Avenger(20)

“Pumpkins? But it’s so messy,” he wrinkled his nose in distaste.

“I want to. Please?” I begged. Technically I wasn’t on bed rest anymore, but I had to limit my activities. The simplest things made me exhausted. I had left the house a few times, but since each time resulted in me sleeping for twenty-four hours so Caeden wouldn’t let me leave anymore—except for doctors appointments. But surely I could sit and carve a pumpkin.

He sighed and I knew he was caving.

“Please? I want to carve a pumpkin for the baby,” my fingers grazed back and forth over his chest.

“Fine,” he relented and I smiled triumphantly. “But you’re not going with me to get them. You can stay with Nolan.”

“I’m okay with that,” I said quickly. I knew there was no point in arguing about going to pick my pumpkin, because Caeden would never let me, and I was sorta sick of sleeping for a day when I went out.

He chuckled. “I didn’t know you could be so…agreeable.”

“Yeah, well, sacrifices must be made. And as much as I’d like to go out and do things, I know staying home and limiting my activity is best for the baby.”

Caeden leaned over and placed a light kiss on my lips. “I’ll shower and head out. I won’t be gone long. I don’t like being away from my princesses.”

“The baby could be a boy,” I replied, just like I did almost every time he referred to the baby as a girl.

“Fifty fifty, baby, and I’m betting on a girl.”

“Oh, so this is a bet now is it?” I laughed.

He stood and stretched his arms above his head. “Sure. If it’s a girl I…never mind, I only see this blowing up in my face,” he grinned crookedly.

“Afraid I’d win the bet?” I asked, raising a brow.

“Maybe,” he smiled as he backed towards the bathroom door.

I shook my head and slowly eased from the bed. I felt like I did everything in slow motion nowadays. I didn’t like it. And like Gram had warned, I’d lost my ability to shift…well, let’s put it this way—I hadn’t tried to shift, because my wolf side was silent. I knew it was gone and I was so weak anyway that I didn’t see the point of testing it.

I slipped my feet into a pair of slippers and grabbed a light gray sweater to wrap around me. I was freezing all the time now—strange since I was a shifter and we tended to have a higher than normal temperature.

I slowly made my way down the steps, gripping the railing tightly in my hands for fear I’d get dizzy and slip.

I shuffled my feet along the floors and stepped into the kitchen. I was surprised to find it empty. Nolan seemed to spend most of his time in there eating everything he could get his hands on.

I decided to take the time to make Caeden and myself an egg sandwich. Lately, unless Caeden made my meal, I’d been living off of cereal or anything that was easy to make. I didn’t like feeling so weak and tired all the time. Laying in the bed all the time was so not as fun as it sounded.

When the sandwiches were done I carried the plates over to the table and went back for two glasses of orange juice.

By the time I sat down and took the first bite of my sandwich, Caeden walked in, rubbing his damp curls.

“You made me breakfast,” he smiled when he saw the plate.

I shrugged. “You’ve been doing so much for me, the least I could do is make you a sandwich.”

He bent down and kissed my cheek before sitting across from me. “This is really good,” he commented. “But you certainly didn’t have to do this.”

I laughed. “I’m certainly not as good of a cook as your mom.”

He shrugged. “My mom has had to cook all the time, raising two hungry shifter boys and all their friends, so practice makes perfect.”

I bit my lip, absorbing his words. In seven months, we’d have our own child, and it was only a matter of time before the others started popping out kids. Somehow, over night, we’d become adults. It still hadn’t quite hit me that my childhood was gone. After all, I was only eighteen and that was young. But Caeden and I had the weight of the world on our shoulders—or so it seemed—and that made us seem so much older.

We finished eating and Caeden took our plates to rinse off and put in the dishwasher. Moments like this made it so easy to forget all the bad going on in our lives. In these brief times, we were just Caeden and Sophie—husband and wife—going about our daily activities and being normal. I craved normalcy something fierce. But the moment I found out I was a shifter, any chance at a normal life went out the window, and honestly when it came down to it, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Caeden, the whole pack, the shifting, all of it was amazing and it was worth the bad times. After all, once Travis was gone once and for all our lives could be—not normal—but peaceful.