Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Today, the doors were wide open to the biting spring air. Andromeda stood framed in them looking not out at the view, but at the door from the main part of the Medica…as if waiting for something or someone.
Her face both lit up and wobbled the instant she saw Honor.
She went to move toward her, but Honor was already there, her arms around the other woman. Andromeda was far older than Honor in years, but age didn’t work the same in those who had once been mortal as it did in those born immortal. And Honor, while she’d stopped aging when she became a vampire at twenty-nine, held an inner age Dmitri alone truly understood. Her maturity was that of a woman far beyond her years.
She cupped Andromeda’s shaky face. “Look at you, you gorgeous glowing creature.”
“I’m huge,” Andromeda whispered on a sobbing cry, her emotions all on the surface and her curls wild. She clung to Dmitri’s hand when he reached it out to her, while Naasir rubbed her back. “And now I’m crying. Again!”
Nuzzling her, Naasir murmured something Dmitri didn’t hear, but that made Andromeda sniffle back her tears and turn her face into his chest. After she was steadier, Dmitri caught Naasir’s eye, and the two of them stepped out onto the rocks, so that Andromeda could talk to Honor.
Because sometimes, a woman needed a mother’s advice and comfort, and for Andi in this moment, Honor held that role. At first, their bond had been through Naasir, but over the years, Dmitri and Honor had both formed their own relationship with her. How could they do anything but love the woman who loved Naasir with all her fierce heart?
“How are you doing?” Dmitri asked Naasir when they were distant enough that they couldn’t overhear the two women.
Naasir walked to stand on the far edge of a cliff, the wind blowing back the thick silver of his hair. “Scared.” A single rough word as he glanced back at Dmitri. “She…they…” His throat moved.
“I know. They’re everything.” He hugged his arm around the younger male, tugged him close. “It’ll be fine. She’s too tough for anything else.”
“Yes,” Naasir said, a growl in his tone—but he didn’t pull away. “Will I be a good father, Dmitri?”
Memory crashed into Dmitri, of Naasir asking him another question that had destroyed him: Am I a person, Dmitri? Will you be sad if I die?
“You’ll be the best,” Dmitri said, his voice raw. “Trust me. I know exactly who you are.”
Naasir shuddered, sighed. “I didn’t know I could be this happy-scared.”
“It’s wild, isn’t it?”
Naasir knew about Misha, about Caterina, about Ingrede. He’d come upon Dmitri as a youth, while Dmitri held a painting of his lost family, his tears locked hard and painful in his chest, and somehow, even though Naasir had still been more feral than not, he’d known that all Dmitri needed at that moment was to be loved. So he—the boy who was ever in motion—had sat nestled against Dmitri’s side until Dmitri was ready to speak.
When he was, he’d told Naasir stories of his little boy and little girl, and of the wife who had been his soulmate. Even so young, Naasir had understood loss. Naasir, too, had been wounded by grief. He hadn’t been afraid or scared or uncomfortable at hearing of Dmitri’s own loss.
Rather, he’d seemed fascinated that Dmitri had sired a baby girl, his eyes going wide when Dmitri explained how Caterina had fit into his hands and how she’d cried for her papa to rock her to sleep. “Only Papa could get her down,” he’d said, the precious moments spent with the little girl he’d intended to spoil and cherish spilling over into words.
Naasir had smiled at the stories of Misha’s mischief, asked for more, and for the first time in eternity, Dmitri had found joy in speaking of his boy, who’d always run pell-mell toward him when Dmitri returned home from the markets, and who’d once tried to hide in the cart with the vegetables so he could go to the market with his papa.
Now, the boy who’d listened to his stories of his family needed him to stand as his father, and Dmitri would do so with pride. His job here today was to be whatever Naasir needed him to be, while Honor’s was to be the same for Andromeda.
Which was why Dmitri stood guard outside when the contractions turned urgent, while Naasir and Honor stayed in the birthing chamber with Andromeda and the healers. They might be in the safe haven of the Refuge, but Naasir’s primal heart needed to know that Dmitri, dangerous and deadly, watched his family’s back at this vulnerable time.
Only then could Naasir let down his guard and just be in the moment.
The first shocked cry came far faster than Dmitri had expected, with angelic birthing often taking well over a day or more. That cry was thin but strong. It was followed by a second…then a third.