Page 159 of Slick Handling

Skating around the rink in my sixth season of the ABOHL, I know exactly what I’m looking for.

Clover is standing at the Zamboni entrance. She’s holding our daughter Poppy on one hip and our son Forest on her other. They’re twins who are just about to turn two. Both of them are in the family Mathers jersey with 00 because we couldn’t agree on which number to give our kids to wear. It’s bad enough that we argue about which one to put our Omega in.

Against the glass is our oldest son Frankie who is five years old, our four year old son Finn, and our three year old daughter Lily.

Griffin insisted the girls all be named after flowers like their mother. It had been such a sentimental ideal and so unlike our pack mate, but we loved the idea.

McKinley and I are to blame for the F names. We watched a lot of reality TV shows when Clover was pregnant and it had just seemed like a good idea.

We were ready for more kids too. There was still Daisy, Rose, Violet, Iris, and Aster. Or if we had move boys Felix, Ford, Flynn, Fitz, and Fisher.

The first few pregnancies happened so easily, but for the past year or so we haven’t had much luck getting our Omega pregnant.

We were lucky. Five kids are a ton. They get to come with us to games because of the pack laws that the team follows. Our families helped a lot too. Honestly, we made good looking children so everyone seemed to not mind lending a hand and holding one.

I’m nudged out of the way as Mick waves at our kids.

Soon Vaughn and Griffin are standing there as we do our usual pregame warmup greeting.

None of us care who is the actual father to the children. Sure some of the kids may look a little more like one of us than the others. And maybe one of our children likes to be held and cuddled all the time because they’re attention seeking. Maybe one of our kids has dark soulful eyes that make my heart melt whenever I look into her eyes. Maybe one of our sons has the quietness about him that is all my packmates. Maybe one of our daughters likes to write lists and spreadsheets for everything. But at the end of the day we love them all and every one of those kids are ours.

Together.

Clover leans in with all the kids and I try not to think about all the germs. This is the grossest part of our pregame ritual but I can’t stop doing it because they play it on the Jumbotron and everyone always loves it.

We all kiss the glass.

Clover mouths I love you and starts to wrangle our brood away, my eyes turn as she walks with our family to go to our seats and I freeze.

On the back of her jean jacket, in fuzzy red patches, are the words ‘I’m pregnant’.

She looks over her shoulder and winks at us as we watch her walk away.

“Holy shit.”

“I would offer to retire, but we’re about to be dads to six maybe seven kids if we have another set of twins, I don’t think we can afford that.”

“We’re going to have to change diapers again.”

“Clover’s going to have milk again.”

“Stop being weird Griffin.” McKinley hits him with his stick and looks up at me with a smile on his face, “I guess we get to use more of those names after all.”

Yeah, I guess we do.

CLOVER’S EPILOGUE

FIVE YEARS LATER

Ikiss Poppy’s cheek, watching her nuzzle into the purple dragon that she takes everywhere. All the other kids are tucked away asleep in their own beds. Forest was in his across from her snoring softly as he held One in a chokehold. He loved to cuddle anything and the grumpy cat of mine had turned out to be his best friend.

One looked at me and blinked his one eye before purring and nuzzling into my son.

I loved that orange baby.

One of the good thing about having a big pack is everyone gets to help at bedtime.

I open the door to leave and smile as Vaughn’s arm wraps around me. He holds my lower back as his other hand falls onto the bump I’m sporting.

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