Page 40 of The Baby Hex (Mori’s Mementos #2)

Pierce

As much as I wanted to keep Crilus locked away in the house we both needed some fresh air.

We weren’t ready for time apart yet and that was okay.

Time apart was for when you felt smothered and while sometimes I drowned in how much I cared about him, I wasn’t smothered and unless he learned to lie over our mating link, neither was he.

Going out with an egg in the nest took some preparations.

We couldn’t just lock up the house and leave the egg alone and we weren’t willing to be apart yet.

So, we set about making an egg pouch that Crilus would wear around his neck.

If something went south, he’d take off with the egg, seeking the high ground, unless we were attacked by a dragon for some reason, and I’d fight with the sort of magic I rarely had occasion to pull out.

While we were happy to go alone to the bar, Medwin Moonscale insisted on sending a guard car to tail us.

If they weren’t guys I enjoyed working with, they may have been my lunch instead of the okra and jalapeno poppers Crilus pulled out of the freezer and cooked up while I went from room to room sweeping up any left behind glass.

By the time we sat down to eat the bar was more or less ready for the public again.

We talked plans for the bar’s future in circles.

The immediate plan was to offer Raiel a promotion to bar manager, if he’d take it.

“They’ve been getting paid for their normal hours even though the bar’s been closed,” Crilus said.

“I have insurance that takes care of all that. It was one of the things I wouldn’t open the bar until I could buy because I didn’t want anyone who threw their lot in with mine to get screwed over if my life blew up. ”

He’d be back at the bar as soon as he felt that the baby was old enough to be away from him.

I reminded him that during the day I could hang out in the upstairs apartment where he lived not so long ago if he really needed or wanted to be at the bar.

He reminded me that most of the business at a bar is done after dark.

“It’s not like I’ll be gone forever but while I’m chest feeding, I’ll stay home as much as I can. Besides, milk pumps freak me out. I’m not a cow or a goat!”

I smirked thinking of milk running down his chest and stomach, rolling lower and lower until ---

“Hey!” he swatted my arm, having picked up the thought over our mating link. “That is baby food not something for you to lap up as an excuse to go down on me.”

“Do I really need an excuse?” I asked, turning his barstool so that he faced me.

“I have an egg around my neck, mister!” he said and playfully swatted my thigh.

“Okay, okay. I won’t offer to give you a mind-blowing orgasm to help you relax,” I said, mock rejection tickling my words.

“I’ll cash that in tonight when the baby’s back in the nest and I’m holding you to the mind-blowing part.

If I’m still able to rub two brain cells together and make a coherent thought, you have to start all over again.

In the meantime, we have baby shopping to do.

Put your dick brain in your back pocket until we’re finished. SC is still on the loose.”

I wasn’t sure when we started calling Sharon Claudis ‘SC’ but that was her new name now as far as we were concerned.

***

I’ve always thought it was a shame that some of the best days of life were always the ones that passed the quickest. Crow eggs incubate for approximately three weeks.

In our case it was eighteen days. Eighteen days filled with shopping, rearranging the house to ‘baby-proof’ it, and being surprised by various events whenever we returned home from our various outings.

All three of Crilus’s parents came over in cahoots with mine to have not only a mating feast for us but a baby shower too.

The little attic nursery was filled with everything a baby could ever want or need.

Morvan and Rho both attended, bringing their baby, Cutter, who froze into a little stone gargoyle whenever anything startled him.

He was adorable and always made me wonder what sort of cute and funny treats we were in for with our own kids.

With Teal’s help, I changed out the attic window with one that opened outwards to allow bird-sized people to fly in and out with ease.

It was too small for even Crilus to contort and fit through in human form.

Mori could barely squeeze through in wolf form but Venal and SC were both bears, and they weren’t known for being sleek and slender.

We spent so much time in the car getting things ready for our baby’s arrival that most of the chatting about names took place there too.

Our discussion raked in names from everywhere but never quite settled on any singular theme.

Whenever Mori was included, he always tossed out floral names like Lavender or Sage but none of them ever sat right with us.

“Maybe Belladonna or Yew,” Crilus said one afternoon, tucking his phone into his pocket.

All morning, Mori had sent lists of flowery names.

Sometime between Crilus’s first and only ultrasound and our baby shower he had a vision of holding a raven-haired baby girl.

If Crilus’s oldest brother wasn’t named Raven, we might’ve been that bloody cliché.

Truth be told we were leaning toward names that spoke of magic and perhaps even a few rough edges.

Belladonna and Yew were both common names, though.

“Hex,” I teased him. “We’ll call her Hex and if it turns out the baby is a boy we can still use Hex.”

