise to my feet. I grunted and screwed up my face. Pain shot up my back and back down. It squeezed the small of my back and a gush of water washed down my legs.
“LUC! ALPHA! I NEED HELP! MY WATER’S BROKEN? ARE YOU HERE? BARRIC? GLORIA? ZERA? ALPHA? ANYONE? I NEED HELP! MAX NEEDS HELP! MY BABY’S COMING! HELP ME!”
The smell of bacon wafted into the bedroom from downstairs. My stomach lurched. I opened my mouth to yell at Barric for feeding himself while Max starved to death.
I startled awake. Cold sweat dripped down my nose and drenched the sheets. I touched my stomach. It flip-flopped but was just as lean and flat as when I fell asleep. It was dark out again and the bed was empty.
“It’s the middle of the night. I think,” my wolf said.
Who’s cooking bacon in the middle of the night?
I groaned as my stomach lurched again. Swallowing hard I rolled out of bed.
“Alpha?” I called out for Luc over our mate link.
“Mate? Are you okay?”
I didn’t get a chance to answer. My stomach lurched hard as if it meant to crawl up my throat and right out of my mouth. I dashed into the bathroom and slammed the door behind me. How was I this sick? I hadn’t eaten all day! The toilet and me became better acquainted than I liked that morning. My wolf howled inside of my chest feeling his own version of whatever tried to kill me.
Someone opened the bedroom door. I slid my heel back to keep the bathroom door shut. I was a mess and didn’t want company.
“Aidan?” Luc said through the door without trying the knob. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know, Alpha,” I panted in between bouts of sickness.
“You slept all day yesterday. I was starting to worry. Even an exhausted wolf can only sleep so long.”
“What time is it?” I asked taking slow steady breaths not to jar my stomach.
I slid back until I could sit leaning back against the side of the fancy bathtub.
“Almost 6 in the morning,” Luc said.
“I think I’m dying,” I said. “I’m sick. I slept too long. Something’s not right.”
“Mate,” Luc said gently through the door.
I tried to clear my head, but whenever I thought too hard my stomach lurched. So thinking was just as bad as the smell coming from downstairs.
“Kill the bacon!” I managed to say without throwing up again. “Get it out of the house and burn it at the stake!”
Baby Max wailed somewhere in the house and I swore under my breath.
“Have you guys fed him?” I grunted through the door.
“He’s well taken care of,” Luc said and tried the doorknob.
It twisted and I stopped it from opening with my foot.
“Can I come in?” He asked meeting the resistance.
“I’m a mess. I’m dying! No! You cannot come in here!” I panted.
“Aidan, you’re not dying. At least, not anytime soon. I think we’ve conceived, sweetheart,” Luc said from the other side of the door.
My mouth hung open in a wide O. How could I be pregnant and not know it? Only, maybe I did. I was too tired and cranky. Everything either pissed me off or made me want to cry. The bacon tried to murder me from downstairs.
“Not dying,” my wolf said.
Then I was sick again. Luc took advantage of my stomach’s acrobatics to open the door and come inside the bathroom. His scent was calm, cool, and collected. It might even have made me feel better if my head wasn’t over a toilet. He gently gathered my hair in his hands and pulled it back away from my face. He patted my back and reached over to turn on the sink. Then he filled the cup we kept for brushing our teeth with water and opened the medicine cabinet. He never let go of my hair or tugged on it with all of his moving around. The man had nerves of steel, which was a good thing, because my last nerve broke sometime during my first bout of morning sickness.
When my stomach stopped lurching, I set back on my heels and wiped my mouth on the sleeve of my robe. Luc grabbed a bottle from the medicine cabinet and took out a single tablet. He broke it apart and dumped its contents into the water glass and swirled it around.
“This will help,” he offered me the cup.
I crinkled my nose up at the rose-colored water. It didn’t look natural or appetizing.
“What is it?” I grunted.
“An old Montero concoction for morning sickness and hangovers,” Luc grinned.
“One treatment for both?” I arched a brow.
“Also works wonder for the stomach flu from what my carrier always said.”
“It better work. Looks like I’m drinking a vampire’s watered-down leftovers,” I frowned and took the cup from him.
“Sip it,” he sai
d.
He grabbed a hair tie left behind from another day from the back of the toilet and pulled my hair back out of my face for good. Then he stood back and waited for me to test his concoction.
“Looks like a fairy bled in a cup,” my wolf groaned.
