Page 10 of Within the Veil

"I'm going to need you to not talk about our cousins that way. Bad enough they get the short end of stick...get it?" He doubled over laughing and I looked at him and shimmered my ass back to the training ground.

I shake my head at the memory.

"God," he groans. "How the fuck did I forget I had these? Stretching them out feels so damn good." I frown at the reminder of how our memories were taken from us and then the sudden onslaught of having them back. It was like getting hit repeatedly over the head.

"We forgot a lot of shit," I nodded. "At least we got it back. Where are the others?" I asked Ryder.

"Oberon is flying through the damn trees again like Phil Collins is out there singing for Tarzan himself. Hunter and Remi are outside taking a breather after giving Hudson her sponge bath, and King, Jensi and Luca are at some council meeting again," he answered, heading over to the weapons wall, grabbing Hudson's hand scythes and settling down to oil them like he did everyday.

That was another development, when Hudson fell into her coma...well, when everything settled down, anyway...there was a ripple effect in the Fae realm. A jolt of power that flooded us, the land and the people in it. Jensi and Luca, were given sentinel marks as a result. But in this case, both of them also have a deeper connection to all 5 of us as well as Hudson. It was unprecedented, especially since King was already a Sentinel, but having all three of them able to take point with the council while we trained soldiers as well as stood close to Hudson, was a Goddess-send. Not to mention the calming effects they had on our consistent spikes of anxiety or in Hunter's case...anger.

"So the midwife came already?" I asked, already knowing the answer. Still, asking was just another way of coping. Oberon had found a Fae, Onóir, also known as Finleigh, from Gaia knows where who was well learned and deeply honored to watch over Hudson and the babies. In fact, without her we would be clueless about fae pregnancies. I mean, we had devoured all the books that we could find about pregnancies, however most of those books were human related. We really should have been looking into the royal libraries, but for obvious reasons we didn't have access to the old court and their knowledge base. Simply being well versed in human pregnancies rather than both human and Fae pregnancies was not enough seeing as the genetic component between humans and Fae were different. All in all, Finleigh was a godsend. Because while we may have gotten a lot of our memories back, we didn't know jack shit about pregnancies then either.

* * *

"Yup,like I said she has no answers. She measured her belly again took her notes and flushed her IV before giving Hudson a fresh bag of the vitamin concoction she created, mixed with what ever Xena has been bringing. At least their vitamin elixir looks way better than the ideas we had," he chuckled. I smiled, remembering the argument we had a few weeks ago.

We stood around the bed taking in Hudson's slight pallor.

Grayson broke the silence first."She is going to need prenatal pills." He was right.

"She needs more than one set of pills a day. She's a mythical creature having quadruplets. Fae barely have babies, we need to keep her vitamin-ed," Hunter grunted out, his voice raw and cracking.

We were all taking the loss of her energy pretty hard, but Hunter? Hunter has spent such a long time being immersed in his anger that the love he felt for Hudson knocked him flat on his ass; rendering him inconsolable one moment then furious the next. He was barely holding on as it was.

"Mythical creature? She's not a fucking unicorn, fucktwat," I mumbled, rubbing my temples fighting off a headache. I'm pretty sure the last time I ever had one was over a hundred years ago. But with all this fighting and stress, I have a feeling this was going to be a permanent fixture.

"Technically we are all creatures of myth, so that is a moot point," Ryder pointed out, his face stuck on his computer looking up prenatal books.

"It says here, giving her multiple prenatals is going to do more harm than good, too many vitamins can poison the babies and Hudson. Don't you all ever read?" He snapped.

"What am I supposed to read? Guide to Faerie Pregnancies? Is that on amazon?" I barely suppressed the urge to be childish and roll my eyes.

Hunter chimed in, "Sure, I was going to read about prenatal pills during the aftermath of a fucking war and Hudson in a coma, you pretentious fuck. I'm going to infuse a sword with my magic and stick it right up your..." I cut him off before he worked himself up into a frenzy.

"Shut the fuck up," I lifted my head and glared at him.

"This fighting is pointless. Ryder, how can you poison a Faerie with human pills? She just needs the Fae equivalent to vitamins. We should ask the village people,someone has to know something" I said, standing up to stretch my back.

"Oh sure and then let's ask the people about pixie dust; shit we should know. Next we are going to ask them how to change diapers; This is all common sense. Woman. Pregnant. Pills. Healthy mom. Healthy babies," Ryder said in his best caveman voice. I looked over at Remi who was really close to losing it. She looked like she couldn't suppress the laughter for too much longer, but it wouldn't help with the dilemma, or Hunter's rage.

"I'm telling you all, she doesn't need vitamins. The babies will be strong with her chewing on some elder root and herbs, nature will guide her, we can just magic her jaw to chew and her to swallow. Like a deer grazing," Oberon said, his face serious.

"A fucking DEER?!" I yelled. Remi fucking lost it and fell to the floor rolling with laughter.

"Oh yeah, and how the fuck did that work for your entire fucking species? Lots of babies yeah?" Hunter yelled.

Ryder added in a quick, "Technically, our species too. We just forgot."

"Shut up, Ryder!" Hunter growls and Ryder just chuckles

Grayson growled, losing his patience, "theoretically she should be fine with regular pills, it's not like fae and humans are too much apart." Ryder snorted at that.

"Yeah and we thought that about birth control and we knocked her the fuck up. So I don't think we're all that fucking close!"

"I'm the oldest, so I pull rank," Oberon said, and then we all exploded into action, beating the shit out of each other.Good times.

"Our ideas were solid. They just needed to be tweaked a bit. At least we didn't offer to make her chew on a tree like a damn panda bear," Ryder grunted out.

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