“How’s your head?” Ivan asked.
“So much better.”
“Good enough to move to the bed?”
I lifted my head a little to see if it started pounding. So far, so good. “Try opening the door. Just a crack, please.”
Ivan untangled himself from me and my nest and crawled to the door, opening it just a little, like I’d asked.
The light was overwhelming, but not painful. It was just the normal response of dark-adjusted eyes to light. “That’s okay,” I said.
Ivan swung the door fully open. “Then let’s get you to the bed. It has to be more comfortable.
I snuggled further into Ivan’s clothes. “If you’re leaving, I’d rather just stay here,” I said.
“Are those… are you snuggling my dirty boxers?” Ivan asked incredulously. “No wonder you smelled so strange.”
I lifted my head to see my cheek was indeed pressed against his boxers. A pair I distinctly remembered making him come in a couple days ago. I sat up and coughed awkwardly.
Ivan stood and crossed his arms with an amused smile. “Facts, do you have a fetish you haven’t told me about?”
“No,” I protested. “I just… your scent made me feel better. And clothes that you’ve worn recently carry more of your scent… seriously, don’t make this weird.”
“I don’t have to make it weird. It’s already taken a roundtrip there. Come on. Let’s get you settled in bed.”
I didn’t need help walking, but Ivan hovered close. He whipped the covers back for me to crawl in, and I stared at the bed for a moment, biting my lip.
“Don’t tell me you want to grab the boxers, Facts.”
I shook my head. “Do you think you could… would you mind making me a nest? Just pile the pillows and blankets up in a circle. It makes me feel safe.”
Ivan rubbed a hand in my hair and kissed my forehead. “Of course. You rest, I’ll fix the bed.”
As he untucked the blankets and sheets for maximum nest making, the blood in my head started to beat a little too hard again. I wanted nothing more than to crawl into my nest with my mate and sleep for the next week, but there was a knock on the door.
“I’ll get it,” Ivan said, buried under the duvet cover. “Just give me a moment.”
“No, I can do it.” I walked to the door, hoping my blood pressure wouldn’t rise enough to aggravate the headache. River stood outside.
“Do you need Ivan?” I knew the idea of curling up with him all day was just a dream.
But River shook his head. “How are you feeling? You look tired.”
“That’s rude,” Ivan called, trying to escape from his duvet and sheet prison. “You’re always supposed to tell omegas they look amazing.”
“Says who?” River shot back. “I expect Vasily to tell me I look amazing when I’m covered in the blood of my enemies and I’m a complete mess. Any other time, he better tell me the truth, or I’ll whip his balls off with my chain.”
I blinked rapidly at that disturbing image and answered River quickly. If he wasn’t here to take Ivan away, then I wanted to get to the cuddling and sleeping as soon as possible. And if I felt better after that, I had some other ideas of what to do with my time alone with my mate.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I had a migraine before Ivan came in, but I’m fine now.”
“When did you start to feel fine?” River asked. “Before or after Ivan came in?”
“Uh… definitely after. I tried shifting earlier and that didn’t do a damn thing. But these mate bonds are something else. I just completely relaxed once he came in, and I think that helped a lot.”
“Or it could be something more…” River leaned in and sniffed at my neck.
I took a surprised step back. “What are you doing? Looking for cancer or something?”
“Or something,” River agreed. “It’s strange, though, because you both carry a mate mark. I had problems because Vasily and I were only half-mated.”
Ivan finally fell out of the duvet cover to the floor and scrambled to the door. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying, River?”
The smaller man shrugged. “I tried to see if I could catch the scent, but outside of blood, metal, and gunsmoke, I’m kind of useless.”
“What are you guys talking about?” I was getting nervous with the way they were dancing around things. Maybe River was trying to sniff for cancer.
Ivan wrapped his arms around my stomach and pulled me up, my back pressed to his chest as he buried his nose against my mate mark. Normally, that was a move guaranteed to take me from zero to sixty, if I wasn’t halfway there already, but with River watching us, I knew Ivan wasn’t being sexual.
“You guys are scaring me. What’s going on?”
“That’s why you smell so strange,” Ivan said wonderingly. He set me on the floor gently, and turned me to face him. His smile stretched from ear to ear. “Tanner… you’re pregnant!”
River snorted triumphantly. “I thought so.”
Me… pregnant? I pressed my hands to my stomach and searched my brains for information. “Did you know that a Russian woman in the eighteenth century allegedly gave birth to sixty-nine children? She was pregnant twenty-seven times. It was a lot of twins and triplets and quadruplets.” I skipped through my brain, looking for other information. Useful information. Like, were migraines a symptom of pregnancy? What were other symptoms of pregnancy? What would pregnancy look like for me?
I pushed past Ivan. “I need to find my phone.”
“Is he okay?” River asked. He was asking that a lot today.
Ivan chuckled quietly. “He’s overwhelmed, and I think he exhausted his database on pregnancy. Once he absorbs four or five websites on the topic, he’ll be fine.”
I found my phone on the floor in the closet, wincing as I focused in so I could type a Google search. I clicked the first article and stumbled back to the bed, hoping the migraine would stay at bay so I could read up on pregnancy symptoms. Ivan closed the door on River and crawled in next to me, tucking the blankets tightly around us. I sighed gratefully as his body’s touch somehow retracted the ice pick in my head. This mate thing was awesome.
“Do you want to read them to me?” he asked.
I smiled and pulled his arm over my side to press against my stomach. My mate knew exactly what would set me at ease. His presence and new information. Knowing that he enjoyed the trivia as well was the cherry on the top.
“Did you know that migraines are fairly common in pregnancy,” I said. “But they might not be consistent. Something might trigger one on Tuesday, but Wednesday you can do the same things and be absolutely fine. Fatigue is another symptom…”
Ivan rubbed his nose against the back of my neck as I settled myself in facts, just like he’d known I would.
10
Ivan
I leaned back to avoid getting burned by the steaming plate of ravioli that got slammed down in front of me. Every time I'd seen Angelina Salvatori in the past, she'd been sweet and maybe even nervous around us. Yeah… that wasn't the case tonight.