A
little something from me to you. I hope this unabashedly joyous story brightens
up your world a little. ❤
p.s.
Even if you've never read anything from this series, you should be able to read
this story without problems.
Seedlings
A Psy-Changeling Short Story by Nalini Singh
Tamsyn had been
ready to have cubs since about five seconds after she and Nathan officially became
a couple—in other words, since the day her mate got his head screwed on
straight and stopped trying to protect her by keeping his distance.
The cubs? It was a
healer thing. She knew enough healers to understand that the need to look after
a family was an itch in their blood. Of course, since healers considered the entire
pack their family, it was an itch they could scratch even if they didn’t have
kids of their own.
As for Tamsyn, she’d
made sure she didn’t have children. Her mate wasn’t ready. It had taken a solid
couple of years for Nathan to accept that she didn’t regret mating at nineteen and
never would. Not only that she had no regrets, but that she was joyously happy
to be with him, her soul lighting up each morning she woke to find the muscled
heat of him beside her.
Adding cubs to
that would’ve strained her husband’s huge and bruised heart to breaking point.
But, she was happy to say that their years together—coming up to fourteen now!—had
healed the bruises, had him laughing in a way that reached the midnight blue of
his eyes and creased his cheeks. Her heart squeezed each time he smiled—the man
was getting more handsome with age and it wasn’t fair to her poor heart.
But she’d keep on falling
into his smile, and she’d keep on kissing him, and she’d keep on tumbling into
love with him over and over again. As for the cubs, she babied and mothered
every single one in DarkRiver. “Ry, put that down right now,” she said firmly
to the gorgeous little boy who was clutching a fat worm in his small and pudgy
fingers.
All white-blond
hair going dark at the roots and dirt-streaked face, he looked at her with
wounded eyes that nonetheless glinted with mischief.
“Bryan!”
Grin wide, he
stuffed his little fist into his mouth.
Jumping across the
garden bed, she took hold of the wriggling end of the worm and managed to get
the poor creature safely back into the soil. “Worms are for the garden,” she
said in her most severe tone. “You’re a leopard. You hunt. You do not dig up
your dinner from my seedling garden.”
“I lub oo, Tammmmmmmeeeeee.”
She bit the inside
of her cheek to keep from breaking out into a grin. Ry—Bryan when he was in
trouble—was too damn adorable, but he had to learn that being adorable didn’t mean
he could wriggle out of trouble. “Repeat after me, I do not eat worms.”
A stubborn silence,
eyebrows drawing together.
“Fine. Then you
have to go inside and learn your words.” The greatest possible threat for an
active cub—especially when the sun was high in the sky and the air crisp with
spring.
The toddler’s
lower lip began to quiver.
Tamsyn shook her
head. “I won’t change my mind even if you cry.” Though she would feel sorry for
his precious heart. “You know the rules. No digging out things from my
vegetable patch without permission. And no eating worms.”
Thereupon ensued
a small standoff, but stubborn or not, Ry was a sweet, good-natured cub at the
core. Beaming at her without warning, he threw out his arms. “I no eat orm.
Pomise.”
“Good boy.” Gathering
him close, she snuggled his giggling warmth; he still had that toddler softness
to him, his cheeks and limbs rounded, and it melted her. “Do you want to help
me plant?”
An enthusiastic
nod.
They both had
their fingers in the rich, fertile soil when Nathan returned from his meeting
with the other DarkRiver sentinels. Hunkering down next to Ry, he ruffled the
boy’s hair, then reached across that curious head to kiss Tamsyn on the mouth.
“I see you two have been busy.”
“I no eat orms,” Ry announced proudly. “Tammy says.”
Nate grinned, all
dark hair, that heartbreaker gaze of darkest blue, and laugh creases edging out
from his eyes. “That’s right. Us big, tough leopards don’t hunt worms.” He
growled, the sound coming from deep within his chest as his leopard rose to the
surface of his skin. “We hunt big prey.”
“Grr.” Ry’s tiny growl—complete
with soil-covered hands shaped into claws beside his face—had Tammy’s ovaries
going into complete meltdown. She had no idea how his mama disciplined him.
“He’s a fun little
guy,” Nate said to her after Ry’s uncle Zach picked him up ten minutes later.
“Maybe we should have one of our own?”
Blinking, Tamsyn
sat down in the garden bed and just stared at her gorgeous, strong, loving
mate. “What did you say?”
A hint of
unfamiliar shyness to him, he shrugged those big shoulders. “A cub? What do you
think?”
