Page 30

Someone is tickling him, and whoever it is had better run fast because Nix just closed his eyes an hour ago. They all had. Finn’s last wave had crested, but like a real tide, it hadn’t ebbed away completely.

Nix’s stoic, even-keeled alpha mate had taken each of his mates and renewed their mating bites before finally falling asleep, knotted inside Leo.

Everyone had cleaned up (except Leo and Finn) and rolled back into the nest, trying to avoid the wet spots, rather unsuccessfully, considering Nix is a walking wet spot on a regular day.

And now, there were gentle, tickling fingertips all over his ever-growing baby belly. “Quit it,” he grumbles, but the tickling only increases, and by then, Nix has had enough. “Listen, I mean it.”

He swipes a grumpy hand over his belly to move the fingers away and…there aren’t any.

What? The tickles continue, though, unimpeded by Nix’s alarm, and it strikes him that they are coming from inside his abdomen.

The babies. He is feeling the babies, and it’s the most exciting thing that has ever happened to him, bar none. But he’s cognizant enough to know that yelling his excitement in a nest full of exhausted Weres, including five alphas, is probably unwise.

So instead, he whispers loudly, “Guys.”

There’s a granola bar dropped on his face from a large, freckled hand over his head.

“Will make food soon, Nixie. Shhh.”

Rude. Fine, be like that .

“Jamie, wake up.”

The tickles pick up, one movement escalates to a swirl and his belly jiggles. He can just see the babies moving from the outside. But he’s not sure. At least, not until he looks inwards, where he can see the tiny golden lights are so bright and very awake.

Of course, Jamie always answers the call. “Baby boy? You okay?” He’s got his enigma nose in the air.

“Look!” He points at his belly.

Jamie tilts his head. “Um…pregernant? Preganante? Perganernant?” He smiles at his own joke and leans forward to kiss the smooth skin, and the babies go crazy when he does. Very nice, but not news.”

“No! They’re awake and moving!”

Eyes popping wide, he finally looks closely at the lower part of Nix’s belly just as it ripples.

“Holy shit balls!” Jamie shouts, and every single mate in the nest is jerked rudely awake.

In a single second, Grayson is crouching, red-eyed, next to him in an instant, and if Nix hadn’t seen it coming and thrown up a quick block, he might have landed that left cross-swipe across Jamie’s throat.

“Whoa, Gray. It’s okay,” Nix says, in the multi-layered voice that comes from deep in the vortex of his bonds.

Luca squeaks, though, and runs from the nest into the attached restroom, while Grayson subsides from his full-on attack mode to a low-key growl.

He’s gorgeous, with his long black hair swirling around his head in the room’s breeze, and his basil-vanilla scent is almost eclipsed by his new perfume. It’s enthralling, and for a second, Nix forgets what set him off.

He looks so wild and familiar that Nix almost follows the memory back, back through his mind.

“Sorry. Thanks, that was close,” Jamie says.

Luca climbs back in the nest and settles his butt in Jamie’s lap so he can get a front-row seat to the excitement. “That was close. I nearly peed. You scared me, Big Daddy.”

Jamie was Big Daddy? Yes, Nix loves that .

“Did you have a bad dream, Jaybird?” Rowan asks, unwrapping the granola bar he’d dropped previously. He’s so thoughtful, his Rowan.

“No! Look.” Jamie points at Nix’s belly again, and Gideon smirks.

Nix knows the joke is coming before he even says it. “No, it’s the babies. Look.”

The babies stop for a second like they have stage fright, and then, when Luca puts his hand flat under Nix’s belly button, they kick up a fuss, even more active than before.

“Holy shit balls.” He laughs and puts his soft, round cheek to the subtle movements. “Sugar, they’re moving!”

The smirk drops from Gideon’s handsome face, and he meets Nix’s eyes.

“Kitten?” Luca grabs his hand, and Nix feels his alpha’s and beta’s hands cover their pack’s babies. It makes their tri-bond swirl.

“Ohhhhh, they like that.”

It’s a novelty to see Gideon’s biggest grin, the sight of which makes tears prick behind Nix’s eyes.

“Rowan? Gray?” Gideon asks, pulling a grumbling Luca back so the enigmas can get close.

Grayson nods to Rowan and the younger alpha puts his giant hand over the small space first. There’s a jolt as the little beans bump up against it like they know he’s there.

Rowan meets Nix’s gaze, and now they’ve both got tears in their eyes.

“She’s real. She’s really real. Gray, you gotta feel.”

He pulls Grayson’s hand in under his own, and the two of them just smile at each other over this shared bond of fatherhood, filling the room with happy spiced rum and fragrant perfume-y basil vanilla.

There’s a loud honk and all eyes are on Leo.

“What? A man can’t blow his nose?”

“He can. Come feel before they go back to sleep,” Nix says.

