Page 22 of The Ruby Dragon’s Unconventional Mate (Oro Escondido #3)

Chapter

Twenty

L ars hummed, pinning something to his mood board. Samuel had brought him a stack of magazines from the bookstore. Everything from cottage core to baby’s first nursery to food magazines.

Which was so cool, because now he could start brainstorming the nursery so he and Bryant could talk about what they wanted for the baby.

He was starting to really show some, and he thought it was definitely time to get that ball rolling.

He felt better. Lars was so glad to be over some of the morning sickness. And some of the crushing exhaustion.

“What are you up to, baby?” Bryant wandered in, set his coffee cup aside, and came to slide both arms around him from behind.

“I’m making a mood board.”

“What for?”

“Well, let’s see.” Lars kept his voice light, even though his eyebrow lifted.

“There’s cribs, there’s mobiles, there’s a changing table, there’s some rocking chairs, there’s a bunch of butterflies and birds.

And there’s a little bitty dresser for little bitty clothes.

So if you had to guess what the mood board was for, what would you guess? ”

Bryant snorted. “Okay, okay, point taken.”

Lars waited for Bryant to start making fun of him, but what he said was, “Can I help?”

Oh. That melted him, bone deep, and he beamed at Bryant, patting the space next to him, making room for his mate. “Absolutely! I’d love your help. I’ve just been cutting out things and kind of putting them on here and seeing what looks cool and what doesn’t.”

Bryant settled down next to him and started looking through a magazine. “God, I didn’t know there were this many options for cribs. I thought they were just like boxes with slats in different colors.”

Lars chuckled. Such an alpha. “No, there are tons of options. I mean hundreds, thousands probably. I kind of like the white ones, but then part of me doesn’t want to let the baby chew on things that are painted.”

“Do you really think our baby’s going to chew on the crib?” Bryant asked, eyes twinkling at him.

“I think that the baby’s going to chew on the crib.” In fact, Lars was absolutely sure that Bryant’s child would chew through an entire woodpile when he was teething.

“Well, the white goes really good with the butterfly thing. Are you definite on the butterflies?” Bryant asked.

“I like the birds too, but yeah, butterflies, flowers, all the natural fun.”

“I kind of like these weird gnomes, too.”

Lars looked at them, pondered. “You don’t think they’re a little psychotic looking, like they’re going to come and murder people in their sleep?”

Bryant stopped and looked at him. “I have never once thought, oh, look, that gnome is going to murder someone in their sleep.”

“Well, obviously you haven’t been imagining well enough, because I can totally see it.” It wasn’t even that hard, to be honest.

Bryant chuckled, wrapped one arm around him, and patted his stomach. “All right, all right. I like butterflies fine.”

“Beautiful. I think it’s important to find a theme that’s wonderful. You should have seen Grant’s nursery when Jake brought him home. It was awful.”

“Really. He seems like such a good dad, so solid. What was the room like?”

Lars rolled his eyes. “He’d read somewhere that babies needed contrasting colors, so everything was black, white, and red. It was like walking into a slasher movie or some kind of, you know, strange constructivism painting, you know?”

Oh, man that had to be hard on the head. Right. No wonder that baby kept trying to pop in and out of different dimensions, trying to get away from the black-and-white triangle mobile.

“All right, point taken. So no black and white and red for this baby.”

“No, I want warm and natural and sweet.” He wanted something easy on the eyes.

“You do realize that having a nice, natural, sweet nursery almost assures that this baby’s going to be a ball buster, right?”

Lars’s mouth fell open. “Listen to you talk about our child. Listen to me. Our child is going to be sweetness and light. Lots of light.”

Bryant snorted. “Yeah, my brother is light. Lots of light.”

“He’s like a shining beacon, right?” he teased. “Of hope?”

Bryant rolled his eyes. “Well, of something. I’m not sure hope is the word you’re looking for.”

Bryant kept stroking his belly, and Lars pushed into the touch. It felt so good. Suddenly, he felt a little tiny flutter inside of him, like a weird, non-hiccup, and he stilled, tilting his head.

Bryant went still as well. “You cool?”

Lars nodded, swallowing hard. “I think I felt the baby move.”

“Really? Oh, how cool. I can’t wait until it’s big enough that I can feel it too.”

