Chapter Twenty-Two

October – Kildare, Ireland

Melody

I’m sitting by the fireplace in the great hall when my phone chirps. I sigh and slowly lift my massively pregnant body from my chair, making my way to the table to see who sent me a message. I smile when I see it is Summer.

Summer: Hey. Any babies yet?

Summer’s pregnancy was complicated, and she ended up spending months in the hospital while she was on bed rest. She was MIA for a few weeks during that time, and I panicked when I couldn’t reach her. Now she makes sure to text me every day. I take my phone back to the armchair by the fire and text her back.

Mel: Not yet. I can’t wait to be done and have them here. How are you guys doing with my little girl?

Summer: Great, Gus loves being a big brother, and we are all looking forward to coming to see you guys for Christmas.

We made plans for Donnie, Summer, Gus, their new little girl, Sam, and Colin to come to Ireland for Christmas for a visit. Living on the other side of the world from my best friends has been an adjustment. Especially while pregnant, when Sam threw Summer’s baby shower, I was able to make the trip back, even though I was pretty far along in my own pregnancy. The girls were shocked when I showed up as big as a house at the airport.

Mel: I can’t wait to see you guys then and meet that sweet baby girl.

Summer: Speaking of, she is awake. I better go. Keep me updated and let me know as soon as you head to the hospital. I need the play-by-play details.

Mel: Will do, coach. I roll my eyes at her. Ever since Summer moved in with Donnie, she has gotten very into sports lingo. He must be rubbing off on her.

“Did you just roll your eyes, lass?” Finn asks me from across the room.

“You really do see everything don’t you?” I say as I put my phone down in the chair next to me. “I can’t catch a break. I was talking to Summer. She says she needs play-by-play info from you as soon as we are on the way to the hospital.”

“Okay, but how about I just let her know afterward and focus on you for the time being.” Finn crosses the room to me and holds out his hand to help me stand from my chair. He wraps his arms around me, and my belly is so big between us that I struggle to reach up and kiss him.

“I love you.” I smile at him. “Ready for bed, love?” I nod in response and let him lead me up the stairs to our room.

Once we are settled in bed, I slowly work my way onto my side to look at him. His eyes are still amber. They stay that way most of the time now, always in charge, always on high alert, always the Alpha. Only late at night, when he relaxes, lets his guard down, and isn’t being Alpha will they return to their warm chocolate color.

“Hey, it’s okay. We are safe. The pack has the whole place surrounded. I’m pretty sure if you don’t give them a day off soon, they’re going to rise up and throw us out, make us go back home to Maryland, and not let you be in charge anymore. Breathe, Finn, it’s okay to relax. It’s over.”

He smiles a soft smile at me and brushes a curl behind my ear. “I hope you’re right, love. I’ll relax when I feel like we are safe. I’m about ready to let them kick us out and go back home to Maryland, anyway.” Shaking my head, I reach out and touch his cheek.

“Don’t say that. You don’t mean it. You love being here with Lydia and the pack. You were born to lead them, Finn. This is our home now. We both know that.” Nodding silently, he smiles a genuine smile at me this time, full of teeth and I can see him visibly relax, his eyes shifting to brown now.

“Get some rest, love. Soon we may not be getting much sleep.” Finn reaches over and rubs my belly as I close my eyes and drift off.

***

November – Kildare, Ireland

Melody

I sit bolt upright in bed. “Finn!” I yell, reaching over and shoving his shoulder to wake him up. "My water broke."

"Huh, what's going on?" he asks next to me, rolling over to look at me.

"My water broke. Get up. They're coming." I sit up and swing my legs over the edge of the bed.

"Shit. Wait, I'll help you up." He jumps up from the bed and grabs my hand helping lift my heavily pregnant body off the bed. "The bag is packed and in the car. Let's go. I'll get you in the car and wake up, Lydia." He puts his hand under my elbow and leads me to the door.

I hear Lydia from behind me when we are halfway down the staircase. "She is having a baby, lad. She isn't going to shatter like a china doll."

I smile at the sound of Lydia's voice. She rushes up next to me and takes my other arm. "Go bring the car around, Finn. I've got Melody." I watch him hurry down the stairs then and smile at his back. Once he is out of the door, I turn to Lydia.

"It's too soon. I'm scared, Lydia. They shouldn’t be coming now. It’s too soon. I shouldn’t have flown to the states in August. It was stupid for me to put them in danger like that.”

