Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
My mate is perfect.
Heavy with my child, she is even more so.
“Careful,” I do tell her as she steps out onto the steps that can become slick with too much standing water. Her habit of hanging her hand over the lip of the edge leaves droplets and tiny puddles. “Is it too cold, now?”
Selina sticks her tongue out at me. “I thought you were bringing more hot water and coming to join me, Bo.”
That was the plan, but the trip around the house to fetch the water I left boiling over the pit brought me face to face with a messenger sent by my father. Nowas wouldn’t send for me at a time when my mate is so close to having our child unless the message was very important.
Unfolding the large swath of fabric she likes to towel off that I brought from inside the house, I hold both ends wide for Selina to walk into the middle. I wrap both ends around her, and then after a bit of twisting the ends, I tie them over one of her shoulders, giving her a tunic of sorts.
“Change in plans,” I say.
Selina turns to face me, pouting. “Well, I don’t like this already.”
Chuckling, I tick a knuckle under her chin to ask for a kiss that she happily provides standing on the tips of her toes. Time never fails to stand still when we kiss. Sound bleeds away. The background fades until it’s nothing but her and I. Even the weight of her arms snaking around my neck grounds me to the stone under my feet as we become one with it.
There is no place else where I wish to be. Nowhere but here.
As her heels rock back to the rear stone step, I explain, “My father’s sent a message for me. I’m needed in the city for a meeting.”
“Now?” Selina asks, her hands falling to her stomach.
Mine goes to the same place, atop hers. It’s something else to feel our child shifting slightly back and forth. “Now, sadly.”
“Can’t I come?”
Knowing what little I do about the reason my father sent for me, I’m not sure her attendance is such a good idea. My mother and sister, and even my father the last time we spoke, warned me about not upsetting Selina during this delicate time. It isn’t as if they believe she can’t handle it, but the baby she’s about to bring into the world doesn’t need the negativity and heaviness all around them. That shouldn’t be how we’re feeling when they meet us and Hallalah receives them.
So, I don’t tell her that I’m heading to the palace to receive news about my brother and Earth. I do nothing that upsets my mate. Not unless absolutely necessary. She’s close enough to bringing life into the world—an experience dangerous and life-altering all on its own.
She has enough to worry about.
Enough to hold on her shoulders.
The rest, we can do.
“It’s boring council requirements,” I fib, but then immediately move onto something I know will make her happy. Or rather, it will give her something to look forward to. She’s known about the saddle I had made by a Hallan skilled in leather work so she could begin riding lessons, but time dragging on made it a distant memory. I bet she’s all but forgotten it by now. “When I get back, I’ll have a surprise for you.”
That news does light the sparkle in her eye.
“Oh, what kind of surprise?” she asks.
I have yet to present a gift to her that she has not loved. Whether purchased, found, or made, if it comes from me, there is nothing she cherishes more. Unless I’ve somehow screwed up, and in that case, gifts do not work at all. Which, perhaps, is only fair.
I grin. “Not telling. Where’s the fun in that?”
“Bo.”
I drop a kiss to the tip of her nose. “The faster I go, the quicker I get back with it.”
The quicker I get back to her.
“Is that the real reason you’re going to the city? To get my surprise?”
“No, my love. Your surprise is simply the bonus.”
She concedes the point by clutching me closer to her for another heart-thundering kiss that I let go on and on. The two of us linger, loving, until the messenger has to round the back of the house to find me with the reminder that my father is still waiting.
What a shame.
*
It isn’t until I arrive at the palace and greet my parents and Vabila in a private den that I understand how serious the news from Earth is. If it were good news that they cared to travel, they wouldn’t ask to see me in the rooms used only by our family where nothing can be overheard.
At first, my father fills me with hope.
“Halun has found your mate’s mother, and he also asked for you to be informed that he has collected enough books to create a sizable library for your mate.”