Page 101 of The Omega's Alpha
“Can we start the fire now?” Agatha begged. “Please, Holland, pretty please.”
I laughed and picked her up. “Of course, sweetheart. Remember to give the gifts to Quin to drop in the flames.” It still surprised me that she wasn’t bothered by the fires. After the first couple of full moon nights, she seemed to forget her trauma, and had grown rather obsessed with them. Which was, perhaps, a worry of its own, but not one I could figure out how to deal with. Not yet. But perhaps one of those online therapists who had been so good for Quin would be the key to making sure that we’d drawn that poison.
Quin set Dorian on his shoulders and draped one arm around me. “I’m partial to what Duke and Bram did. And maybe the pups can throw some in too.” He raised his eyebrows at me. “It is their ceremony too.”
Why not? We were breaking all the other rules, why shouldn’t we take a sledgehammer to this one too?
Quin must have seen my answer on my face, because he grinned even before I could say anything. “All right, guys. Let’s go start a fire!” He waved at the bratvuk, who howled their human howls, even the human in the bunch, and began dragging piles of firewood out from hidden stores around the clearing. We soon had a stack of wood as high as Quin and wider than he was tall in the middle of the clearing. Fan strutted out of the crowd with a little red plastic jerry can in his hands, Duke right behind him, hands out as if to catch him on the off chance that the jug of gasoline were to knock him over completely.
Proudly, Fan presented the can to Quin. “I brought the gas, Uncle Quin! Uh, I mean, Alpha!”
Quin set Dorian down on the ground. “Thank you, Fan,” he said gravely. He guided Dorian over to the jerry can and helped him unscrew the cap. “Help me pour it?”
Dorian grinned and he and Quin careful poured the gasoline over the closest of the sticks, walking a slow circle around the base of the bonfire until they’d came back to me and Agatha. He handed the can over to Duke with a quiet word and Duke took it and Fan back over to stand in the front row of the encircling crowd.
Quin passed me a lighter and short branch, the end wrapped in a twisted strip of paper. “Do the honors?” he said.
I smiled and set Agatha on her feet. “I’ll light it and you can throw it,” I told her.
“Okay,” she said, bouncing in place, but I smelled a little anxiety off her and I felt like a heel, because I shouldn’t be so happy to know my baby was apprehensive.
“It’ll be okay,” I whispered in her ear. “You want me to hold you?” She nodded and reached for me, so I picked her up again. “Hold the paper and I’ll light it, then you throw it right into the wood, okay?”
Agatha took the paper in one hand and held it out as far from her body as she could. I moved right next to the pile of wood, struck the lighter, and held it up for Agatha to see. “Ready?”
Bravely, she held the paper-wrapped end of the branch in the flame, watched as the edges blackened and caught fire and when I nodded to her, she tossed it onto the wood.
Quin shouted, “In honor of our great fortune, and in prayer for our continued prosperity and the increase of our people, let us dance and take joy in the night, and the moon, and the fire, the child of the moon and sun.” And the pack cheered and howled again.
The fire spread rapidly and we stepped back with the heat already beating on our faces. Quin came to put an arm around my shoulders and we watched until the flames almost licked the stars, then Quin gestured to myrozvennyaand they came forward one by one to turn over the gifts they carried.
We started with Agatha’s, then Dorian threw one in, then I did, then Quin, each in turn until they’d all gone into the flames to carry their wishes and blessings to the gods. Then we stood, the four of us—five, really—and I suddenly wanted to tell the pups. I glanced up at Quin and he caught my gaze, reading me in that eerie and mostly convenient way he had. He nodded and tipped his head in a manner that said the rabbit was in my territory.
“Babies,” I said, using a term I didn’t use often with them, but which felt right in the circumstances. “Quin and I have some other news for you.”
Agatha gave me a look that said, in no uncertain terms, that I was an idiot. “I know. You’re having a baby. Can you have a girl? Boys are boring.”
“Boy’s aren’t boring! You’re boring,” Dorian shouted and made a face at his sister.
“The joys of parenthood,” Quin said to me over their heads, and I laughed.
“You guys are okay sharing us?” I asked them, hugging Agatha close.
“Promise we still get story time? And bedtime songs?”
“Always.”
“Don’t let the baby poop on me,” Dorian said. “Babies poop a lot.”
I tried to frown at Quin, who was snickering to the stars, but it was hard when I wanted to laugh too. “I’ll do my best not to let the baby poop on you,” I promised.
“Good,” he said. “Can we eat now?”
I glanced up at Quin, his eyes streaming tears now as he laughed silently above us. “Yes, let’s go eat. Before Quin has an accident.”
Agatha looked up, concerned. “Do you need to pee, Quin?” and I howled with laughter as Quin gravely responded, “No, I’m okay. Let’s go eat.”
Chapter Eighty-Two
