The "boy" held her tighter against him, obviously not the least bit worried. "I'm fine, Mrs. Smith. And I have a sister, too."
Lia turned her gaze on Riley. "Good God, Mercy. You brought another one into the family?"
And Mercy knew it would be a good night, no matter the worry that continued to pierce her heart.
Sascha stared at Tamsyn in the rosy evening glow. "You're sure?"
"Sascha, darling," Tamsyn said with teasing patience, "it's a pregnancy test, not rocket science. Even if it wasn't positive, the fact that Lucas says you are is gold - you're probably around two weeks along. That's when males tend to pick it up."
"He told me my scent's changed, that my body's already shaping itself to accommodate the new life in my womb." His eyes had glittered with protective emotion, his soul there for her to see.
"A mate always knows," Tammy said with a gentle smile. "The rest of the pack will begin to pick it up now that he has."
"How?"
"Something happens when the male member of a pair knows - it's like his protectiveness coats you, and your own scent changes with it, to something unique, something that speaks of life newly begun."
Life. Sascha laid a fluttering hand over her abdomen. "I still can't quite believe it." A soft warmth lay curled in her belly, a presence that she sensed with every empathic sense in her. It was a spark now. No, a tiny fraction of a spark. So tiny that she had to focus all of her power to feel it. "I never expected to be a mother." Perhaps that's why she hadn't understood what her body had been trying to tell her.
Tamsyn looked surprised. "Really? But you love children."
"Yes." She reached out for Tammy's hand, wanting to share the depth of her joy. "But when I was in the Net, when I thought I was flawed, I swore I'd never submit a child of mine to that kind of an existence."
Tammy leaned forward to kiss her lightly on the cheek. A gift. A comfort. "You're not in the Net any longer."
"And," a deep male voice said from the doorway, "you were never flawed."
She raised her head to look into the face of the panther who was her heartbeat, and now, the father of their unborn child. "You were supposed to stay downstairs."
"Yeah," Tammy said, even as she released Sascha's hands and walked to the doorway, "this was a girls-only session."
A slow smile crossed Lucas's face. "I wonder if it'll be a girl."
Tammy passed him, brushing her fingers over his arm in an affectionate gesture. "Way too early to tell."
Lucas stayed in position after Tammy left, his green eyes stroking a caress over her. "Scared?"
"Yes." She didn't know how to be a mother. "Nikita was hardly a good role model."
"I'm scared, too."
"You're the alpha of the pack," she said, finding they'd somehow moved toward each other without realizing it. "You're only saying that to make me feel better."
He took her hand, placed it over his heart. "Listen."
It was jagged, touched with a tinge of sheer terror. "Why?" she whispered.
"My parents were wonderful," he told her, continuing to hold her hand. "But they couldn't protect me. It terrifies me that I won't be able to protect our child."
She shook her head, pressed her hand more firmly against him. "They died fighting for you. If that's the legacy we leave our child, that child will grow up knowing he or she was loved, loved so completely."
"Such faith in me, kitten." He cupped her cheek with his free hand, his touch warm, wonderfully familiar. "Have the same in yourself."
Leaning into him, she drank in the beat of his heart. "Give me a few months. I have to study the mother thing."
"Ah, Sascha." He laughed, and the sound of it wrapped around her like a sensual blanket. "I'm sure you'll have a graduate degree in it by the time the kid decides to pop out."
She fisted her hand and thumped him on the chest, fighting the smile that threatened to edge her lips. "Don't tease."