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Slade

“Well, that was bloody amazing, Hawk,” I said, patting my stomach.

Any morning that started with a full cooked breakfast was a good one as far as I was concerned.

Well, I could think of one better. I remembered the way it’d been when we just got back, and one of us would wake the others, our bodies sliding against each other like snakes, stirring up some kind of sensual fire that only seemed to go to embers but never actually go out.

I glanced down, felt the throb of my cock, and hopefully subtly adjusted it.

It wasn’t my focus, that was on Jules. Watching her eat, actually eat with gusto for once, was more satisfying than anything we could get from each other’s bodies.

I nodded to Hawk and saw that small private smile in response.

In Hawk language, that was him fucking beaming.

He kept his cards close to his chest, but we were starting to get him.

“Now that I’m fuelled up, I’m off to set up the nursery,” I said.

“Still? Do you need some help?” Finn asked.

“No need, Finnegan. I’ve got this.”

I did not, in fact, have this.

I looked down at the boxes of flat pack furniture, an Allen key in one hand and a screwdriver in the other, and wondered at some of my life decisions.

Jules had sent the provisions crew on a trip to this place called Ikea to pick out all the stuff she wanted for the nursery.

Never really saw what the point was of a room like this, anyway.

In Sanctuary, bubs always slept with their parents.

We might set up a basket by the bed to make sure the really little ones didn’t get squashed or anything, but there wasn’t a need.

Our Tirians never really slept, and they kept an eye on the young ones, keeping us from rolling over on them.

But Jules said this was what she wanted, and I was never gonna be able to say no to my beautiful girl.

Three hours later, I was no closer to having this shit done.

There were bits of board and fasteners, and drawings on paper that seemed like instructions, but apparently, not for what was in the box with them.

I threw the tools down on the ground, cursing up a storm, and reached for my cigarettes but realised they were long gone.

Jules had insisted we keep the house smoke free since she got the news, and we’d all fallen all over ourselves to give the mother of our child what she wanted.

She was giving us the world, so smokes seemed a more than fair sacrifice.

I gnawed at my thumbnail, my jaw grinding from the frustration of it all.

I’ve fucking rebuilt motors, stripped down firearms, built bloody furniture from scratch…

My mind grabbed on that last little bit, my Tirian perking up at that. He stared at me, like somehow that was going to make his thoughts clear.

Build it , he said when I didn’t clue in.

Fucking trying, aren’t I?

No, build it.

A new vision of what this nursery could look like sprung to mind.

It took all the things Jules had bought—a crib, a nursing chair, a mobile, a chest of drawers, a change table—and showed me just how they could look.

Rather than soft and white and curving, these were big, solid pieces of wood, smoothed down and lacquered until the timber took on a golden sheen.

Little wolves chasing their tails were pierced out of the headboard of the crib, cut into the drawers…

I looked down at the boxes and their contents spewed all over the floor and rolled to my feet, then shoved the bits back inside not too carefully.

“I’ll be out for a bit, love,” I called out as I walked out of the room, Jules’ lying in what looked like a food coma on the couch. Her head rolled in my direction, and she shot me a drowsy, grateful smile and waved me away.

“Kieran,” I said as I entered the workshop, Buddy at my feet. The dog liked to get out, and his mistress couldn’t take him far anymore. The old workshop manager stepped up, giving me the same steady look he’d given me when I apprenticed here for a year before deciding to go and work with Finn.

“And what can I do for you, Slade, son of Cheryl.”

“What’s your schedule like? I’ve got a big project I need done ASAP.”

“For you? We’ve got a backlog at the moment, outfitting the new houses for the women and kids that came through the portal. Don’t know if I have time for fripperies.”

“For my mate.”

The old bloke nodded, wiping his hand on a rag before gesturing me into the office.

“She’s the girl that faced down the Black Wolf, your girl.

You brought those women, those poor little kiddies back.

” I nodded. He pushed a pencil and a pad towards me, and said, “Draw me the details, Slade. You know how, and then we’ll talk. ”

There’s a weird kind of peace that comes from working with your hands.

‘Listening to the song of the timber’ was what Kieran called it, but right now, its song was pretty bloody raucous.

The apprentices were ripping down big planks into the main parts of the furniture, the shapes so much clearer to me than that plastic wrapped shit Jules had bought.

The wood told you what it could be, you just needed to listen.

I bent down and started sketching out the headboard of the crib under Kieran’s watchful eye, and he followed my hand as I drew.

But as the details started to pour out of my brain and onto the blond wood, it all dropped away.

My Tirian shifted as the pencil zipped across the boards, flexing through me as I detailed the piercing decorations on the top and bottom boards.

He nosed at me when I got to the railings on the side, drawing tendrils that wound around each bar, like those the Great Wolf had shown us.

Wolves danced in a great pack on the back of the nursing chair.

I’d have to carve them as the design was too complex for piercing.

Had to keep it smooth too, so as to not make it uncomfortable for my mate to sit in.

My mate.

The words still seemed too unreal to credit, even after all this time. That Jules… That we’d… We should be dead, she should have tossed me aside for someone much more worthy, someone who’d be a better fucking dad than me.

“Turn up, son,” Angus had said one afternoon when we sat on the porch, drinking beers. “That’s the main thing.”

“Give a shit, always,” Brock said. “If you’re there and you care, you’ve won half the battle already, and there’ll be lots of them.”

“Remember when we caught this little prick going down the creek?” Angus said.

“Tried to blame it all on Grace’s son. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth,” Brock said.

“And when he stole my beer,” Jim said from where he swung lazily in the hammock.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I was a tearaway, which tells me perhaps you aren’t the best people for advice.”

“We didn’t kill you,” Brock said, and Angus bent over to clink bottles with him.

“Yeah, alright, hit me with your best shit.”

Angus and Brock had the more practical crap, like not opening your mouth when changing shitty nappies, as it made the smell worse. But it was Jim’s that was the most useful, yet difficult.

“Just love them, always,” he said, swinging back and forth. “And make sure they know it.”

So that’s what I thought about as I cut and shaped, sanded and lacquered, screwed and glued.

I wasn’t good at explaining it, about telling Jules how I felt, but it burned inside me.

I let those flames stoke higher and higher as I worked, day turning to afternoon and then night before Kieran put a hand on my shoulder, stopping me.

It felt like I was yanked back to reality, the pull of that so rapid, I swayed on my feet.

“Stop for now, son,” he said. “You’ve done a helluva a lot, but you’ll need to come back again tomorrow. I’ll get the apprentices on the donkey work, help you along, but right now, you need rest. Take yon dog home to his mistress.”

I just nodded. This was too much like being Tirian, when words were thrown over for experience, when everything you are was caught up in the right now. I flexed my hands, saw my fingers, not paws, felt the cool of the night air, and then whistled to Bud before getting back into the car.