Every Dawn Forever (18 page)

He wondered if she was so tired because she was worried about the pregnancy.  He didn’t like the thought of her being worried about anything, and decided to talk to her privately in the morning.

He woke up after nine and the bed was empty, save for himself and Sydney, who was tucked against his side with one leg between his.  She shifted with a soft, sleepy sound, her thigh dragging against his rapidly awakening cock, and he stifled a groan.  It had only been a few days since they’d discussed being mates, and it grated his beast that they weren’t mated to her already.  It made sense to him as a human as well.  He wanted Sydney, and it would be so easy to roll her underneath him and…the erotic thoughts stalled out as the pamphlet from her purse snapped through his mind.

Syd yawned and made another soft, groaning sound, rolling to her back and stretching with a yawn.

“Morning,” he said.

“Hi.”  She sat up and stretched again, rolling her neck.  Glancing around the room, she said, “I don’t even remember coming home last night.”

“You passed out at the desk.  Orion asked me to bring you home.”

“Really?”  Her brow raised.

“Yep.  One minute you were working and the next you were snoring,” he teased.

“I do not snore!”

“Like a lumberjack.”

She smacked him in the face with her pillow and he pushed her to her back, caging her with his arms.  “What am I, a teenage girl?  You hit me with a pillow.”

Brushing her hair from her face, she laughed.  “It was the closest thing I could grab.”  Her face went stern, but amusement glinted in her eyes.  “And there will be more where that came from if you go around spouting lies like me snoring.”

Shit he loved how feisty she was.

He nuzzled under her ear and inhaled the sweet, natural scent of her skin.  It made his beast go nuts.  Kissing her neck, he lifted up enough to look down at her, training his ears to the door.  He didn’t hear his brothers at all, which told him they were either down in the den working or outside somewhere.  They were alone for now, and although he enjoyed teasing her, he knew that he needed to take the chance to speak to her now while he could in private.

She pressed her palms to his cheeks.  “You look so serious.  Is something wrong?”

His whole life he’d always been
the quiet one
.  It wasn’t that he didn’t like to talk, only that he rarely felt the need to speak.  He’d spoken more to Sydney in the last few weeks than he could remember ever speaking with anyone else, even his family.  She touched something inside him that made him want to be vocal.

He took in a slow breath and let it out.  “When I put you to bed last night, a pamphlet fell out of your purse.”

Her mouth fell open and her eyes widened in shock as her body went stiff.  For a heartbeat, he thought she might try to deny what he’d seen, but instead her eyes filled with tears.  Her hands left his face and she hugged herself to him, pressing her forehead to his collarbone.  “Please don’t be mad at me, please, Sterling.  I couldn’t bear it on top of everything else.”

Easing them both to their sides, he held her close with one arm and wiped the tears from her cheeks.  “Love, I’m not mad.  Tell me what’s going on.  Whatever it is, Syd, you know that I love you — that
we
love you — and nothing on earth will change that.”

She blinked, forcing more tears to spill over her cheeks, and he wiped those away as well and waited for her to speak.  For several quiet moments, she just looked into his eyes as if she were drawing strength from him, and then she told him what was going on.  Pains at the full moon and a missed period had led her to conclude she was pregnant, and she was afraid of what it might mean, so she asked Alyssa to take her to the doctor instead of talking to them.  She spoke softly, her fingers tracing patterns absently over his back.

A part of him wanted to be angry at her for not telling them what was worrying her, but it was a tiny, insignificant part of his brain and it was drowned out by the enormous pleasure that stole through him when she said that the baby was definitely their clan’s.

He laughed and kissed her hard.  Then he pushed her to her back and lifted her shirt until her stomach was bared for him.  He kissed her stomach and rested his hand on her warm flesh.  Looking up at her, he grinned.  “You’re going to be a mom.”

“I don’t know how.”

She’d certainly never had a motherly role model, so he understood her concern.  “We’ll learn this parenting thing together.  And you’re going to be a wonderful mom, Sydney, I just know it.”

Tears spilled over her cheeks again, but she was smiling this time.  “And you’re going to be a great dad.”

Damn straight.  And he was going to be the best dad he could be to his child, and the best mate to his woman.

* * * * *

Crux stared at Sydney in stark shock.  She was pregnant?  With their child?

She sat on the couch in the family room with Sterling, and he and Orion were sitting on the other couch, their mouths hanging open in shock.

Looking at the way her hand clutched Sterling’s, Crux asked, “Did you know?”

Sterling nodded and explained how he’d accidentally found out.  Jealousy flashed through him, that Sterling had shared this with her privately, followed quickly by anger that she’d purposely misled them about what was going on with her.  But one look at the worry on her face, and he knew that she’d been battling her own demons.

He crossed to her and got down on his knees, taking her free hand.  Kissing the top, he looked up at her and said, “I wish we could have been there for you, but I think I understand why you needed to do it on your own.”

She pressed her lips together and her eyes glistened with unshed tears.  “I thought you’d be mad at me for not telling you, but I was afraid of what the doctor might tell me.”

Orion moved to the other couch and sat by her side.  “It’s okay, sweetheart.  I’m so happy that you’re carrying our cub.”

“You are?”

Crux said, “Of course!  You’re our mate.”

Orion’s voice dropped low.  “Even if it weren’t our cub, sweetheart, it would still be part of you.  We love you and we would love any child of yours whether it’s ours or not.”

She sniffled and squeezed Crux’s hand.  “I’m glad it’s your child.  I’m so glad.”

Leaning forward, she hugged Crux and started to cry and he rubbed her back until her tears dried up.

She kissed all of them and then leaned back against the couch.  Taking a deep breath, she said, “I want to tell you about my past.”