Stretching out a hand over Jamie’s lap, Nix reaches for Leo’s hand.

Leo comes as bidden, lying on his belly so he can put his mouth against the tingling skin in a kiss. The babies show no signs of slowing down, however, and a fierce bump gets Leo in the mouth .

“Ow! That’s quite the hoof to the kisser. You know what that means?” He blows raspberries against his belly as Nix bucks and giggles.

“Alright. My turn. Move out,” Finn says, voice hoarse with overuse.

He looks exhausted and so lean, once Nix gets a good look at him. But he’s smiling that big smile where he shows his top and bottom teeth at the same time.

Jamie rolls Leo off so he can start blowing raspberries on Leo’s tummy instead, and Luca joins in. It gives Finn enough room to come in close.

“May I?” he asks with a gentle smile, just like he always does when he’s checking Nix over.

“Of course, Dad-Finn,” Nix says, and Finn’s face goes pale, and then pink.

“What? No? What about Finn-Pa?”

Laughing, he boops Nix on the nose, on the chest, and then on the belly.

It makes the babies wiggle, and Nix sends a thought along the bond: Pretty cool, eh, Doc?

“The coolest. You feel alright?”

The best. Who would have thought? I’m making people. Me!

“You are amazing, even without that,” Finn responds, expertly blocking Leo’s stray foot so it’s not Nix who gets a hoof to the belly.

I’m glad I got to feel them here, in Clearwater, for the first time. I wish my mom could see me. She wouldn’t understand, really, but she’d be happy.

“I’m sure she would have been so happy. We could go see her if you wanted.”

Finn lies down beside him with one hand on the babies and his other propping his head up.

“Sugar, they’re doing that thing again. I wish I could brain-talk with Nixie. Imagine the things we could do!”

There’s a squeeze to Nix’s foot, as Gideon hoists the complaining Luca up and carries him out of the room.

“I am 100% sure that no one would survive that, Honey. Let’s go eat.”

Soon, there’s the scent of pancakes drifting into the room.

Grayson kisses his forehead and drags Rowan into the bathroom for a shower, while Jamie and Leo head to the one down the hall .

“I don’t mean to leave them out, Finn.” He doesn’t. It’s just so easy to activate his mental bond with Finn, especially when his palm is covering the now-calm babies in his belly, like the pack clearing out meant it was time for them to follow suit.

Finn gives him a reassuring smile, clearly sensing the turn his thoughts are taking. “They don’t mind, not really. Come on, I can almost hear your stomach growling, and unless that’s our babies, you are hungry.”

“Fine, but carry me, please.”

“Me? Huh, I must have been derelict in my portage duties.”

“Maybe a bit light on the carrying-me-about-the-house, but I do recall two memorable occasions up against that wall there.” Nix points to the wall on the first landing. “And that wall there.” He points to the one just outside the kitchen.

“Shit. I remember that, too. What a week. I didn’t…hur—”

“No fucking way, Dr. Merritt. I was living my best life. Zero complaints. Never fucked in the back of a van before. That was fun. Fun, fun, fun on the runnnnnnn!” Nix sings as he remembers the vibrations of the van and Finn’s knot deep inside him, while Gideon kept them on the road.

His growling and cursing echoed through the vehicle, almost enough to make them both come again.

Nix may have called out for him, claiming a good, hard spanking would go perfectly.

Come to think of it, Gideon had promised he’d really get it if he didn’t cut it out—he hadn’t.

He sends some mental images along the bond, causing Finn to shudder.

“No. Nix Rhodes, no. This is the first day I am not in a pheromone haze. Just give me one day,” Finn says and pinches the inside of Nix’s thigh.

It tingles all the way into his groin.

“An hour,” Nix counters, just to be a little shit.

“A day , and I’ll do that thing with you and Leo that you liked last night.”

“You will? It was so good like that, you know I—”

“Tomorrow.”

“Fine. Pinky swear. You can’t break a pinky swear. The babies will know their Finn-Da lied,” Nix says, and crosses his arms .

He’s happy to see Finn shake his head at the new “Dad” moniker.

“No? Not Finn-Da? Fine…leave it with me.”

Gideon has a stack of pancakes waiting by the time Rowan finally gets to the kitchen, walking gingerly, with damp hair and a hickey precisely the size of Grayson’s mouth on his neck.

Grayson blows by them with a wave, barefoot, and goes down into the vegetation in a blink.

The rose-colored bond is calm, and Nix knows that at least his soulmate is content in his reconnaissance.

“Sorry for the delay, Nix. Here.” Rowan offers a bite of pancake.

Nix opens his mouth to accept the offering, then palms the burner phone with the biotech info on it off the counter.

He pages through the pack, and everything is tickety-boo except now, it’s Rowan’s butt that is a bit on the red-light side.