Page 62 of The Ruby Dragon's Unconventional Mate

Lars’s mouth fell open. “Listen to you talk about our child. Listen to me. Our child is going to be sweetness and light. Lots of light.”

Bryant snorted. “Yeah, my brother is light. Lots of light.”

“He’s like a shining beacon, right?” he teased. “Of hope?”

Bryant rolled his eyes. “Well, of something. I’m not sure hope is the word you’re looking for.”

Bryant kept stroking his belly, and Lars pushed into the touch. It felt so good. Suddenly, he felt a little tiny flutter inside of him, like a weird, non-hiccup, and he stilled, tilting his head.

Bryant went still as well. “You cool?”

Lars nodded, swallowing hard. “I think I felt the baby move.”

“Really? Oh, how cool. I can’t wait until it’s big enough that I can feel it too.”

That flutter came again, and he nodded. “I think I really just felt the baby move.”

Fuck. It was real. He knew it was real because he was getting heavier and rounder, but this was proof of life.

And it felt like butterflies. “I want butterflies for the nursery. Bryant, please.”

“If you want butterflies, baby, butterflies it is. I will make sure that every inch of that room is covered in gorgeous butterflies. But yeah, I don’t think we should have the painted white crib.”

“I thoughtyourchild was going to chew on crib slats.” He couldn’t stop laughing, joy filling him.

“No, you’re absolutely right. Mine probably won’t, but yours? Yours totally would chew on cribs. Remember, I’ve seen your nieces.”

“Oh.” He laughed harder, because Bryant had a point. “But those are half Dakota’s too.”

“True.” His laughter finally died down. “I needed that.”

“Mmm.” Bryant kissed him, loving on him gently. “I did too.”

He patted Bryant’s chest. “You loon.”

“How about you let me deal with the crib?” Bryant said. “I have a couple of ideas.”

“Okay, I think we can do that.” Lars had no clue what Bryant had in mind, but alphas seemed to have opinions about cradles and cribs and places where their children slept, so he was going to let Bryant deal with it. “I can do the curtains, right? Andmaybe, I don’t know, wallpaper seems weird because we have stucco walls.”

“Do we? I thought we had wainscotting.” Bryant raised his eyebrows.

“Well, we do, and the walls above that aren’t textured anymore, but we do have stucco under there.”

“Under—that’s very New Mexico. Interesting.”

“Yeah, it’s funny how things grow out of the ground here. I think it’s because we have so much clay, and the houses sort of create themselves. At least the guardian ones do.”

“Yeah, I helped put a roof on a house in the village the other day, so I know that not everything makes its own happiness.”

He got to giggling again. “So, a border or something that we can either paint up there or put up and then take down and paint over the bad spots if the kid decides they don’t want that later on.”

Sounds good. I like the idea of it being changeable when the next kid comes along.”

“So you think there’s going to be more?”

“I do, yeah.” Bryant’s eyebrows waggled madly. “I think you and I are going to have a big family. You love to nurture people. You love to give of yourself to people. Why not to your own kids? And god knows that I want to be a dad. I want to be a good dad, and I want to be one with you.”

That made him kind of weepy, but he loved it. “I think that sounds amazing. Of course, we’ll see how this pregnancy goes, and how I feel about it. If it’s anything like Dakota’s, then maybe not.”

---