Moon Child (The Year of the Wolf #2) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,4
all, didn’t you know that?”
“Considering I can read your minds, nope, I just know that you like to ogle my tits when I’m meditating, and that Eli loves watching me bend over the dining table.” A chuckle escaped me. “I’m more than down for you taking me over that obnoxious thing.” Obnoxious because I was pretty frickin’ sure Washington had eaten on it. The thing was ancient and not to my taste at all.
Eli groused, “Don’t hand out promises you can’t keep.”
My nose crinkled again. “I totally would go down for two in one night.”
Ever since the knots had started taking less time to bind us together, and with the start of my pregnancy making my hormones out of whack, we’d all been screwing more. But I was heading out of that phase, to the part where I was beginning to waddle.
I remembered this time from Joshua—how awkward it was to suddenly have a basketball glued to your belly. Oddly enough, I loved it.
I loved being pregnant, even though I was getting cankles, my tits ached, and my belly was starting to stretch to the point where it was getting uncomfortable.
The disadvantages more than outweighed the advantages, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t happy as a clam to be pregnant, to be carrying one of my men’s children—and I figured it was Eli, as there was a single child in my womb. A boy. Not that I knew how I knew about that, just that I did.
Sometimes, when I tried, I could hear his heartbeat, and other times, I got the vaguest of impressions that he was starting to know what was happening outside the womb.
Of course, if I thought about that too much, I’d stop having sex period, so it was easier to shove aside the knowledge that even in utero, shifter babies had better senses than regular ones.
When Eli bent down and hauled me up, uncaring that I was dirty, uncaring that my hair was tangled with leaves and that I was probably dripping the last remnants of spent seed down him—God, I loved how earthy they were—I grumbled, but let him hold me like I was a child.
As he started toward the circle, I muttered, “Can’t believe you brought in the big dog, Austin.”
My mate snickered. “He knew you’d twist me around your finger.”
I peeped a smile at him over Eli’s shoulder. “That’s how it’s supposed to be. You’re supposed to keep your mate happy.”
Eli snorted. “I have ways of making you happy that don’t involve you freezing your ass off out here. I know the temperature is regulated in the circle, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t drop below freezing.”
I heaved a sigh. “I’d come in if I was cold.”
“You wouldn’t if you’d already turned into an ice cube,” Austin pointed out.
“When would that happen? People don’t turn to ice when it’s just above freezing,” I argued. “Anyway, you’d take me home if that was the case.”
“This way, you get to wake up in a feather bed with all your mates,” Eli reasoned, not even with a drop of his tone indicating that he’d been zapped by the totem as it relinquished us to the woods.
It was a strange thing to say, but I was pretty sure the line of the circle that separated the totem and the forest was a portal. But that was too The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe even for me, so I grumbled, “Now it is cold.”
I ignored Eli’s annoyance to reply, “I like to feel the rays of the moon on my skin.”
I tipped my head back and watched the full moon as I was carried back to the packhouse.
The dimples and divots, the shadows and crevices were a welcome and soothing sight.
When Austin and Eli started talking about a conversation they’d been having at dinner, I tuned them out and focused on Berry.
She was the she-wolf Ethan had managed to save in the other realm. She was my guardian, and while I could hear disjointed thoughts from other animals, sense their locations if I focused on them, hear their heartbeats if I ‘tuned in’, she and I were on a direct line. A strange wavelength that meant I could understand what she was feeling.
“Something in air.”
I arched a brow at that, because if that was her first greeting with me outside the totem’s circle, I figured shit was weird tonight.