16. Morgan

Chapter 16

Morgan

I changed my shirt for the third time and looked at myself in the mirror. My face looked tense, meaning the relaxed, happy demeanour I'd started to slowly develop among my new family had vanished.

Suddenly, my mate's strong arms slid around me and I was engulfed in a warm hug from behind. Lew seemed to surround me, I breathed his scent in and he buried his nose in the crook of my neck, right beside his claiming bite.

"What's wrong, Morgan?"

"Nothing's wrong," I said.

He held me tighter, and it should have hurt but actually the less room I had to breathe while Lew was hugging me, the happier I was. He relaxed his arms too soon for my liking.

"What are you nervous about? Don't you think your family will be pleased?"

I no longer questioned the fact that he knew what was bothering me. His question before had really been an opening gambit to get me talking. It wasn't unusual at all for him to blithely carry on with the discussion even though I'd said nothing was wrong. Because we both knew something was wrong.

I swallowed.

"I just want everything to go well."

"It will." Lew met my eyes in the mirror. "You know the Hoskinses will be pleased. Don't you think the Somervilles will be happy?"

I hesitated before answering. I wasn't sure.

"It's not that, I don't think." Even when I paused again to think, which wasn't the most sexy thing, Lew still held me tightly and waited patiently. "I think they'll be pleased. Probably. Maybe."

"Why wouldn't they be pleased?"

"I don't know. I just know that I could never please them before. I was never good enough. "

Lew growled, and the sound and the vibrations it caused to run along my back actually settled me. His dragon always got riled when it wanted to protect me, and sometimes it wanted to protect me from my own family.

"You're better than all of them, Morgan. You're the most wonderful person I've ever met."

I smiled, trying to show my mate how much I loved him and how much I appreciated his praised. I knew, logically, that I wasn't all that wonderful but I also knew Lew actually believed it when he said it. To him, I really was that amazing. And he made me feel it, too.

"Do you think we could tell Alfie first?" I asked.

We'd talked about it before but we'd decided to tell everyone together.

Lew cringed. And that, right there, was the reason we'd decided to tell everyone together.

"I think the others will be offended if we start to tell others first."

"But Alfie's my brother! He doesn't count as ‘others' surely?"

That cringe was still lingering in Lew's expression .

"If we tell Alfie, we'll have to tell Dee at the same time. If she finds out that your sibling got to know early and she didn't…"

I nearly cringed along with him at that thought. I doubted Dee would take well to being snubbed.

"That's okay," I said, and twisted round in Lew's arms, looking up at his strong jaw. "We can tell them all at the same time. No favourites."

"They're all going to be excited, Morgan. Who wouldn't be?"

I nodded. Lew didn't quite understand my worry. He'd been raised here, with this large, rowdy, affectionate family. It wasn't that my family didn't love me because I was sure my mother did, but they had also been distant and disapproving.

I wasn't sure whether that still applied.

Alfie wasn't like that, and he'd be thrilled for us, but the rest of them… how different were they going to be now that my father was no longer their elder? I couldn't be sure what was their innate personality and what they'd been forced to do to please him.

Being a wooden puppet, closed-off and proud, hadn't really been natural to me. It had taken me a long time to feel secure enough with Lew and his clan that I could become more myself. I wasn't sure how much my birth clan would change, now that they could.

Lew bent his head down towards me and kissed me slowly, teasing my lips and sliding his tongue into my mouth. His taste burst across my tongue and made me press harder against him. He kissed me slowly, not trying to do anything other than that.

I would have been happy to lay down and bare myself to him, just like I always was, but he didn't move me across to the bed.

In fact, he broke our kiss with a chuckle.

"We need to go down to dinner, mate. No sex right now."

Disappointment flared inside me, but he was right. Maybe after dinner?

He nipped my bottom lip and whispered, "Soon," and then he stood back and took some deep breaths, trying to get himself under control. I glanced at myself in the mirror again. There was no point in changing my shirt again. I'd go with what I was wearing.

When we got downstairs, we were just in time to see Laura arrive with her mate, Marcia. I waved and Marcia beamed at me. She looked so happy when she smiled that it couldn't help but make me happy, too. Her cheeks were so round that they squeezed her eyes shut and she radiated contentment and compassion.

Before she could even get her coat off, Dum appeared out of nowhere and rushed over, saying, "There you are! We wondered whether you'd arrive in time."

Sure enough, without even looking round, I knew I'd hear Dee. She said, "How's our Honey-Cakes?"

Marcia turned her beam on them. "He's fine, thank you. He sends his regards."

"Well isn't that sweet of him?" said Dee.

