Page 43 of Broken Kingdom

“It’s always like going home,” she says, clinging to me as we ride each other with the familiarity of two people who have made love thousands of times, knowing exactly how fast and hard we like it. “I love you, Ford. I’m so glad you’re mine.”

“Love you so much, baby girl,” I say, my voice rough and my throat tight. “I couldn’t ask for a better life or a better wife or a better place to make a baby with you.”

“I might not get pregnant the first time,” she warns as her skin begins to glow the rosy pink of a phoenix shifter about to get off on her husband’s dick, confirming why pink will always be one of my favorite colors. “We might have to try for a while. You might have to come inside me again and again.”

“Devil,” I say, pumping faster, harder. “You know that’s going to make me lose control.”

“I hope so,” she says, meeting me thrust for thrust, her breath coming faster as her orgasm gets closer. “I want you to come inside me so bad. I need it, Ford. I need you. Always.”

“Always,” I echo as I pump deep and cry out, riding the wave of pleasure as I shoot everything I have into her pussy.

Several minutes later, as we’re catching our breath, she moans and arches into my cock, still semi-hard inside her. We’re still so close that I can feel the telltale flutter in her pelvis as she whispers, “Oh, shit.”

I grin down at her, so happy that phoenix shifters have special skills in the “knowing exactly how knocked up I am” department. “Already? You feel it already? Is it a girl? I love our boy, but you know I’m a sucker for a baby girl.”

Juliet’s eyes go wide as she says, “Yes, it’s a girl.” Then she hits me on the shoulder. Hard. “And another boy.”

My smile stretches wide enough to make my jaw hurt. “Twins? Again?”

She hits me on the other shoulder, making me laugh as she adds, “Yes. Again. What the actual fuck, Ford?”

“What?” I ask, still laughing as she rolls me onto my back and straddles my hips. “It’s not my fault.”

“It is your fault. It’s your stupid super sperm,” she says, slapping my chest with both hands.

“Guess my testosterone levels are just fine them, huh?” I tease, grabbing her wrists and pinning them to the blanket on either side of my head, bringing her lips into perfect kissing range. “No more hitting. We can do this. We’ve already done it once and everything is easier the second time around.”

She sighs, her breath sweet on my lips as she mutters, “And then you’re getting a vasectomy, the kind with magical accompaniment that not even multiple shifts can heal.”

“And then we can fuck without protection or pulling out ever again,” I say, lifting my hips, letting her feel what the thought does to me. “Sounds amazing.”

“You’re amazing,” she murmurs, brushing her nose against mine. “How are you hard again? Didn’t your dick get the memo that he’s old and crotchedy?”

“Guess not,” I say. “But if you ride him again, he might learn the error of his ways.”

She starts to move, stroking her hips up and down my cock. “You think so?”

“No,” I admit. “He’s never going to learn, but…maybe that’s part of what you like about him?”

“What I love about him,” she corrects and then she proves it, making me pretty sure I’m the luckiest man on earth.

Then we head back to the house to welcome our kids home from school and make the most of the late summer warmth, grilling out on our big back deck with the view of our new private island, filled with people who have proven they share our dreams and vision for Zion.

And yes, the world outside our bubble of safety and inclusion is still, in many ways, a shit show. Alphas fight each other for territory, the path to a united shifter world has been rocky, at best, and everyone who was trapped in the Parallel when the portals collapsed is still lost to us. Variants are welcome in more places than they once were, but there are parts of the country that are dangerous for our friends who aren’t wolves and vulnerable shifters are still sold into slavery far more often than anyone with a conscience would like.

But here, at Zion, we’re getting closer to the kind of world we want for our children.

And when Fray and Freya are born nine months later, we’re just a little closer still.

As Juliet and I sit propped in the birthing bed downstairs with our swaddled little miracles, our friends and loved ones call to congratulate us and wish us well, and I’m reminded of how far we’ve come. There was a time when we had almost no one—no family, no pack, not even each other—and look at us now.

“We’ve done okay for two people who hated each other’s guts,” she says when I mention it. Then she grins and adds tiredly, “Glad I didn’t shoot you that first night at the motel.”

I smile, sweeping the hair from her forehead. “Me, too.”

“Us, too,” River and Luna say from the door, Layla right behind them.

“Sorry, guys,” Layla says as our first set of twins comes to meet our second. “I told them it was too late, and they could see the babies in the morning, but they insisted.”

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