“Good,” I say. “If that’s what you want.”
She’s silent.
“Don’t be afraid to talk babies just because of my defective ovaries, Ivy. Seriously.”
“I know you’re not Team Ty right now, but…”
“It’s none of my business,” I say. “I can’t say I get it. I can’t say I’ll ever be okay with it, but it’s your life, Ives.”
“Well… I talked to him about things and…”
“And?” I prompt after a long silence.
“I want to help you have a baby.”
My body locks tight. I put my coffee into the cupholder shakily, before I spill it all over myself. I grip the steering wheel, like it’ll steady my heart.
She continues, “So, we’re gonna try to get pregnant as soon as possible. I mean, we’re already trying considering I can’t be on the pill and he likes to have sex at least twice a day, if not more.”
I snort-laugh. “Sounds familiar.”
“And then…” she continues, “as soon as I can after we have one, we’ll find a way. Before I went to Mom’s to help yesterday I stopped in to talk to Cat. I hope you don’t mind, but I confided in her, hoping she might be able to help. And Cat says that it might not even have to be my egg. She said she knows a specialist and they can do an exam on you and find out if they can get any of your eggs out and if so, let your man’s seed to its thing with your egg in a Petri dish and then bing bang, boom, turkey baster. She said just because you can’t ovulate doesn’t mean you can’t carry the baby. But if you can’t, I can. Whether it’s your egg or if you can’t produce any… my egg.”
I stare at the windshield in shock.
“I’ll have a baby for you,” she says softly. “Or give you one of my eggs, if you can carry. But either way, the baby will be part Mason and part you. Because the part you part is important. Because you’re amazing. Even if it’s not your egg, if it’s mine, it’s still part you, right? Because I’m part you.”
I nod, eyes swimming with tears. And then I turn to my sister and pull her close for a hug. She hugs me. I hug her back. Hard. So hard she complains I’m about to crack some ribs.
I fucking love my sister.
“We need to get back on the road. Let’s go,” she says.
I wipe my eyes and nod, then start up the van.
Both our phones are off. No point arguing on the phone with our alphas. We’ll be in Marblehead by lunchtime.
53
Erica Young
My phone rings.
I’m in a lounge chair outside my bus, a cup of Twinings Honeybush, Mandarin, and Orange herbal tea in my hands and a cat sleeping on my lap. I stretch to the side to fetch the phone from the stairs that lead into the bus.
Vivi calling.
I grab it. The kitty skedaddles, shooting me a dirty look as she lands on the grass.
I give her a heavy blink in apology.
“Hey,” I speak into the phone.
“Hey,” Vivi replies. “I think we need you here. Actually, I know we do.”
“At home?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
Shit.
“You know I can’t show my face around there.”
“Rikki, this is… Amelia and Ivy Brennan are here.”
“Huh?” Why is she calling me Rikki? They know how I feel about that. I guess it’s down to the fact that the Brennan sisters are there.
“Yeah,” Vivi says. “It’s all culminating. It’s time.”
My heart sinks. I’m not ready. I’m nowhere near ready to face him.
“We’ve got a rare gem here with a wicked dark and powerful curse on it that we need your help with. Converting this energy. Me and Ronnie are working on it, linking with Ivy and Amelia, but it’s not enough. Jess and Dani aren’t here and can’t get back today. I can’t even get Jess on the phone as she’s off grid. The Brennan girls are helping, but it’s not enough. I can’t seem to convert the energy on this, and Ronnie says we need you, for sure. If we don’t have your help, the best we can do is temporary brain fog and that’s not enough. We need amnesia to hit our target. To help the pack. And that might help us open the door with Greyson.”
Vivi has clairvoyance and precognition. Veronica has psychometry down pat so would know everything about that gem by touching it including the originating spells and all the connections through that along with how to convert things. But my gift is spell-writing and I’ve certainly honed those skills in the past six and a half years since my first spell went incredibly, catastrophically wrong, but if I go to where the Brennan girls are, then there’s a very good chance the Arcana Falls wolf shifter pack won’t be far away. And that’ll mean I have to face him.