Page 55 of How to Rescue Your Surprise Baby

Mav picked up Telos’ discarded pickup line, and tucked it into Telos’ hand.

Telos stared at him. “You didn’t want to give me the line about my ass, but you’d give me one about us dying in a horror movie?”

Mav rolled his shoulders. “Pretty sure we’d end up surviving in one of those movies.”

“Yeah? Want to demonstrate some moves?”

Ace cleared his throat loudly, snapping his fingers at them. “Go piss on those sticks so we can get on with the mission!”

“Fine,” Telos grumbled. He grabbed a few more kits from the bag, and stared at Estie on his lap. Mav was watching them. “I suppose you could hold her again.”

Mav brightened, scooping the baby off Telos just as she burst into a ball of flames.

Mav’s face softened in the orange glow of fire. “She’s so beautiful.”

Telos wasn’t sure if he was supposed to hear that. His insides turned into mush, and he hurried to their bathroom.

Mav followed with Estie.

“Are you serious?” Telos asked, brandishing the test kits at them. “You’re gonna watch me pee?”

Mav shrugged. “You need extra hands to help hold the sticks, don’t you?”

“I guess.” Telos sighed. He tore open the next few boxes and took out the kits; Mav read the instructions on all of them.

“This one first,” Mav said, picking out a purple stick. “It’ll take the longest.”

“We don’t even know if they’ll work for alphas,” Telos grumbled.

“We don’t have many other choices if we want an answer right now.”

It felt weird pissing in front of Mav. Telos felt the slow sweep of Mav’s gaze down his body, lingering on his scars.

“Where did this come from?” Mav asked, brushing his knuckle against the jagged scar on Telos’ hip.

“Some king had a harpie problem and hired me to drive them off his land,” Telos said. “They were getting too close to his castle and killing his soldiers. Turned out, they were a pain to fight.”

“I don’t like them either.” Mav winced. “They trapped one of the wagons in a caravan I was traveling with. Took us a while to fight them off and continue on our way. We had to kill some harpies so they’d stop chasing us.” He brought his knuckle to Telos’ abdomen, where there was a series of nasty-looking, star-shaped scars, almost completely faded. “What about these?”

Telos snorted. “Got those when I was much younger. Fell off a tall roof and landed on a spiky iron fence.”

Mav recoiled. “That looks like it bled a lot.”

“Yeah, it did. My parents were worried.” Telos shrugged. “Old news now, though.”

“You shouldn’t be putting yourself in danger.”

Telos raised an eyebrow. “Really? Are you saying that to me right now, in the middle of a mission?”

For a second, Mav looked sheepish. Then he nodded at the test kits. “Piss.”

“Fuck off.” But Telos held the sticks in front of himself, and finally managed to wet all their tips. He exchanged the soaked sticks with the fresh ones Mav held, and peed on them too.

“Start the timer,” Mav said.

“Timer started,” Hadley sang from the living room.

They gathered the kits and returned to the couch, where Telos resumed stuffing his face with his reheated breakfast. Hilly-Billy was the best.

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