“Well, I just thought you’d want to know right away. We’ve had a pretty peaceful spell the last few years, and that might change.”
“It might. It might not. I think the Maguire clan is done with us as far as their new Alpha is concerned. Trill might be an asshole, but he’s not interested in coming over here to fight for turf he doesn’t want. He’s content providing guns and ammo to the IRA and keeping the street drugs flowing freely in the republic.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I hope I am too. I’ve no desire to fight with the Maguires, but you know how it goes; we’ll fight with them if we must.
“Good enough. I have to get going. I’ve got a date.”
“Ah, youth,” Olcan teased, seeing him back out the front door before returning to the back porch to sit with Niamh.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Everything’s fine,” he replied.
There was no need to worry her over what was potentially nothing, so he saw no point to mention it. He’d told her that he would take care of her and their family, keep them all out of harm’s way, and that was exactly what he would do, but there was no reason to discuss the things that always lurked around any corner that could go bad for them. That was for him to worry about.
He watched as the boys continued to splash about in the pool and resumed his thoughts about them. He was no coward, and he’d never raise his sons to be cowards, but he also hoped that they’d never have to put the skills he would one day teach them into practice. He never wanted to know they faced the hard choices he had sometimes made in his life. It was such a shame that they couldn’t stay like this forever.
“Oomph,” Niamh exclaimed, pulling him away from his thoughts.
“What is it?” he asked, immediately on high alert.
“One of these babies is a little kicker. Come feel this.”
Olcan stood and moved closer to her, putting his hands on her belly as a small foot began kicking out against the palm of his hand as if it knew where to aim. He left his hand there, enjoying the way it pounded its tiny appendage back and forth until it finally seemed to settle back down and perhaps go to sleep.
“That one is definitely yours,” he teased Niamh.
“Why is it mine?”
“Little fighter, not afraid of anything.”
“As if you are afraid of anything either,” she observed.
“Yes, but I’m an Alpha bear. It’s expected of me. You’re supposed to be demure and quiet. Instead, you’re hell on wheels when threatened.”
“Like I’ve ever shown you any real trouble,” she joked.
“Well, there was that one time you were surrounded by shifters and refused to back down. If I remember correctly, you bit my hand, drew blood.”
Niamh laughed. It was good that she could do that now about such a harrowing day, he thought. He turned to look at the boys as he heard them laughing along with her. They all three sat there watching her and giggling along. It warmed Olcan’s heart.
They might all be still small, but there was one thing for certain. When he was older and perhaps not as strong as he was now, those three boys, along with however many additional ones she carried inside her, would take his place.
This had not been what he had meant when he promised her that he’d make sure that no one ever harmed her, but he was realizing now, from the way they looked at her and joined her in her mirth, that their sons would one day pick up wherever he might be forced to lay off. They would never allow anyone to hurt her.
So, she might have thought she was picking up a single love in her life when she would have seven when all was said and done. They were building their own private army, and the number-one mission would be to protect the woman that gave them life.
Olcan sat back down in his chair and admired his family, just as overwhelmed with love today as the day he’d married their mother. Whatever came to be, they’d make it through. Of that, he was certain.