Page 30 of Consume
“Yeah?”
I pulled away to read his face, and didn’t hesitate a moment longer. “I’m pregnant.”
He blinked. A wrinkle of confusion bunched his eyebrows, and then he leaned back on his heels as shock dropped his jaw. “With...with a baby?”
“That’s usually how this works, yes,” I said, grinning.
“When?”
“Uh, probably one of the times we had sex?”
“I mean when do we get to meet it...him...her...?” His eyes flared wide, and he stumbled away a few steps. “The baby.”
“Seven months.” Was his reaction normal? Should I have eased into this a little more gently? Because he looked like he might pass out or have a panic attack or—
“Then we need to makedamnsure we live that long.” His voice carried so much emotion, so much strength and love that my eyes filled with tears.
“So...you’re okay with this? With a baby? With everything that I am, not just the scales, but...what I could pass on?”
He crossed toward me and rested his hands on my shoulders. “Areyouokay with it?”
“I-I’m...terrified, like I have been with almost everything in my entire life. I mean...we’re still at war—”
“No,” he rasped and shook his head hard.
“No?”
“No, don’t think like that. Take out the war part. Easier said than done, I know, but...” His eyes, his smile, even the shadows biting into his cheekbones twinkled. “Do you want to have a baby with me, Absidy Jones?”
My worries deflated, and at the same time, love filled me to near bursting. “I want to do everything with you, Mase Ryan.”
Grinning, he swooped down on me and kissed me, his hands cupping my cheeks where tears wound through the cracks between my scales. I wasn’t so sure all of the tears were mine though.
“I’m going to be a dad,” he whispered between kisses. He pulled away, every inch of him bouncing, and then he lunged for the door and threw it open. “I’m going to be a dad!”
The hallways answered him back with an echo.
The smile slipped from my face as he sprinted to the left, and a surge of anxiety roiled in my stomach. My Mase was the happiest I’d ever seen him, which made the burden of winning the Black War even heavier. Because what if we failed?
I followed after him, and we found Pop in the dining room facing us from across the table carrying the soup, the double doors flapping behind him. His gaze widened when it settled on Mase.
“You must be Mase.” He puffed out his chest in an odd display that wasnotmy Pop. He glared at Mase for a long, long moment, a pillar of judgement. “I hear you’re a big fan of my daughter’s.”
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I am,” Mase said. It was a wonder he could keep his cool when Pop was making this—whatever it was—so awkward.
“Pop,” I warned. “You have to do this now? This sizing Mase up?”
He ignored me entirely. “I hope that doesn’t change when she gives birth to your baby.”
I sighed, a blush flaming my scaled cheeks. “Oh...good. Yes, let’s do this now.”
“What’s happening?” Ellison burst through the doors from the kitchen, locked gazes with all of us, and gave me a sympathetic smile. “Oh.Thisis happening.”
Mase touched the small of my back, stirring a pleasant tingle down to my toes like only he could in an embarrassing situation like this.
“I don’t plan on going anywhere,” he said with a confident smile.
Pop breathed a huge sigh of relief that scattered the tension in the room.
