Page 87 of Echo and the Homicidal Sea Panda

“Are dolphin pregnancies different?”

Echo cringed. Dolphin pregnancies were bad enough, but they weren’t a year and a half.“Twelvemonths.”

“Ahh,” Mael said. “I suppose it’ll make things interesting waiting to see how it would end up. We can take bets on how long it’ll be. We might make a small fortune. We can set up Junior’s college fund early.”

Echo chuckled. “You sound almost certain that I’m pregnant.”

Mael’s smile faded. “We both know the chances are low. We shouldn’t allow that mural to get our hopes up.”

Echo’s stomach knotted at the thought of never having a child with his mate. He forced a small smile. “You’re right. There’s no way that’s us.”

He slowly spun to face the water, sipping his coffee. Tears welled in his eyes, and he blinked them back, focusing on the beauty of the rising sun and not the breaking of his heart. The damned hormones were making him weepy, and he wasn’t going to allow them to. Mael was his mate, and they would have a life of love and happiness together. Plenty of people couldn’t have children or chose not to—and they were not diminished by that in any way.

But he’d always envisioned becoming a papa one day.

His thoughts drifted back to the mural with the couple who looked like them.

“So…?” Mael asked, slipping his hands around Echo’s waist from behind. “I was wondering. Which… um… which one… is connected to the womb?”

“They both are,” Echo replied, chuckling to himself. He lifted a finger and casually flicked off the tear that slipped past his defenses.

“Oh?I assumed it would be one or the other, but not both of them connected to the womb.”

“Wombsss,”Echo hissed, grinning to himself.

Mael spun him around, his jaw slack. He searched Echo’s face a moment, eyes widening. “You have two?”

Echo nodded. “I think I’ve already told you that, haven’t I?”

“I don’t recall. I damned well think I would have remembered.”

Echo snickered at the wide-eyed, comical surprise on Mael’s face.

“For fuck’s sake, Echo…” His surprise shifted into a smile. “That doubles our chances, now doesn’t it?”

Echo bit his lower lip, not wanting to get emotional again.Fucking heat hormones.A heat flooded his system and often left him emotional for a day or two as he returned to level ground.

“And honestly, I think that’s just further proof we were meant to be,” Mael said.

“Is it now?”

Echo’s head whipped in the direction of a woman’s voice. Mael stiffened as a woman rounded to corner from the side of the boat, glaring at the two of them. She looked like an older version of Tempest with a few gray hairs threaded through the raven black.

Shehadto be Mael’s mother.

The orca matriarch.

And she didn’t look happy.

19

“Good morning, Mom,” Mael said, sliding Echo slightly behind him.

His mother’s glare whipped from Echo to him. “It’s not the best of mornings. My sister called last night, frantic. I went in search of my children to send to her aid—and I couldn’t find a single one.”

Mael stood taller, his stomach turning.

“My sons and daughter finally arrive home late last night, yet there’s still no Maelstrom and they won’t tell me where he is.” She strolled a bit closer. “Then I get a call from the Harbormaster a few minutes ago, telling me that my errant son is on Storm’s boat with a strange man he’s never seen before.” She cast a look around Mael’s arm for a few seconds before looking back at him. “And I come here and find that stranger in your arms… someone who’s apparentlymeant to be, hmmm?”

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