Aura laughed again as she looked over at the clock on the wall behind him. “It’s only nine in the morning. It’s not my fault you went to sleep so early last night.”
“Ugh, nine in the morning?” He turned over beneath her, upsetting the delicate balance of her head on his chest, though his back was just as good a pillow. “That’s way too early to be awake. Never before noon. At the earliest.”
She moved to sit on his back down by his waist but more or less on top of him instead of snuggling against him. “You’re a horrible snuggler.”
“Yeah, well, I haven’t had much practice. And the steel is softer than you are.” He said with a grin half over his shoulder at her.
Aura growled and then leaned down to stretch out along his back where she started to bite at the side of his neck. “Yeah, well, it can’t do all the things that I can do.”
“That’s the damn truth.” He’d been getting an education in exactly what she could do over the last few days, but he’d been doing his best to be patient with her, even if his best wasn’t very good most of the time.
She moved from his back to lie next to him again, on her stomach, but she turned her face toward him. She was already starting to show a little, though her clothes hid it well enough for the moment. But it was obvious when she was shirtless that she had little wolves growing inside of her. She only had two more months in her human form before she turned permanent wolf for the last three months of her pregnancy, and there was no telling how many pups were inside of her. Aura wasn’t that big a person in the first place, so it was hard to hide several lives growing inside. “Have you ever been with someone during the Fulness?”
He turned to face her, his head resting on his arms and his blond hair spilling over his face, but his hazel eyes were still visible between the disheveled strands. “No. I might be stupid enough to have gotten into a makeout session with you when we were kids, but I haven’t been dumb enough to get a human knocked up. I usually chained myself up for the Fulness back up north.”
Aura’s eyes instantly widened, since she had never been chained up for a Fulness. “You chained yourself up? How awful!”
“It wasn’t that bad, actually.” He shrugged, muscles rippling over his shoulders with the motion. “I knew a guy who ran a kennel for babysitting dogs, and me and all the guys used to check ourselves in there over the Fulness. Paid him well and he made sure we had our own room, our own cages, and no chance of becoming a tabloid every month. It was a good arrangement.”
Aura pushed some of his hair aside and she kissed him without giving him any warning. She looked into his eyes afterward. “I think this house will contain you. Don’t you?”
“If it was me here by myself, then yeah, I would say it would.” He returned the kiss, leaning up on his side to pull her in closer to him. “But since you’re here, I’m not really sure there’s anything that could really contain you if you didn’t want it to.”
She couldn’t help rolling her eyes. “I’m not that powerful.”
“Uh huh.” He said without an ounce of belief in his voice. “I seem to remember you crushing a swing set with one hand when we were kids.”
“We’re Ironborn. We can do that.” Aura ignored his compliment, even though she knew he was impressed with her. She didn’t find herself that impressive.
“Not all of us.” He said with another kiss and then ran his hands over her exposed stomach. “You’re stronger than I’m ever gonna be, and these kids are gonna be even stronger. I just hope it takes them a while to figure that out.” He laid back and stretched again, clearly taking his time with waking up.
Aura laughed weakly as she laid back and looked up at the ceiling. All the questions that ate at her had to be spoken. “Would you want some of your own someday? Some that are actually genetically yours, I mean?”
“I don’t know, actually.” He shrugged again and sat up, cracking his knuckles as well as his neck, as he did every morning, though it annoyed her to no end and set her teeth on edge whenever he did it. “I guess we should see if I’m any good at being a father to these before that call gets made, really.” Most wolves, Ziem included, grew up with the understanding that they had centuries to live. Ziem in particular had never been in a hurry to do anything but have fun, and there were some wolves that intentionally waited until they were almost two hundred years old to even think about having children, so that they were old enough and powerful enough to take care of them without question of weakness.
After wincing from the bone-cracking, she persisted. “What about me? How permanent do you want us to be?”
He turned around to face her, his hair looking like it had been through a hurricane, but his face still as chiseled and inviting as it had been all their young lives. “Are you seriously asking if I plan on
