Page 73 of The Storm
Once upon a time, when their world was not filled with raw, wounded soldiers, Leo and Max would have gone to a proper scribe academy at age thirteen. They would have learned every facet of Irin life, from preserving manuscripts to magic useful for the family. They would have been taught the customs and spells to care for a mate and children, along with those for fighting, weapons, and buildingtalesm. They would have had a true education from elders and soldiers and fathers and healers.
Instead, they’d been thrown into the fire and shaped to be weapons.
You’re going to be a father.
Leo had frozen. He didn’t know what to do. He was still trying to understand what it meant to be a mate; he didn’t know anything about being a father. Then the look in Kyra’s eyes had gutted him.
You don’t want—
I do. I didn’t expect it so soon. Most Irin don’t conceive—
Without magic. I know. The same thing happened to Ava and Malachi. I know we weren’t trying, but—
Kyra, I am happy. I promise I am.
What he didn’t tell her was how scared he was. How the thought of a small, vulnerable child in their world made him freeze. It was hard enough being an uncle to Malachi’s children. His own and Kyra’s? Terrifying.
Leo sat on a pine stump his father used for shaping metal. There were hammered divots in the top. It wasn’t the stump his father had used when he was a child. Pine didn’t last long, and Leo had been alive for over two hundred years. He’d spent the first sixty training with his father, his grandfather, and the scribes in Riga before being presented to the Watchers’ Council as a full-fledged warrior. The council traditionally didn’t take scribes trained for less than a hundred years.
They’d taken Leo and Max at sixty.
Leo knew war. He knew fighting. He knew nothing about children.
Some nights in Istanbul, dark dreams would taunt him—dreams of screaming and fire—and he would wake up covered with sweat. He’d go to the courtyard, waiting under Matti and Geron’s window, tracingtalesmon his temples until he could hear every heartbeat in the house. Until he could hear their inhalations and snores. He would listen for a few minutes—wait for the pounding in his chest to pass—before he could go back to sleep.
They were so small and vulnerable.
The child in Kyra, his child, was even smaller. Only a few months old, it was barely the size of an apricot. Kyra had told him that. She had looked it up online, excited about when she would be able to hear the baby and what the baby’s mind would sound like, and all Leo could think about was how would he be able to sleep knowing that his mate carried new life and he could not guard her every moment of the day.
And then he wondered how he could possibly be the kind of father his child would need when he knew nothing about having a family.
He watched his father quench the horseshoe and hang it on a bar near the forge. Peter hung the hammer and put the tongs on a rack. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt that fully covered him. Scars and burns ontalesmwere regrettable and often damaged the magical armor their tattoos provided. Wearing protective clothing, even in the heat, was practical.
Peter was nothing if not practical.
“Did you want me?” Leo asked the silent man. “When my mother became pregnant, was it an accident or was it purposeful?”
Peter frowned. “Why would you ask that?”
“Did you want me?”
He pulled off the heavy leather gloves that covered his forearms. “We petitioned Uriel with songs and prayers for three years before your mother became pregnant.”
“So you wanted me.”
“I answered you.”
Leo crossed his arms. The fire was still going, and trails of sweat dripped down the center of his back. “Kyra is expecting a child.”
Peter, as Leo had done, froze. His eyes went wide and darted to the door. “Who is with her?”
“Renata.”
Peter’s posture relaxed, but only a little. “You should not have flown in an airplane to get here,” he said.
“The healer assured her it wouldn’t be a problem.”
“You should drive back.” His eyes kept going to the door.