Tamsyn stared at
him for another long minute before making a high-pitched squeal of joy and
pouncing on him, taking him to the ground.
“Your seedlings!”
he yelled, and that was when she knew that even if she hadn’t been madly in
love with him already, she’d have fallen for him then and there.
She and Nathan
didn’t succeed on the first attempt, but they had a whole lot of fun trying.
Including racing each other in leopard form across the forest, then shifting
and tangling naked on a carpet of fallen leaves. Then there was that seriously
naughty quickie in her office at the pack’s HQ when they nearly got busted by
another sentinel.
Nathan had laughed
so hard, his face buried against her shoulder, and his arms locked around her
that she’d felt the vibrations all through her body. They’d loved each other so
long now; he knew her body from tip to toe, as she knew his, intimate skin
privileges between them a scalding heat that burned hotter with every passing
year and a warm affection that was an embrace.
And love. Infinite
love.
Then one day, Nathan turned to her with an expression of startled delight on his face. Because among changelings, mates were almost always the first ones to pick up the subtle scent change—or perhaps it was something deeper, more inexplicable. But Tamsyn
got a feeling in the part of her that made her a healer not long afterward. They did the test together, Tamsyn letting her mate see the result
first. “So?”
Growl loud, he
lifted her up by the waist to spin her around…only to stop mid-spin. “I
shouldn’t do that. You’re preg—”
“You stop that
right now!” Clapping her hands on his cheeks, she looked those leopard eyes
full-on, her own eyes no longer human either. “Do your senior soldiers go hide
in a padded room while they’re pregnant?”
A scowl. “No.”
“Did Shayla stop
working while she was carrying Lucas?”
Scowl turning
darker, he grumbled, “No.”
“And what about—”
Her mate kissed
her, luscious and deep. “I admit defeat,” he said when they were both
breathless. “Have mercy.”
Wrapping her arms
around his neck, she pressed her nose to his. “You sure?” Nathan’s intense
protectiveness had always been the biggest problem in their relationship—it
hadn’t reared its head for some time and she intended for that to continue.
“Because we’re going to have a child and that child will be a leopard
changeling and leopards need freedom to thrive.”
No humor in his
expression, his throat moving. “I’m sure,” he promised, voice lined with grit.
“If I slip up, I know you’ll help me find my way.”
Eyes hot, she
spoke with her lips against his. “You’ll be a wonderful father, Nathan.” She
saw how he was with the young ones in the pack, how they trusted and turned to
him.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Our baby is
so lucky you’re their dad.”
A slow smile. “A
cub?”
“A cub,” she
whispered.
Turned out they
were both wrong. Their babies were born one after the other seven and a half
months after that test. Julian and Roman. Jules and Rome. Their gorgeous cubs
with their scrunched up old-man faces and good strong yells and eyes that
promised to turn the same midnight blue as their daddy’s.
A shirtless
Nathan, cubs held skin-to-skin against him as he sat by the window, looked at Tamsyn
with a scared-astounded-proud look on his face. “Our cubs.”
“Yes.” Tears
threatened at the sight of his body backlit by the sun as he cradled their boys
against him; her smile was wobbly when she said, “I love you, Nathan Ryder.”
Rising with
happiness written on every line of his body, he placed their cubs back against
her bare skin, before getting into bed next to her, a big wall of protective warmth.
She snuggled into him—her mate’s protectiveness was a large part of him and
Tamsyn loved that part as she did the rest of him; she just knew that at times,
he needed her to help him see clearly through the shadows of the past. When she
tipped up her head, he dropped a kiss on her lips while the sun rose beyond the
windows.
Because of course
their twins had decided to start their journey outside her womb at four in the
morning. Julian had been born at 5.59 a.m. Roman at 5.59 and 30 seconds. “Do
you think they’ll be friends?” There was no guarantee, even with twins.
Chuckling, Nathan
nudged his head downward.
She followed his
gaze to see that Julian had his hand fisted tightly over his brother’s. “Good
thing we built the double crib.”
“Yeah.” A
roughness to the single word, Nathan pressed his lips to her hair. “Thank you
for not giving up on me even when I messed up big.”
Leaning into his
chest, against the strong beat of his incredible heart, her own huge with love,
she said, “Never.”
Copyright © 2020 by Nalini Singh
Author’s Note:
Nate and Tammy’s story is told in the novella Beat of Temptation, which
is part of Wild Invitation (A Psy-Changeling Novella Anthology). Click on the link for excerpts. Also, please note that the novella was originally released as part of the multi-author anthology An Enchanted Season, so if you have that, you have Beat of Temptation.
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