"Did he send anything else?" asked Dum.

Laura snatched up a bag they'd both grabbed at, and bared her teeth at them. "You can have a honey-cake after dinner, not before."

"But everyone else always steals them," whined Dum.

" You always steal them," Laura corrected.

I figured they'd have that argument for a while yet so I glanced at Lew and he shrugged. We walked hand-in-hand into the dining room and settled down.

By the time we were seated, I was sick with nerves. The only thing holding me together was Lew's warm hand wrapped around mine.

Everyone else entered and sat, chatted and smiled, and I could feel myself retreating into my wooden mask, just like I had at the Somerville castle under the disapproving gaze of my father.

Lew clutched my hand tighter and I saw Alfie send me a few sidelong glances, but thankfully he didn't ask me what was wrong. I hated being the centre of attention, and especially hated it when it was sudden. Just saying what we wanted to say was going to be A Lot for me.

Everyone settled and Nana stood.

The door creaked open and a head popped round it. I stared at the newcomer. I'd never seen him before.

Nana said, "Come in, Daniel, you're just in time."

My mouth stayed open the whole time he was taking his seat. I'd never seen him out of his dragon form before. He was dark-haired, like all curaidh , and his black eyes darted round as though expecting an attack. It was clear he didn't like being in his more vulnerable human form.

Then I realised, he wasn't just in human form around his own family – something he rarely did – but around my family, too. I'd assumed we'd have to tell him separately because he hadn't been near the castle since the Somervilles arrived. He'd been flying the borders, staying out of the way. I hadn't been sure whether that was just his preference or whether there was some other reason he wanted to avoid them.

Nadia introduced him to my family. "This is Daniel, my brother. Here, have a glass. Nana's going to give a speech."

"Thanks," he said, as he took it. It was the first time I'd heard his voice. It was slightly husky.

Nana raised an eyebrow at Nadia, who smiled and gave her a little salute with her own glass.

"I was not, in fact, going to make a speech. I was going to hand over to Lew and Morgan. They have something to say."

All eyes turned on us.

I began to sweat.

Lew's hand clutched mine tighter and I wasn't sure if it was his palm getting sweaty or mine .

He cleared his throat and spoke clearly and confidently. It was probably my palm, then.

"We wanted you all to be here together when we announced this, so thank you all for coming. Morgan and I have some very exciting news. We're going to be fathers. Nadia has consented to carry our child for us."

He'd planned to say more but a commotion broke out as everyone tried to congratulate us at once.

"That's amazing, Lew!"

"Congratulations, Morgan."

"You must be so excited."

I had to lower my head to keep from bursting into overwhelmed tears. It was only when I heard Alfie's voice, so pure and dear to me, that I peeked up.

"I'm so happy for you, Morgan. You're going to be such a wonderful father!"

That was it. I burst into tears.

Lew had his arms around me and people were up out of their chairs and clustered round us and everyone hugged us and it took me a few minutes to realise that I wasn't the only one crying. There were happy tears on people's cheeks as they hugged and kissed us. It must have taken twenty minutes for calm to settle over the table again and for everyone to return to their seats.

Alfie said, "Hey, that means I'm going to be an uncle! How cool is that?"

At the other end of the table, Dee grinned and said, "I'm going to be the best auntie ever."

Dum said, "I'm going to be the best uncle."

They argued, Dee insisting that Dum wasn't technically the baby's uncle. Dum just shrugged. "Whatever."

They looked to Lew, and I saw the same look he always got when he was confronted with his half-sister. It was somewhere between affection and fear.

He wasn't helped in this instance by the fact that he never kept track of his familial relationships.

"The best relative?" he guessed.

Dum nodded. "Don't worry, we'll show our baby relative how to fight."

Lew said, "We were hoping to leave that until they were old enough to be trained by Dane."

Dee grinned her shark grin at him and that same combination of love and terror flickered over his handsome features. I could never quite understand why he was afraid of her, since it was clear that she loved him and he was also the best fighter in the whole clan. Even Nana said that, so it wasn't just me being biased about it, either. There wasn't a real reason he should be afraid. Even I wasn't that scared of them, now I'd got to know them a bit better.

Dee hissed, "Don't you trust us to teach your baby, Lew?"

"Oh, um, sure, we'd love you to, um…?"

He trailed off, unable to finish that sentence and looked to me as though I'd save him. It made me feel a flush of pride, even if it was amusing to see him so cowed by his half-sister.

Arram, the dryad, saved us. They were Dee's mate and a solid, reliable presence in the chaos that was her life. "Do not worry," they said. "I shall ensure they do not allow your child to encounter any weapons before they come of age."

