Teague shivered in the afternoon chill, watching the sun sink slowly beyond the horizon and boiling a set of sheets from their bed as he stood in the yard between the barn the cottage.
They had a son.
His first cries still echoed in his ears, almost obliterating the sound of Kira’s pain while she was in labor. He could still taste the sourness of his fear from that time, fear that was only abating now.
Now, since she was safely tucked into the freshly-made bed, clean and secure, their son cradled in her arms.
He wanted to join them so badly it hurt.
But he lingered outside instead, staring at the western horizon, a frown creasing his brow, jaw tight, muscles taut.
What in blazes is about to happen? I’m wound too tightly for this to be leftover nerves from delivering my own son. His fingers curled into fists, breath steaming in the chill as he exhaled slowly. He looked toward the cottage, thinking of Kira. She’d known something was bothering him all day. He wished he could put his finger on it.
Teague pulled the sheets out of the water and swapped it for fresh. He flexed his hands, itching for his sword for some inexplicable reason. It was leaned up against the bed-stand inside, easily within Kira’s reach. He hadn’t thought he’d need it out here. There hadn’t been any sign of Dirae or any other enemy of theirs since Neve and Cameron rode away.
He missed her, his little sister, the last princess of Avalon, but he didn’t regret letting them ride away—not even when he’d felt the pain in his leg and back so sharply that he’d known something terrible had happened.
Have faith, Teague. Have faith. That’s what Kira had said to him as she’d held him, curled in their bed as fear-born tears had poured down his face. They’ll be fine, just like we are. They’ll be fine.
It was one of the things he loved about her—the fact that she would hold him when the fear came and not judge him for it. She was the only one he had now that he could do that with.
Exiled or not, he was still a king—even to his sister and his cousins.
It should have been you, Seamus, he thought as he poured the sheets back into the caldron. I was never meant for it.
He checked the fire before turning away from the caldron, sure that the sheets would boil for a while now, and headed toward the cottage. In the distance, he heard a wolf call to another. They had been moving steadily south since winter had set in, but he wasn’t worried. He’d dealt with worse before. Far worse and far bigger in the days of old.
But these aren’t the days of old, are they?
He ducked back into the cottage and shucked off his boots, heading back toward the bedroom. A fire crackled merrily on the grate and Kira was still snuggled in the bed under a thick quilt. She peeked up over the edge of it and smiled at him.
“Are you going to stay in here for a while?” she asked.
Teague nodded, taking off his coat and hanging it across the back of a chair. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I’m going to stay in here a while. Cold out there.”
“Do you think it’s going to snow again?” she asked, shifting in the bed to sit up a little further. Their son stirred in the crook of her arm, then quieted.
“What’s his name?” he’d asked her. “What are we going to name him?”
“Seamus,” she’d whispered back. “For your brother. Seamus Michael, for my father, too.”
His brother the healer and the healing archangel. It still made him smile. It made him dare to hope a little harder that they’d win the war that was coming, the one they might watch from afar—the one they might get sucked into.
“Maybe,” Teague said as he sat down on the edge of the bed. He leaned in to brush his lips against hers, then to gently kiss their son. He already had a faint, fine spray of reddish-gold hair. Teague smiled.
Kira reached up and stroked his cheek. “Are you all right?”
“For once, yes,” Teague whispered, looking at her, spirit buoyed at least momentarily. “For the moment.”
“It’s the calm before the storm, isn’t it?” Kira asked softly. “It’s all about to begin.”
Teague eased beneath the covers with her and wrapped his arms around his little family. “Yes,” he said. “But not yet.
“Not quite yet, not now. We have right now and that’s all I want.”
Kira closed her eyes and rested her forehead against his neck. Whatever tomorrow or the next day brought, they would face it together—the same way they had since the day they’d met on a sun-dappled green in the middle of Chicago’s concrete jungle.
That was the way it was meant to be. In a world where nothing else was sure anymore, he knew that to be true.
And it was enough and always would be.
