Chapter Five

Logan

Despite the celebration Zoey-bell shared with the other new trackers on Hemlock Mountain, Jessie and I put together a celebratory dinner for when she and Kata arrived back home to Mage Street later in the week. Jessie and Jake, another tracker and the Shifter Cultural Studies Professor at the academy, hunted fresh deer and pit-roasted it. Jake's mate, Gary, Ross, and I spent the day before making side dishes and desserts. It was all too much food. It was always too much food, but there was always someone hungry and willing to eat leftovers.

Jessica ran in and out of the house, alternating between watching the pit with the Alphas and asking us to make every dessert known to wolf-kind. We gave in on a lot of them, since she'd never be this little again. My little Zoella was all grown up. After the others left for the evening, I sat on the sofa, remembering the nest that took up most of our living room and how she broke her way free of her egg. Now she was grown and about to be a sire. Where had the years gone?

"Dad?" Jessica climbed over the back of the sofa and flopped down next to me.

"Yes, pumpkin?"

"Will the baby be a dragon?" she asked, looking up at me with Jessie's eyes.

"Who told you about the baby?" I arched a brow, trying not to grin.

"I hear the baby's heartbeat."

"You can't hear the baby right now. They're inside Kata's tummy on an airplane," I laughed.

"What? Kata's having a baby too?" she sat up. "Is Zoey-bell allowed to be a mommy? Did you give her permission?"

"Who else do you know that's pregnant?" I stifled a laugh.

Jessica furrowed her brows and gave me a look she one hundred percent inherited from her sire.

"Who?" I laughed.

"Don't you hear it?" she asked.

"Hear what, pumpkin?"

She pressed her ear to my stomach and my heart skipped a beat. She squirmed around until she found the spot she was looking for.

"Right here. The heartbeat is right here," Jessica said a second later.

"Huh?" I blinked.

"Our pup is right," my wolf chimed into my thoughts.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I thought back at him.

"It wasn't the right time," he said.

"How'd you hear that?" I grinned at Jessica as she sat up.

"I just heard it," she shrugged. "I'm not going to be a tracker, though."

"What are you going to be when you grow up?" I asked her.

"A racecar driver or a ballerina or both. I just can't decide which to do first. Maybe the ballerina, because racecars wreck and if I messed up something maybe I couldn't dance. Or I'll be a horse. Can I be a horse?" she asked, but didn't wait around for an answer, instead she wandered into the kitchen. A second later the fridge door opened. I left her to raid one of the too-many desserts we made and headed outside to see if Jessie heard what our daughter claimed to hear.