Wild and Free(197)

She lifted the bouquet to her face, took in a breath and then let it out, but it didn’t help.

Nothing, she’d found, did.

“Are you quite all right, Sonny?” Gregor murmured and Sonia looked to her vampire.

“Yes, I’m wonderful, Gregor,” she told him and his lips tipped up but his eyes moved over her face.

“You’re a bit flushed, my dear,” he noted and she lifted a hand to fan her face.

“Just… feeling strange. Probably stress. It’s been going on for a while. I suspect, after this is over, it’ll be over,” she told him and was too focused on what was to come, she missed his eyes moving swiftly to Regan before coming back to her.

“Sonny, sweetheart, are you and Callum, um…” Regan trailed off and Sonia turned her head to her mother-in-law.

“Are we…?” she prompted.

“Uh, planning on pups sometime soon,” Regan finished and Sonia grinned.

“No, I’m on birth –” she stopped abruptly on a gasp, leaned into Regan and asked in a panic. “Do human birth control pills work with werewolves?”

Regan smiled a gentle smile, reached out and gave Sonia’s hand a squeeze before she replied, “Yes, Sonny. Usually a doctor will prescribe a certain brand as, obviously, werewolves have, uh… a different hormonal make up but it’s unusual for a she-wolf or human to become pregnant if a woman is taking any kind of oral birth control.”

Sonia sat back in her seat on a relieved sigh.

“Does Callum know you’re on birth control?” Regan asked and Sonia looked to her again.

“I, well, I think so. I mean, we’ve been together awhile. I don’t recall if I’ve ever taken it in front of him but he’s never brought it up so I assumed he knew I had it covered. I mean, we would discuss having, well,” she grinned, “pups and decide together when the time would be to start trying for a family.”

Something which, on their honeymoon (Callum told her they were going to have a honeymoon thus it was not a surprise) she’d be bringing up.

For her, the sooner the better. Mara, Callie and Regan had explained werewolf DNA always won out over human and any offspring created in a wolf/human interaction was wolf and therefore immortal.

Callum would have centuries with their children. Sonia, decades.

She wanted to start right away.

“I think, sweetie, you may want to discuss this with him at your earliest convenience,” Regan advised quietly and Sonia again grinned at her.

“Oh, I will,” she whispered, Regan’s eyes lit and they shifted to Gregor.

Sonia’s followed and she saw Gregor slightly shaking his head and frowning.

“Vampire grandpa, of sorts,” she muttered her tease, sliding into him and burrowing so he had to lift an arm and wrap it around her shoulders.

He looked down at her and muttered with distaste, “Vampire grandpa to werewolves.”

Sonia grinned.

Gregor kept frowning.

Sonia pressed closer and kept grinning.

Gregor’s eyes moved over her face, his frown faded and his eyes grew warm. “Vampire grandpa to my Sonia’s children.”

Sonia took in a quick breath and warned, “Don’t make me cry, Gregor.”

“Fine, Sonny. So deep breathe or do whatever you humans have to do to withstand enduring something like this,” he warned then he gave it to her. “You’re beautiful today. You’re beautiful always but today, you glow. I love you, my dear, I have from the moment you came to me even if that moment was a sad one. And I’m immensely proud of you.”

She deep breathed, taking those breaths in through her nose and letting them out of her mouth as she stared at him.

Then she whispered, “I love you too. I have for ages and I’ll do it forever.”

He nodded, a muscle in his cheek twitched and he turned his head to look out the window but his arm around her curled tighter.

Regan grabbed her hand and held just as tight.

Twenty minutes later, on Gregor’s arm, Sonia received all the pomp and circumstance a woman walking toward her husband the king should have.

Following Calder and Caleb escorting their mother then her string of bridesmaids who wandered the length of The Lodge to the dais where Callum, Ryon, Drogan, Magnum, joined by Calder and Caleb, stood, all looking breathtakingly handsome in tuxes, Sonia noted the entirety of the space not taken up by wolves was festooned in ivory silk rosettes, bunting and so many calla lilies, lily of the valley and white roses, Callum had to have bought every bloom, not only in Scotland, but all of Europe.

The building so big, the procession took so long, the women walked the space to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”, a full symphony and chorus behind the dais filling the beautiful acoustics of the space with some of the most extraordinary notes ever put together.