Epilogue
The day had finally arrived. They were going to have their mating ceremony. The wedding was still three months away. A human wedding took more time. But she didn’t want to skimp on it either. Roman had said he didn’t want her to give up that part of herself and she took him at his word. So far he’d been a really good sport.
But today was their mating ceremony with the pack.
The entire pack would turn up.
It was so very different from a human wedding ceremony. There were no chairs and there were no tuxedos and there were no DJs or strobe lights. The entire pack would bring them a gift to pledge their support for the new couple. In this case, a new family. They were all acknowledging Eliza as part of the clan, which really made her happy.
She found Roman in their bedroom fidgeting with his shirt, which was odd because there would be a few photos taken but it wasn't the same kind of formal ceremony the wedding was. It was meant to bring the pack closer together and bring the couple closer to the pack. And bring the couple closer to each other.
As soon as the ceremony was over they would all shift into their animal forms and go for a run. That part made Everleigh a little nervous because although she had shifted into her bear a few times with several members of the group, she'd never done it with all of them at once. Having hundreds of wolf shifters look at you was a little different than having just three or four.
But it was something she was going to have to get used to.
In all honesty, life in the pack had been a welcome experience. She finally felt like she was at home. For so many years she'd been happy but something had been missing. Her bear had felt adrift and isolated because she never got to spend time with other shifters. Although none of the pack was a bear except for her daughter part-time, that didn't seem to matter. Just being around other shifters who understood what her life was like was really nice.
They understood what it was like to have enhanced hearing and sight and smell, and they understood what it was like when the woods called to you. What it was like when they saw a wild animal that they wanted to chase.
She'd suppressed all of those things when she was a human, but they'd still been inside her, begging to be set free. Now her bear was content, and she was relaxed as much as she could be at this point.
"Are you worried about something?" she asked Roman.
"I hope you're going to be happy."
She turned around in his arms. "Of course, I'm going to be happy. Why do you say that?”
"You've just had so much change."
"I have. But so have you. And we've both adapted.”
Her stomach twisted. Her hand flew to her abdomen.
"What's wrong?"
"I feel like I'm going to throw up. Which is really odd because I haven't eaten anything except for eggs.” And shifters didn't tend to get food poisoning. They could be poisoned by something like silver or a potion or a spell. They didn't get an upset stomach from food. They didn't get the flu or stomach bugs either.
She ran to the bathroom, and sure enough, she threw up.
“Everleigh!" Roman raced after her. She held up her hand.
"It's okay. I'll just brush my teeth."
"Do you need to postpone the ceremony? I can tell everyone right now.”
"No. There's no need to do that." She smiled. She put her hands on his shoulders. "Listen. It's fine. Well, I hope it's fine. We haven't actually gotten a chance to talk about this yet."
"What do you mean?"
"How do you feel about having other pups? Or cubs for that matter, or a baby that's a mixture of both?"
"I would love to have more kids. I'd planned to bring that up, but since it's not a dealbreaker for me, I kept putting it off. I thought we might want to get settled in before we discussed it. Why?"
She raised one eyebrow at him. "Try and guess why I might be bringing it up right now."
His head turned to the left and he looked at the bathroom and then he looked back at her, and he finally looked down at her flat stomach.
"Are you…?" He couldn’t get any more words out.