Page 42 of The Syndicater (Dark Verse 6)

Zephyr stared at him for a long second, biting her lip. She hadn't had a chance to tell anyone. Dr. Nei had tested her and she'd come back positive. To say she'd been stunned would have been an understatement. Though the doctor had reassured her that it could have been missed due to her recent stress, and maybe the hospital hadn't tested her for it at all, it was completely normal and she just had to schedule an appointment with a gynac in the next week to make sure everything was as it should be.

She'd thought she would break the news to Alpha when he got back home. But before she could have, he'd been onto her, kissing the daylights out of her, just kissing because he'd been waiting patiently for her to give him a signal that she was ready in the headspace to have sex again. And then, in the middle of their makeout, Morana had called and the entire mood had shifted.

And now, standing in a strange apartment in a strange city looking at a boy who wasn't that strange to her, she realized he was about to be the first one to hear the news.

"Well," she began. "I'm pregnant."

Xander stilled, his eyes slightly widening, moving to her stomach. "There's a baby in your belly?"

Zephyr looked down at it, the curves hinted at in her loose top and smiled. "Yeah."

"How did it get there?"

Blood rushed to her cheeks at the innocent question, her gaze darting everywhere, mildly panicking because what the hell would she tell a child about how babies were made? She didn't want to be his first conversation about it, didn't want to say something that would traumatize him. She looked around theroom for inspiration, before taking a deep breath in, realizing he was waiting for an answer.

"Well," she swallowed, taking one pancake off and putting it on the plate, then adding the batter for the second one. "When a man loves a woman, he gives her a special… gift that only he can. And when the woman loves him back, she accepts it. That gift becomes a baby."

There. That was very child-friendly and very simplistic.

Xander kept looking at her stomach. "That's not true. I was a baby but I don't think I came from a gift of love."

The heavy words, said with that simple, direct tone, shot through her heart. Zephyr looked at the little boy, wondering what his life had been like before, who he was born to, and knew she couldn't say anything to counter his statement because she didn't know anything.

"What do you think you came from?" she asked him casually instead, making another pancake, busying herself so it didn't seem she was too curious about his answer.

"I don't know," he simply stated. "I saw love after I was born, not before."

Zephyr bit her tongue to keep from prying. She didn't know anything about his past experiences and didn't want to tread over any trauma he may or may not have. "You're very loved now, even if people don't tell you."

He nodded. "I know. People express love differently. Some tell me, some show me, some do both."

"Good. You deserve all the love." Zephyr finally finished cooking—three with extra butter for him and one for herself—and plated up their food, placing them on the table. Xander, as well-mannered as he was, added glasses of water and more orange juice next to her plate first and then to his, and Zephyr wondered if that was something he'd learned before or after he'd come to live there.

They both hopped up on the stools, both their feet dangling in the air which made her chuckle, and dug in.

"Has Tristan given Morana his gift?" Xander asked just as Zephyr took her first bite. Her eyes widened, food going down the wrong pipe as she choked. She coughed, taking sips of water to clear her airway, her eyes tearing up both in shock and laughter. Oh, she was pretty sure Tristan had given Morana hisgiftmany times. Just the way the man stared at her was enough to overheat libidos all around, but aside from that, there had been too many occasions on their video calls where Morana had had a look on her face Zephyr recognized very well—a woman well-satisfied and well-pleasured by her partner. She knew the look because she had seen it on her own face many times, though not recently.Fuck.She needed to get laid and needed her husband to lay her.

"You'll have to ask them that yourself," Zephyr told Xander, giggling at the thought of the boy asking Morana this and her reaction. Tristan probably wouldn't react. She'd never really seen much of any expression on his face. "It's a private thing."

Xander chewed his bite of food thoughtfully. "Tristan loves Morana, but she doesn't have a baby in her belly, but she loves him too, so he must not have given her the gift, or she would have accepted."

Oh, sweet summer child full of logic.Zephyr was absolutely not going to get into the discussion of protection against the gift with him. With his brain, he would have her talking about things a child should not be learning this early.

"How are the pancakes?" she asked, changing the topic instead.

"Good." He chewed some more. "Tristan makes better."

She'd heard he was a good cook but damn. Morana often talked about Tristan and Xander bonding over food, how it was somehow both of their love languages and how they plotted waysto keep her out of the space. She hoped someday she could taste something he made and see for herself what the reputation was about.

"Is it a boy or a girl?" Xander asked after a few minutes of companionable silence.

Zephyr shrugged. "I don't know yet. It's too early to tell."

"When will you know?"

"Maybe in a few weeks. I have a doctor's appointment soon, so they'll give me an exact time."

He cleaned off his plate, inhaling three pancakes faster than she ate her one. Damn, the boy couldeat.

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