“Ock, dear. Nonsense, when there are two it is common for them to come early. Tomorrow is Samhain, ‘tis only a few weeks now. You heard the doctor at your last visit, they can come anytime now, and it will be safe for them.” She reassures me as we make our way across the hall.

“Oh, Lydia. What would I do without you?”

“Again, nonsense. No reason to even think on it. I’m not going anywhere,” she says with a wink.

Lydia helps me down the front steps and loads me into the waiting car. Finn sits behind the wheel in the driver's seat. She kisses me on the cheek before closing the door.

“I’ll see the four of you soon.” She smiles at me through the open passenger window. I watch as she gets smaller in the distance, waving. I see the peaks of the castle slowly disappear behind the hills as we make our way down the road. This is our home. I smile then, turning to Finn.

“Are you happy?” I ask. He smiles back at me.

“Yes, lass. Very.” He reaches across my seat and squeezes my hand.

“Penny, for your thoughts, lass? You’re very quiet over there, are you all right?” he asks me five minutes later. “You look a little panicked. It will be okay, we are going to have two beautiful, healthy babies.” I turn to him, and I catch a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror. I’m white as a sheet.

“Finn, I have been meaning to ask you something. About the babies.”

Keeping his eyes on the road but giving me his full attention, he says, “What’s that, lass? It’s a little late to have second thoughts now.” He chuckles. I know he is trying to lighten the mood, but I glare back at him.

“The babies,” I start out quietly. “Your wolf babies, Finn.”

He puts his hand up to stop me. “My wolf babies?”

“Don’t laugh at me, Finn. We are on the way to the hospital, and it is a full moon, do not tell me you don’t see where I am going with this. I want to make sure I’m not about to give birth to a litter of pups!”

He is genuinely laughing then. It's contagious, and I start laughing when I realize the absurdity of what I was implying. “I’m sorry, I know that’s not possible.”

We are almost to the hospital now, and he is holding my hand. I focus on my breathing. “It’s okay, Mel. You’ve got this. You can do it. We’re almost there.”

“Finn?” I ask again.

“For God's sakes, lass. If you ask me about whelping puppies one more time, I will turn this car around. Clearly, we will have to come back and do this another day.” I laugh at his response.

“I don’t think that’s an option. It's not that,” I say but pause for a contraction. When it passes, I start again, “Finn, do you remember you told me before that you couldn’t tell me about the rules of mating?” I look at him, and he nods, focusing on the highway.

“I just want to know one thing right now. I have been thinking about it, and I can’t make sense of it in my head. Ahh!” I yell as the next contraction takes hold of my belly and twists.

“Breathe, Mel. Breathe through it.” Following Finn’s instructions, I focus on my breathing. Rushing out my question as soon as it passes, eager to get it out before the next contraction starts.

“The aging thing, how does that work when you choose a mate? Is there some kind of ritual that we will have to do? Something that might be unpleasant.” I look towards him. “I mean, like, you guys eat the hearts,” I stop and swallow the bile in my throat, “of your kill. I don’t know if I can do that, Finn. Is it some druid thing?”

“Lass,” he stops me before I go on, and I look at him, an apology on my lips. “Melody, no. Mating is literal for us, lass. I suspect you stopped aging like a human woman about nine months ago.” He points at my belly. “When we mated.” He briefly takes his hands from the wheel and uses air quotes around the word mated.

“Eww, gross!” I tease. “I mated with a werewolf.” I stick my tongue out at him and twist my face up, pretending to gag. But another contraction rips through my body. “Finn!” I cry out.

“We’re almost there, two more minutes, Melody. Hold on.”

***

I lay resting in the hospital bed the following day. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” I ask gently, rubbing the chubby cheek of our daughter, then our son, and turning to look at Finn.

“Yes.” He smiles from ear to ear. “There is still one matter we need to settle, though. What are we going to be calling them?”

I think while I look out the window contemplating the question again. "Finn," he turns to me, his finger still wrapped in our son's tiny fist. "Edmund."

He smiles then. It’s a soft, pained smile. I know he is remembering his grand da and the sacrifice he made for us.

"Yes, Edmund." He nods. Then brushes his fingers over the rosy cheek of the little girl sleeping next to her brother. "And what about this little lass?"

"Well, I've been thinking about Ciara.” I look at him, watching her breathing slowly in and out. “Do you like that?"

"Ah, it fits her perfectly. My dark Ciara." He twirls one of her long dark curls around his finger.

