Iron Master – Jennifer Ashley Page 0,69
breath, some of his robustness returning. “So, mate claim, eh?”
“She accepted,” Noelle said with satisfaction. “We just have to plan the sun and moon ceremony. Full moon is in two weeks. I looked it up.”
“Can we stay up all night for the moon ceremony?” Donny asked immediately. “It will be a special occasion, right?”
“We’ll talk about it,” Peigi said.
Donny decided to take that as an affirmative. She saw him putting arguments in line if she took a stand against his night-long party.
Breakfast ended in a jubilant mood. Peigi knew she shouldn’t be so happy, as they had much to worry about, but she couldn’t help herself. She’d accepted mate claims in the past—Michael’s and then Eric’s nominal one—but those were for expediency. This time her whole body danced, and joy flooded her heart.
This was right.
Peigi assumed Stuart would want to talk with Ben about Dylan and his requests—rather, his thinly veiled demands—but Stuart said nothing at all. He helped clean up after breakfast, asking Ben what he thought about the Tuil Erdannan, and somehow the discussion ended up being about soccer—or footy as Ben and Stuart called it.
Peigi left them to it.
She did ordinary things, such as make certain the cubs were bathed and dressed, their dirty clothes from yesterday in the laundry—activities that today were easy. She found herself humming again as she worked, which infected the cubs, who started singing or bellowing tunes along with her.
“How many cubs will you and Stuart have?” Noelle asked her after lunch. She held a steno pad and pen and appeared to be taking notes. A young human girl would have been tapping on a tablet, but Shifters were still restricted from certain technologies.
“We haven’t got that far yet,” Peigi said, flushing. “Haven’t even started on the first one.”
Noelle regarded her without embarrassment. Shifter cubs knew all about sex and what it was for, though they had only a cursory interest in it until their Transitions when they were in their mid-twenties. Then they would pursue sex with mindless adrenaline.
“Once the cubs start coming, we’ll need a bigger house,” Noelle said. “We’ll have to tell Eric. We might be able to stay in this one but build on.” She assessed the end wall of the living room.
“Early days, my girl,” Peigi said breathlessly. She’d thought the same at Cain’s house—maybe Eric would okay a courtyard and another floor, she thought with nervous hilarity.
“In any case, Stuart should move into your room right away, and we can start turning his room into a nursery.”
Ben leaned on the open doorway to the kitchen, coffee mug in hand. “You mean he’s still sleeping in the guest room? Seriously?”
As Peigi’s face grew hotter, Noelle nodded. “They haven’t spent the night together at all.” She shook her head, disappointed in them. “Cubs will take forever if they don’t change that.”
Ben took in Peigi quivering with embarrassment, the other cubs listening in avid interest, and Stuart pretending not to hear as he banged dishes in the kitchen, then reached behind him and set the coffee mug on the kitchen table. “Tell you what, kids. How about I take you out for sundaes?”
Instantly the cubs forgot about Peigi and Stuart’s personal life and shouted their pleas.
“Can we, Peigi? Please, can we?”
“I suppose it will be all right. But take your coats—” Peigi’s admonition was drowned out by a chorus of delight.
Noelle abandoned her position of family organizer, flung down her steno pad, and dashed for her coat. Ben herded them toward the foyer as Stuart emerged from the kitchen to help bundle them up.
Ben bumped fists with Peigi. “You two have some things to work out,” he said. He grabbed his leather jacket from the coat rack and followed the cubs out the front door, hollering at them to wait for him.
The door slammed shut, and the cubs’ voices receded and faded as Ben loaded them into the SUV Eric had given Peigi. The engine turned over, and the SUV pulled away.
“I never gave Ben the keys,” Stuart mused. He leaned on the doorframe where Ben had.
“Neither did I.”
“Good to know he’d make an excellent car thief.”
“Maybe he is one.” Peigi tried to smile, and the corners of Stuart’s eyes crinkled.
They studied each other, the silence like a barrier rising between them.
Peigi swallowed. “They expect us to …”
She trailed off, unable to voice it. She hoped, she wanted, and yet was uncertain. Shifter frenzy was strong, but Stuart wasn’t—
Stuart pushed himself from the door frame before she could finish