Dum muttered, "Spoilsport."

It was my mother who brought the whole thing under control again. With dignity and kindness, she asked, "When are you going to start the proceedings? "

"Actually," I said, and then trailed off. I knew we should have told them before we started it, but we'd been so excited and we didn't want to overwhelm ourselves… now they were going to be upset that we hadn't told them first.

Glenwise spoke in his crisp, authoritative voice.

"Judging from the heartbeat of the foetus, I'd say that it was perhaps six weeks old."

Everyone turned to look at Nadia. Well, specifically her stomach. My eyes went there, too, and my cheeks pulled into a smile. They always did, and I could never stop it from happening, no matter how often I thought about that little baby inside there, mine and Lew's baby.

"Oooh," said Alfie, "Let me see if I have a bond with it!"

He looked hard at thin air for a moment. I'd known Alfie could see bonds because he'd told me when we were still children but, since I'd never been able to see them, I couldn't really picture what he saw.

After a while, he huffed and said, "I can't see anything yet but I promise I'll let you know as soon as we form a bond! I must be able to do it, right? Because I'll be their uncle, even if they're born into the Hoskins clan."

He glanced at Nana, as though wondering whether she'd fight for the right to claim my child as one of her clan.

"The child will unite the Hoskins and Somervilles, Alfie. The product of a fated pairing between our two clans."

"Maybe I'll only get a bond when they're born? Or maybe when they develop a bit more?"

Nadia surprised me by saying, "You can touch my belly if you like. To see if that helps."

Alfie moved round the table so quickly that he tripped over his chair. His face flamed red as he went but I could see he was determined to do it, so he must really, really want to.

As Alfie approached, Nadia presented her flat stomach and we all watched as Alfie pressed his hand against it.

"I still don't have a bond yet but I think that helped. Thank you."

Nadia gave a benevolent tilt of her head. "You're welcome. I don't mind you touching my belly again at a future date. I also won't mind it if you fuss over me and make me comfortable. "

Alfie nodded and pushed her chair back in from where she'd had to move it to give him access. He poured her some more orange juice, only then realising that she'd been refusing wine. I smiled to myself again and buried my face in Lew's shoulder. Alfie really was the sweetest man. I still could hardly believe that he was the Somerville elder. He just wasn't scary enough. I watched him fuss round Nadia until she was ready and then he returned to his seat and clutched his own little mate's hand with excitement.

Nana raised her glass and said, "To Morgan, Lew, and their child."

Everyone raised their glasses and toasted us, and I felt more happy tears leaking out of my eyes. It felt wonderful, to have my whole family there – both sides of my family – and have them all show me that they were pleased for me, that they accepted my mating with Lew and our future child.

I raised my glass to Nadia, and met her eyes.

"Thank you," I mouthed.

She smiled at me and I could see the happiness and satisfaction she felt radiating out from her.

Then I turned my eyes to Alfie. He was beaming at me. He raised his glass to me and drank .

It was only after a few moments that I began to hear the conversation going on around me. I'd been too focused on my own overwhelmed happiness. As I began to pay attention, I heard Laura say, "We're thinking about starting a family too."

"That's brilliant!" said Lew. "Our babies will have cousins to grow up with."

Laura nodded but Marcia looked despondent.

Laura turned to her mate and said, "Hey, don't let the troll get you down. We'll have children if we want them. Even if we have to adopt them. They'll still be ours."

Dum butted in, unable to leave it alone. "What's the problem with the troll?"

Marcia said, "We wondered whether Laura could carry our first child and use Randall's sperm so it has both our family DNA."

"What's the problem with that?" asked Dee.

Laura snorted. "Randall was willing but Broadmire's a troll. He just said ‘mine' and carried Randall off like a caveman. I guess he's possessive of Randall's sperm? We're giving him some time to get used to the idea. "

Around me, a lot of the adults were sniggering. That is until a sweet young voice piped up, "What's sperm, Auntie Laura?"

We all looked round at Hannah and Ed, who were looking with innocent wide-eyed interest at everything going on around them.

Gramps snorted with laugher and tried to hide it by pretending to cough. He wasn't very subtle, though. "You'll have to get used to this, if you want children. Why don't you ask Auntie Laura about it later, my dears?"

They nodded and I was sure Ed would forget all about it by the end of dinner but Hannah had a sharp intelligence and was determined to learn everything. I felt bad for Laura that she'd been the one to end up with that task, but Gramps was right. We'd have to get used to that now.

I breathed deeply, scenting Lew beside me. He smelled happy and content, and a little amused. His hand squeezed mine under the table and I smiled round the table at all my family.