The Lost Mate

Lillian

Max had frozen in shock when I had informed him of the news that we were getting an addition to our little family. Once he recovered, he picked me up and spun me around in excitement.

Again, he’d managed to impregnate me without my heat, so I guess all those cringey informational videos and parental lectures they’d subjected us to in our teenage years had been valid. Not that I was going to tell my dad that.

Telling Max I was pregnant again had been easy, because I had always been able to tell him everything since the moment we discovered we were mates.

Jonas, on the other hand, I was worried about. He was five years old now, and he had been the sole centre of my adoration for as long as he’d existed. Meeting his father hadn’t really changed that, because even though Max was always in my mind like a steady hum, Jonas now had a second parent to pay attention to him, along with a pack. Not to mention my time wasn’t being stolen from him by the duties of a vampire slave anymore.

But I was still nervous. Max wasn’t. He was as certain as ever. His attitude was a comfort, although it was a bit annoying how he always took everything in stride while I was busy being stressed out. It always had taken a lot to get him riled up.

Since coming to Glenhaven, I had heard stories of how he’d lost his temper a few times while we’d been separated, but he was back to his collected self since we were together again. I would probably never witness it.

Jonas was in my dad’s rooms in the pack house when we went to get him. I knocked as I opened the door and let us inside, to find the two sitting at the small table along with Kain while the three of them played a gimmicky board game.

I’d managed to avoid being sucked into playing it so far. The game was themed after a popular children’s show about a boy and his worker dogs who saved the adults of a town from their own incompetence every episode. I didn’t dare even think the name of the show because the theme song would be stuck in my head for days if I did.

“Mom, Dad!” Jonas said, his attention breaking from the game and turning to us now that we interrupted. My dad greeted us more quietly, and Kain acknowledged us with some sort of mumbled pseudo-language.

The teen had been spending a lot of time around my dad since we’d been freed from Montgomery. My dad had bought a used Playstation whatever-number-they-were-at-now, and he and Kain had started playing some shooting games together, although Kain was better at it than my dad. I was also pretty sure they talked about memories of Glenhaven, although my dad always kept their conversations in confidence.

“Having fun?” Max asked our son.

“Yes! Papa got us ice cream!” Jonas rushed over and hugged us before hurrying back to his seat. He had even more energy since a month ago when he had made his first shift and now I could barely watch him without feeling exhausted. Our new addition seemed to be sapping my energy, too, like our kids were tag teaming me already.

“Who’s winning?” Max asked.

“I am,” Jonas grinned. I wasn’t surprised by that. Both my dad and Kain cheated to let him win a lot of the time. They were having to get more sneaky about it now because Jonas became very indignant on the couple of occasions that he caught them at it. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they didn’t enjoy that strategy more than the actual game.

“Awesome. Anyway, we’ve got something special to tell you,” I told him.

Kain got up like he would head out the door.

Max shook his head. “Sit down, kid. You’re family too. You might as well hear it.”

He slumped back down in his seat. I ignored the way his scowl lessened at Max’s words. If he wanted to pretend he had no emotions, I wasn’t going to out him.

I got down to Jonas’s level. “Baby—”

“I’m not a baby, Mom.”

“Sorry, Jonas,” I said, correcting myself. “You’re right that you’re not a baby anymore. Actually, your dad and I are going to have a baby, a little brother or sister for you.”

Kain smirked like he had predicted it and my dad looked elated, but Jonas simply studied my face and then Max’s face silently in turn. Then he shrugged. “Okay.” He turned his attention back to his turn at the game like we’d commented on the weather.

His reaction was so anticlimactic that we had no plan for how to deal with it. Max and I had a game plan for happiness, anger, jealousy, sadness, confusion, but this...?

Then I glanced at my mate’s blasé expression and realized I’d been a fool not to have seen it coming. This was exactly how he would have reacted at Jonas’s age. “So, you’re okay with being a big brother?” I asked, just to double check.

He shrugged and shot me a confused expression. “Yes. Why not?”

“You’re not surprised?”

He looked at me like I was the one missing something obvious. “Eric has a baby brother already, and his mom is going to have another one some day, and Theodora is going to have another baby. Probably all the grown ups are having a babies.”

Kain shrugged. “He has a point. Observant kid.”

Jonas pondered. “I hope ours is a boy.”

“Why a boy?”

“I don’t need another Rosella. One is enough.” Kain snickered at Jonas’ comment and messed up his hair. Jonas had a bit of a Kain hero worship thing going on so he glowed under the teen’s attention.

“Even if we had a girl, she’d be sweet like your mother,” Max pointed out.

Jonas’s brows furrowed. “Mom is pretty sweet.”

D’aww. My baby. “Or calm like your father,” I added.

Jonas nodded, apparently convinced it would be fine either way and was clearly finished with the subject. “So, can I stay here longer?”

“That fine with you, Dad?” I asked my father.

“Sure. I’ll bring him home in a couple of hours.”

“Alright, be good,” Max said, grabbing my hand and pulling me from the room like we were still excited teenagers. I didn’t have to ask him where we were going, because we both instantly recognized the gift we had been just given: a couple of extra hours just for us.

Time together was precious and we weren’t about to waste that.