Silence hung between them all for several moments.  His immediate thought was to tell her not to spoil the happiness of the day with a drive back through her past memories.  But if she felt the time was right, then he wanted to hear what she had to say.

Orion brushed her hair from her shoulder.  “If you’re ready, then we’re here to listen, sweetheart.”

Her voice trembled slightly as she began her story of growing up as the unwanted daughter of the pack slut, but as her life unfolded her voice grew stronger.  Angry at times.  Bitter at times.  Sad.  Resigned.  Then hopeful as she found the relo group and dreamed about freedom for the first time in years.

She shivered slightly.  “I knew when you touched me, Orion, that you were my mate.  The drugs were wreaking havoc inside me until you came to me and it calmed everything inside me for a little while.  But I didn’t think you’d want someone like me.  Broken.  Used.  Given away like so much trash.”

During her story, Crux had joined them on the couch and she now sat in Sterling’s lap with her legs across Crux and Orion’s laps.  Crux rubbed her ankles and wished that he could undo the damage that had been done to her.  He wished he could go back and kill that bastard all over again, and every other male that had known what she was going through and never lifted a hand to help.

Orion stroked her cheek.  “We would want you regardless of your past, Syd.  You’re our mate and that makes you perfect in our eyes.”

Crux squeezed one ankle gently and she lifted her eyes to his.  “When is our cub due, baby?”

“June twenty-fourth.”

“That’s plenty of time, then.”

“For what?” Her head tipped to the side in question.

“To make two nurseries.”

“Two?”  Her brows furrowed in confusion.

He grinned.  “Sure.  One up here, I’m thinking the bedroom that you used when you first moved in with us.  And then one in the den so that next winter, the cub can have a room of his or her own.”

Sterling nuzzled her neck and growled.  “And then we’ll get started on the rest of our family.”

She smiled and laughed, the tension that her story had brought to her easing away.  “Just how many children are you planning?”

“As many as you want, sweetheart,” Orion chimed in.

Her eyes crinkled happily.  “I’ve always wanted to have a big family.”

“Then we’re just the clan for the job.”  Orion promised.

Her stomach growled loud enough that they all heard it and she laughed and blushed.  Crux got up and bent over to kiss her.  “How about some lunch?”

“I’m starving,” she said as she stood from Sterling’s lap.

“Oh?  I couldn’t tell,” Crux teased.

She slapped him playfully on the arm.  “Be nice to me.  I’m carrying your child.”

He swung her up into his arms and carried her towards the kitchen.

“I plan to be very,
very
nice to you.  Mate.”

Her eyes crinkled as she smiled.  “Mate.”

* * * * *

The week passed quickly as Orion and his brothers prepared for the mating ceremony.  He had called his parents the day that Syd told them she was pregnant and shared the news with them, along with their plans to mate her on Saturday.  His parents, as he’d expected, were thrilled and couldn’t wait to meet her.  They made plans to visit in November.

Saturday morning, he rose early and left the house.  Everything was ready for the ceremony, which would occur at sunset.  Sterling and Crux had set up the den, stocking the small kitchen with food and drink.  The supplies for the actual ceremony were waiting in the garage.  Which left only this one important task to complete.

Pulling into the parking lot of
Dragon’s Den Tattoos
, he parked and walked to the front door, pressing the buzzer.  The tattoo shop was owned by a friend of Garrett’s, who’d made arrangements to open up early.

The man who came to the door was bald, with a long, gray beard.  Wearing camo pants and a white tank, his arms were a colorful tapestry of tattoos from wrist to shoulder and visible above the neckline of the shirt.

“Which one are you?”  His voice was gruff as he opened the door and Orion stepped in.

“Orion.”

“I’m Barker,” he said as he led Orion to a chair.  Orion sat down and pulled out a carefully folded sheet of paper which held the two designs that would make up the tattoos, one for each ring finger.  Barker studied the paper and then looked at Orion’s fingers.  He disappeared for a few minutes and came back with the the images copied onto transfer paper.  After prepping his ring fingers, the images were transferred to his skin and Barker began to work with black ink.

The man was silent as he worked, and Orion didn’t mind the quiet.  As the tattoo gun buzzed, he closed his eyes and thought about what the tattoos meant.  The top and bottom of the tattoo that circled his left ring finger was made of a simple lock and key design, underscored by a narrow, straight line.  In the center were symbols that represented Sydney’s name and his clan’s vow to her as their mate.  The tattoo on his right ring finger was much simpler, with only two narrow black bands that lined a row of symbols.  It was their clan ring; a vow between himself and his brothers that they would do everything in their power to keep their mate and their future children safe.

As Barker finished the first ring and started the second, Orion’s thoughts shifted to the child that Sydney carried.  He knew how lucky they were that the child was theirs.  Even one day later to retrieve her and it would most likely have been that bastard’s child, and Sydney would be forever tied to someone that had tormented her for six long years.  But the child that she carried belonged to their clan, was the product of the first night they met her, when she asked them for help and they happily complied.  It hadn’t been a hardship to treat her like a queen and make love to her that night.  The only thing that had been difficult for him, and his brothers, was controlling the urge to hunt down her ex and kill him for what he’d done to her.  Since she’d come into their lives, the wounds on her body had healed, and she was coming out of her shell with them.  Sharing her full past with them had been a turning point in their new relationship and he coveted the trust that she had in them.

Barker leaned back and rolled his neck, stretching his back until it cracked.  “Yeah?” he asked, looking at the tattoos.

Orion lifted his hands and studied the tattoos.  They were perfect.

“Great, man.  Thanks.”

Barker grunted, bandaged the tattoos, and stood.  Orion followed him to the cash register, which was covered with stickers for various tattoo products and shops.  When Orion handed Barker cash, he asked, “What’s up with them designs, anyway?”