Leslie laughed as he picked her up and swung her around, then quickly put her down, with a worried look on his face.
“I’m sorry. I need to be careful with you now. This is so exciting. We’re going to have enough kids for at least a basketball team now!”
“Were you planning on starting one of those?”
“Well, no, but we can if we want to,” he laughed. “Come on, let’s go tell people!”
Leslie was overwhelmed by how thrilled he seemed. She had waited to tell him because he had always been against having children. She had not intended to get pregnant, thought they had been careful, but Omegas were very fertile. It was their nature. Even the best contraceptives sometimes failed, and so, here she was. She smiled happily and joined him as he began announcing that they were expecting again.CHAPTER TWENTY-FOURAs spring arrived, Leslie and Tucker moved into their new home with the girls. Though she enjoyed their old place, this one was bigger and she felt like it wasn’t just his house but their house. It was something they had built and decorated together. Soon, they would have more babies, which she was nervous about. There had been no intention to have more children anytime soon. In fact, they hadn’t even discussed it. Both were over the moon about it though.
Though his reaction to her initial announcement had been positive, she still wondered if he could really be so excited about something that he’d seemed so dead set against for years. Wanting no secrets between them, she approached the discussion with him while they were laying quietly in bed, the girls asleep in their new room nearby. It was nice to be able to share a bed all the time now, without worrying about being separated from them.
“Are you sure you are happy with this? I know how you felt about having children.”
“Felt is the right word, Leslie. You’re right. I didn’t want children. I didn’t want a wife. Then you came along and all of that changed. I forgot all about wanting to be alone. I forgot all about not bringing children into the world. So much has changed and I don’t mean just my opinion. I couldn’t see myself marrying into the pack. It had become so foreign to me. I never considered marrying outside the pack, because that felt like a betrayal somehow. I know now that it was all just silliness on my part. I was making excuses to stay away and stay alone.”
“I’m not sure I understand why you had so much disdain for your pack.”
“I guess it was a combination of things. Like I told you before, I wanted to see more of the world than just what my little pack was willing to allow. Then, there was the way my grandfather treated my father. They weren’t on good terms and I saw a lot of that. Marshall and I did. Believe it or not, there was a time when we were close, when we were each other’s support system. Then we got older and he drifted away from me somehow. He grew bitter and petty, and we became rivals instead of brothers.”
“I’m sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No. It’s okay. In some way, I blame myself for Marshall. I left him to wallow in that and he only grew worse in the years that I had gone. When I returned, there was nothing left of my brother. I barely knew the man that taunted me at every turn. I guess he was the real reason I ran away. I was heartbroken by him and I was disillusioned with the whole idea of packs and families. So, I decided none of that was for me. You showed me that it can be very different than my perceptions, that it is family first and pack second.”
“I don’t think the pack would be happy to hear that.”
“Probably not, but the thing I’ve realized since coming back and taking over as Alpha is that they are very much the same way. They may say the pack and the club come first, but the truth is that any one of them would protect their wife and children over a pack brother and I do not blame them for that one bit. Against our enemies, we’ll fight for one another to the death, but put our family in the mix and the dynamics change. It’s just nature’s way.”
Leslie kissed him on the cheek and laid her head against his chest, watching as the moon rose high into the night sky outside their window. Their lives were about to change again, though it’d been changing constantly since they had met already. This was just one more leg on their journey together.
It was going to be more than a handful to have three small girls and who knew how many new babies at once, but they’d hire extra help if they needed it, and at least the kids would all get to grow up together close in age. It wasn’t unusual for Alphas to have large families, so no one would think twice about her getting pregnant again so soon.