That flutter came again, and he nodded. “I think I really just felt the baby move.”

Fuck. It was real. He knew it was real because he was getting heavier and rounder, but this was proof of life.

And it felt like butterflies. “I want butterflies for the nursery. Bryant, please.”

“If you want butterflies, baby, butterflies it is. I will make sure that every inch of that room is covered in gorgeous butterflies. But yeah, I don’t think we should have the painted white crib.”

“I thought your child was going to chew on crib slats.” He couldn’t stop laughing, joy filling him.

“No, you’re absolutely right. Mine probably won’t, but yours? Yours totally would chew on cribs. Remember, I’ve seen your nieces.”

“Oh.” He laughed harder, because Bryant had a point. “But those are half Dakota’s too.”

“True.” His laughter finally died down. “I needed that.”

“Mmm.” Bryant kissed him, loving on him gently. “I did too.”

He patted Bryant’s chest. “You loon.”

“How about you let me deal with the crib?” Bryant said. “I have a couple of ideas.”

“Okay, I think we can do that.” Lars had no clue what Bryant had in mind, but alphas seemed to have opinions about cradles and cribs and places where their children slept, so he was going to let Bryant deal with it.

“I can do the curtains, right? And maybe, I don’t know, wallpaper seems weird because we have stucco walls. ”

“Do we? I thought we had wainscotting.” Bryant raised his eyebrows.

“Well, we do, and the walls above that aren’t textured anymore, but we do have stucco under there.”

“Under—that’s very New Mexico. Interesting.”

“Yeah, it’s funny how things grow out of the ground here. I think it’s because we have so much clay, and the houses sort of create themselves. At least the guardian ones do.”

“Yeah, I helped put a roof on a house in the village the other day, so I know that not everything makes its own happiness.”

He got to giggling again. “So, a border or something that we can either paint up there or put up and then take down and paint over the bad spots if the kid decides they don’t want that later on.”

Sounds good. I like the idea of it being changeable when the next kid comes along.”

“So you think there’s going to be more?”

“I do, yeah.” Bryant’s eyebrows waggled madly. “I think you and I are going to have a big family. You love to nurture people. You love to give of yourself to people. Why not to your own kids? And god knows that I want to be a dad. I want to be a good dad, and I want to be one with you.”

That made him kind of weepy, but he loved it. “I think that sounds amazing. Of course, we’ll see how this pregnancy goes, and how I feel about it. If it’s anything like Dakota’s, then maybe not.”

Bryant chuckled. “I don’t think anything could be like Dakota’s. He’s had two sets of twins. I think those two need to slow down.”

Lars pulled another picture out of a magazine. “Yeah, haven’t we had this discussion? They absolutely do, and I think they will. Logan was just, you know, super enthusiastic.”

“It takes two to tango enthusiastically, babe. I think Dakota liked it too.”

Lars decided that he wasn’t going to think about his brother and his brother’s mate having sex.

Not even a little. “For sure. Are you hungry? I’m hungry.

” It had been a while since he and Bryant had gotten to just sit down to a meal between the two of them.

Everybody wanted to congratulate them and be around and tell them baby stories, so maybe they could just have something super simple tonight like a mac and cheese out of a box or a couple cans of soup and a piece of frozen pie heated up. That would rock.

“Yeah, you want me to make you macaroni and cheese?” Bryant asked as if he’d read Lars’s mind. Maybe he had, if Lars was thinking really loud.

“I was just thinking that!” Bryant had made him macaroni and cheese way back at the beginning, when he was there to help out Logan, and before the thing happened with Lachlan.

It was so funny to watch Bryant very carefully measure out milk and butter to put it in after the pasta was boiled and to stir the powder in just so.

Bryant did everything precisely, and it was so amusing to be around him when he cooked, especially when it was cheap stuff.

“Cool. I’ll pull out that green chili apple pie too, unless you think it’ll make your stomach upset?”

“I think that sounds great. I was thinking pie and ice cream.”

“Perfect.” Bryant put a hand on his belly, then kissed him. “I love you, honey. And I love our little butterfly.”

Lars adored that Bryant got it. Their little butterfly. That was exactly what he thought of with their baby, and they were going to be good together, the three of them.

He just knew it.