“Because I keep saying my family is hexed?” Crilus asked, arching a brow and reaching out for another piece of the blood orange I peeled for him.

“That and imagine – a vampyress with a cloak made from her own crow feathers enchanted so that she can fly without her wings, sashaying into a room. No one’s going to fuck with her.”

“So… She’s either the main character or the villain.”

“Well, we’re not going to have a boring kid,” I laughed.

“We don’t know that she’ll be a vampire either. We don’t know what sort of magic she might have.”

“We know she’s a crow because her egg isn’t growing. That rules out dragon sneaking into our genetics and giving us a surprise draconic hatchling,” I smirked, handing him another slice of the blood orange.

“I sort of like it. Hex. Though, everyone will ask her what it’s short for.”

“Hexanna,” I teased him, but his eyes lit up.

I grinned to myself, satisfied that I found something he looked excited about.

“Is it bad that I like it?” he asked, his eyes misting over. “Are we gonna curse her to be the kid with the weird name forever?”

“No,” I shook my head. “And if she really doesn’t like it, she can go by Anna or change it when she’s older. I mean, she could change it even if we gave her a boring name like Mary or Jane.”

“Hex,” Crilus whispered to the egg in its little hanging pouch around his neck.

He kept it there most of the time now. Only taking it off to shower, sleep, or romp.

The latter happened here and there but nowhere near as often as it had during our matingmoon.

I missed our alone time but loved the new layers of relationship that kept revealing themselves.

Sometimes, happiness really was eating a whole large pizza while making fun of the names your friends suggested for your baby who hadn’t hatched yet.

Which was exactly what we were doing when Baby Hex decided to drag her beak along the inside of her egg.

The first scrape sounded through the living room when we were sitting across from each other on the floor on either side of the coffee table.

At first, I thought Crilus had broken a tooth when he bit into his slice piled high with meat and cheese.

Only pizza wasn’t exactly known for cracking teeth in half.

“Hex!” he said.

“Yeah,” I grinned. “I’m glad you like the name. Is your tooth alright, mate?”

“No! She’s pecking on the egg,” he said, dropping his pizza onto the corner of the box he was using as a plate.

He wiped his hands on a napkin and gently fished the blue-green speckled egg out of the pouch that lived around his neck.

I glanced at the counter on my phone. Eighteen days, seven hours, fifty-three minutes.

Well, since I started the timer anyway. It was a few hours more than that since Crilus had laid his egg on his own during the party.

“Missing a piece,” Crilus said, holding up the egg and trying to peer through it.

“Don’t get pecked!” I said as my heart did a summersault and landed in a handstand. “You might drop it!”

“I’m not going to get pecked,” Crilus laughed as I rounded the table and sank back onto the floor next to him. Holding the egg up to his nose, he sniffed it. “She’s a girl. Mori was right about that much.”

Every second that our daughter took to break free from her egg was a second that I swore my heart would stop beating and no amount of blood would ever make it pound again.

The bird inside was tiny and sort of bald with feet that looked too big for a little body.

I was afraid to touch her as Crilus stroked her and rubbed her little wings, checking that everything felt as it should.

It took her nearly an hour to come around to the idea of shifting into her human form.

Still, she was the tiniest baby I’d ever seen.

Her hair was raven-colored. So black that it was almost blue and green.

It stuck up in every direction as if she’d slept the hardest sleep of her young life.

Her eyes shined blue but sometimes little crow eyes didn’t stay that color and I wasn’t sure how much of that would translate into her human form. Her little ears were pointed

I slid behind Crilus, wrapping my arms around his as he held her up to his chest. I rested my cheek against his soft hair and marveled at the little girl who was born despite everything that might’ve kept us apart.

She was perfect and new and for a little while we were the only ones who knew she’d arrived.

Soon, Teal would come to check her over and our friends and parents would pour into the house but for now, we were keeping her all to ourselves.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“It’s not like I was just in labor,” he teased.

“You don’t have to be feeling bad for me to ask,” I said and kissed the top of his head.

“I’m in awe of her and how I know I’ll do anything to keep this new little person happy and safe. I’d rip out SC’s heart with my bare hands and eat it, if that was the only way to save her.”

“Hey, leave the heart eating to me. I’m built for it.”

“So am I,” he said and a second later his wolf ears snaked out of his head to brush against my face. “Maybe it’s the best tasting part of a bear.”

“Baby Hex,” Crilus cooed her name as I slid up onto the sofa and lifted my mate and baby with me. Labor or not, a nap with our newly hatched baby felt appropriate. Besides, once she realized how much we loved her, she’d be running the whole house, and no one was going to get much sleep.