I trust Alpha. I think.
“Nothing can be worse than this,” he groaned again.
“Go ahead. It’s safe,” Luc assured me as he sat down on the edge of the bathtub.
I took a deep breath and tipped the cup close enough to my mouth to stick my tongue in. The cool liquid tasted pleasantly like peppermint with a hint of ginger ale. Other flavors hid in the background, but my foggy mind couldn’t put its finger on them.
“Not as bad as it looks,” I said and took a sip.
The cool water trickled down my throat into my stomach bringing with it almost instant relief. I sighed and took another. After a few minutes my belly was calm, and half the water was left.
“Try to finish it if you can. It has a lasting effect,” Luc squeezed my shoulder.
After I finished the rose-colored water all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and never get back out. Instead, I crawled into the shower. Luc cleaned up the bathroom like a better sport than I figured most Alphas would be. I stood under the cool water not bothering with soap at first. Instead, I let the cool water wash away the grim and frustration of the morning. The bacon scent finally disappeared, and my stomach stopped with the threats of a second early morning revolt. Just as I reached for my shampoo my phone rang from the bedroom. I groaned and reached for the knob to turn the water off.
“I’ll get it,” Luc said stopping me before I turned the shower off. “I need to send Barric to the store anyway.”
“Don’t tell either of the girls I’m pregnant,” I said as he exited the bathroom.
Luc didn’t answer and I grumbled under my breath. The last thing I needed today was for Gloria and Zera to show up here fighting over who would be more helpful during my pregnancy. Despite sleeping for almost a full twenty-four hours I wanted to go back to bed. My arms and legs felt as if someone replaced my bones with lead weights and holding my head up took all my concentration. My stomach growled, but I didn’t trust the traitor enough to consider eating.
I turned the shower off and sat down on the edge of the tub. Curling up and sleeping in the bathtub definitely crossed my mind as I gathered the energy to standup and grab a towel. I was still pondering whether it was too early to pull the pregnancy card and ask Luc to carry me to bed when he came back into the bathroom.
“Barric’s on the way to the pharmacy to grab a pregnancy test,” he announced. “He took Baby Max with him.”
“How bad are the roads?”
“Half and half, but I enchanted his car myself. It’s prepared for all weather,” Luc squeezed my shoulders.
I leaned my head against his stomach. His scent was nervous and his muscles tense.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked not moving away from my firm comfy ab pillow.
“I don’t want you to worry, but there’s another ongoing hacking attempt on your program.”
“Mother-fucker!” I swore under my breath.
Luc stepped back and looked down at me. I usually wasn’t foul mouthed, but this shit was getting old.
“The girls called Titus and he’ll be over as soon as he can.”
“Fuck that!” I growled and pushed myself to my feet.
Exhaustion fled before my frustrated rage.
“I’m going home to see who the hell has balls enough to fuck with my livelihood.”
“I understand you’re frustrated,” Luc said as he followed me into the bedroom and then into the walk-in closet where my clothes were, “but don’t you think you should rest? I don’t want this mess to ruin our happy day.”
“I’ll be a lot happier once I’m not both starving and afraid of throwing up and there’s not an asshole fucking with a program, I’ve spent the whole of my adult life perfecting!” I snarled.
“I’m going with you. We’ll all go. I’ll call Barric and tell him and Baby Max to meet us there.”
“Fine. Do what you want,” I said, but smiled to myself.
I didn’t like the idea of being away from him under normal circumstances. I certainly didn’t want to drive forty-eight minutes all by myself. It was a short drive, but in true-mate miles it as well have been across the damn Atlantic ocean.
“I’ll even drive.”
“Fine. I’ll let you do that,” I said.
“Are you happy about the baby?” Luc stepped in between me and the rack of clothes.
“I will be when it stops trying to kill me.”
“I think you’re hangry.”
“Can we pick up some burgers at Patty’s on the way?” I smirked at him.
“There’s the smile I needed to see,” Luc opened his arms to me.
“We need to figure out what we’re doing with the hacker and Max.”
“His parents are coming to the party this weekend. We’ll get to the bottom of it then,” Luc said and kissed the top of my head.
“Promise?”
“Even if I have to eat Harvey to make it happen,” Luc growled.
“You’re sexy when you talk like that, but my stomach isn’t going to let me romp.”
“You go sit down. Just tell me what you want from the closet and I’ll bring it out to you.”
