Beauty's Beast - By Jenna Kernan Page 0,93
want babies, babies that he did not dare to give her.
They stood that way a long time and then more questions sprang up in his mind, one after the other, like new green shoots amid a forest blackened by fire.
“What are they?” he asked. “I was born in my fighting form. And I was never pink and...” He stopped himself before he said “weak and helpless.”
She read his thoughts. “They’re not helpless. They can already roll over.”
She clasped his hand and drew him back with her to look at the twins.
“I’m not sure what gifts they have yet. But I know, whatever they are, that they will be wonderful.”
Such complete confidence she had, while he was still drowning in panic.
“What if they attack your family?”
“Don’t be silly. They’re infants.”
He knew better. The yearlings of his kind were as dangerous as hungry tigers. But then he recalled what his mother had said. They had never attacked her or their father. They never killed humans, either. How did they know?
“I could fly at birth,” he said absently, gazing entranced at the two little souls.
“I’ll keep the windows closed.” She giggled and looped an arm about his waist.
“They don’t look like me,” he said. But they smelled like him, he realized.
“Oh, no?” She lifted the closest baby, who woke with an irritated cry and blinked open its eyes. “This is Andrew.”
Samantha rested the infant on her shoulder and cradled the small, fuzzy head as she turned so Alon could see his son’s tiny face. The baby boy blinked open his eyes and stared at Alon.
“This is your papa, Andy.”
Alon gaped in astonishment at the haunting yellow eyes that were so familiar in his kind. But his eyes were that color only when he was in fighting form and never while in human form. The contrast of familiar and unfamiliar increased his anxiety.
“Take him.”
She didn’t give him time to refuse. Suddenly he had a little malleable lump of baby boy molded to his shoulder. He was warm and fragrant, with hair as soft as the belly of a rabbit. Alon’s heart squeezed with joy. He closed his eyes to savor the lightning bolt of emotion that left him full of hope and joy.
“It’s a miracle,” he whispered.
Samantha laughed. “I’m glad you think so. They need feeding every three hours.”
He wondered what they ate. Alon turned to grin at Samantha, still clasping the little bundle. “I love him already.”
Samantha blew out a breath as she nodded. Was that relief? Did she really think he could look at these babies and not want to keep them right here next to his heart?
“I still want to marry you,” he said.
She rested a hand on Andrew’s small back. “Then that is what we shall do.”
Alon swallowed past the lump in his throat. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for you. That I left you alone—”
He was about to say “alone to give birth,” but she cut him off. “No more of that now. My family was with me.”
You and I will build from here, from this moment and this love.
She never spoke the last part, but he knew her thoughts. How did she know what he was going to say? How had he known what she was going to answer?
And then he recalled what she had once told him about her parents and how they knew they were meant for each other. His parents, too, had this connection, this way of reading thoughts and emotions by a touch.
The soul mate bond, he thought and she nodded.
“Yes.”
Behind her came a tiny huffing sound. She turned and bent over the bedding.
“Let me introduce you to your second son, Ian.” She held up the boy, who kicked his tiny legs and frowned at Alon.
“Ian? But Ghostling twins are always a boy and a girl.”
“Are they? I didn’t get the memo. And these are not only Ghostlings, they are also one-quarter Skinwalker and one-quarter Spirit Child.”
It was so. His children were of all the Halfling races.
“What will they grow to be?” he asked, full of wonder and a hope that was as bright and unfamiliar as sunlight after months of darkness.
“Whatever they grow to be, they will be loved.”
Samantha clasped his waist with one hand and inclined her head for a kiss.
Alon pressed his mouth to hers, tasting again the familiar sweetness. She was his bride, the mother of his children and, as soon as possible, his wife. He drew back to stare down at her.
“I’m the luckiest man in the Living