“Thanks, and can I get some more watered-down vampire leftovers, please?” I asked as I headed to the bed.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Luc
After I helped Aidan get dressed and delivered him another, larger, glass of my family’s secret recipe I left him to rest while I called Barric. My apprentice wasn’t fond of the idea of driving to Springfield with a baby in the backseat, but when he realized he’d be home alone if he didn’t tag along, he quickly agreed to meet us there. I called Gloria and gave her a head’s up on Aidan’s possible condition and our arrival.
“That’s great!” She said over the phone. Then her voice fell. “Or not. What if the attack on the company is someone trying to fish you guys out to stop the prophecy?”
“It has crossed my mind.”
“I’ll meet you guys halfway. Strength in numbers,” she said.
“We’re stopping at Patty’s for some burgers. We could meet up there.”
“I’m on my way out the door now. Zera can let Titus in. He didn’t seem too bothered meeting a harpy the first time he was here.”
“We’re not quite out the door,” I told her.
“I don’t mind the longer drive. Keep my brother safe,” she said and ended the call.
“Aidan’s going to eat you,” my wolf snickered. “He said not to tell the girls.”
He’ll forgive me when he realizes it’s for his own good.
“Yeah, because that’s what pregnant omegas love to hear: “It’s for your own good, sweetie pie.”
What crawled in your craw and died?
“Nothing. Just irritated. Wish Aidan would stay in the den. What good are all your spells if he insists on leaving the den?”
We’ll be there. Besides, if Gloria’s right, maybe you’ll get to eat someone. That’d make you feel better, right?
“You do realize that by patronizing me you’re patronizing yourself, right?” He rolled his eyes.
It’s going to be one of those days.
With my wolf still grumbling and on edge I headed outside to double check the charms on my car. I carried a few pillows and blankets out to the backseat too. If Aidan wanted to rest on the way to the Gilmore House, I wanted him as comfortable as possible. Despite the hacking incident and the tension of not knowing who else knew of the prophecy I couldn’t stop smiling. After centuries of waiting I was finally going to be a father.
“And maybe bring harpies back to Earth,” my wolf said as if I needed reminding.
I charmed the makeshift backseat bed with the same charm some mages use to avoid flying magic motio
n sickness. Next, I double checked the car’s first aid kit for the pink pills that have saved more than one day for the Montero clan. When I was sure everything was set up, I went inside to check on Aidan. He’d made his way down to the kitchen and was snacking on a pack of chocolate crackers.
“Are we ready?” He asked me.
“I think so. Are you sure you’re up for the ride? Titus will be there soon.”
“Titus couldn’t figure it out last time. I’m the only one who knows the program. I built it. It’s like a part of my body. I’ve got to be the one to save it, because I don’t think anyone else can.”
“Want me to carry you out to the car?” I asked risking sounding like a cave-Alpha.
“Please,” Aidan grinned. “I know I’m not pregnant enough to ask you to, but I’m tired.”
“Never be afraid to ask me for help,” I stole a kiss before gently picking him up. “How’s your stomach?”
“Better. These help too,” he held up a cracker before he popped it into his mouth.
“Glad to hear it. I’ve set you up a bed in the backseat if you want to stretch out on the way to Patty’s.”
“Thank you, Alpha,” Aidan nuzzled into my neck.
“One other thing.”
“You told the women,” Aidan sighed.
“And Gloria’s meeting us at Patty’s,” I nodded. “Sorry. I know you didn’t want them to know…”
“But she’s worried about the prophecy.”
“Coven link?”
“Zera called me,” Aidan shook his head.
“She’s a good friend.”
“The best,” Aidan said and popped another cracker into his mouth.
The drive to Patty’s didn’t take long, but my wolf paced my chest alert for the slightest whiff of danger. I kept my eyes open too as Aidan napped in the backseat. A thick blanket of snow covered the roads, but my charmed wheels cut through them like a hot knife through butter.
Gloria leaned against the trunk of her car with her arms crossed when I pulled the car into Patty’s parking lot. She wore a dark pink trench coat buttoned all the way up. Her arms were cross with one hand suspiciously tucked inside between her breasts. Either she had a knife, gun, or spell charm at the ready. I hoped to never end up on a Gilmore witch’s shit list. It would be a giant headache.
Mated for the Holidays: A Holiday Mpreg Romance in the Hemlock Mpreg Universe Page 13