Later, I sit in the rocking chair by the window and smile over at Finn lying back in the hospital bed, our babies curled together on his large chest. "He would have loved to dote on them, lass." I nod and smile. Then turn to look back out the window up at the full moon.

"Born at midnight, under a full moon on Samhain.” I'm uneasy and can't shake the feeling it's a bad omen. “You don't think that means anything, right?"

"No, lass. I think it means their Great Grandda will be here to protect them always. The walls between the living and the dead are thinner on Samhain. I imagine he is here with us now."

"Finn, tell me what happened that night, please?" I watch him snuggling our babies, and my heart aches for him.

"When Lydia told you the story of our pack and the Caomhanach brothers, the two who conjured the dark druid magic. Did she tell you who they were, lass?" He is looking at me across the dimly lit room. I stop my motion in the rocking chair.

"No." I think about the story Lydia told me about the night the black wolf came onto their lands and stalked their children, the men went out after him, but two brothers went in search of a dolmen. Hoping they could awaken the druid magic in the land to help protect them and their family. "She told me they went to find a dolmen to use druid magic," I say, "What about them, Finn? What happened to them?"

"Melody, one of those men, the two who awakened the dark magic that night three-hundred years ago, was my grandda. Dagda came after my family specifically to get revenge on the men who killed his brother. Edmund and his brother are those men. They were also the Alpha’s of the two packs in Kildare and Wicklow.” I hold my hand up to stop him.

“Edmund was over three-hundred years old?” I’m looking at him with pure confusion on my face.

“Yes. That night the plan was, he would go to the Summit to meet with his brother. They would draw in Dagda, hoping that his thirst for revenge would mean he insisted on being the one to kill them. That he would send the rest of his pack to split up and attack those in the lines of succession.” He pauses as little Edmund stirs in his arms, but once he is settled, he continues on.

“For our pack, there were three targets. Those who have the Alpha bloodlines, Edmund, me, and you, lass. For the Wicklow pack, there were four, my great uncle, his eldest son, eldest grandson, and a great-grandson. The wee lad was only three weeks old at the time, Melody. A tiny babe, just like ours.”

I gasp and put my hand over my mouth. “Dagda was going to kill the baby?” Finn nods then and continues on looking out the window past me. I know he is picturing the events of that night in his head.

“The packs assigned each heir a cell to protect them during the events of the night, but the majority of the two packs would be at the Summit, lying in wait for Dagda to show up, and they would ambush him. When we arrived at the keep Grandda changed the plan. He insisted on going on to the Summit on his own and that our entire pack would stay back and protect you and me. He ordered me to stay back, and we voted. They all agreed to protect us and let him sacrifice himself for my mate and me.” I watch a tear roll down his cheek, but I don’t dare interrupt him. “I didn’t listen to him. I disobeyed a direct order, and I left the keep. Melody, I’m so sorry I left you unprotected.” He won’t look at me. I see the shame on his face. Finn, no. I make a move to stand. “No, love. I know. But you have to let me finish. Please.” I settle back down and wait for him to go on.

“When I left the castle, four of the pack followed me. The others stayed behind to protect you. We don’t know how they got in through our wards. We don’t know how they could cut the power and take you while we were away. Honest, I didn’t mean for it to happen. I would never have done it if I'd known you would be hurt, love.

“We made it to the Summit, but when we got there, my great uncle was nowhere to be found. Edmund was dead shortly after I arrived. We sent scouts to Wicklow to discover what had gone wrong and where my great uncle was. Why he and his pack had never shown up to keep their side of the bargain. I immediately returned to the keep, but when I arrived, you were... they already had you, Mel. I called the pack back to me, and we tracked you down to the Burren.

“The next day, we learned the truth about what Edmund had planned. He got to the Summit early and sent his brother and pack home. Edmund told him that he needed to go and protect his wee great grandbaby and their families. He met with Dagda on his own. He stalled as long as he could, lass. The fight was brutal. But the moment Dagda killed him, he flew faster than any of us could manage and made it to the Burren before me. He was not of our kind, lass. I do not yet know what supernatural being he was, but he was not a werewolf. We think that he and his pack may have actually been an ancient type of shapeshifters. Pucas who preferred to embody the spirit of the wolf.”

I’m engrossed in his story thinking back to that night in the woods. “If he was a Puca, and his pack, if they were these shapeshifters, Finn, are you sure your pack killed them all that night?” The pieces are falling into place in my mind. I understand now why I have spent the past eight months feeling like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is why Finn won't relax and let his guard down.

Finn takes a deep breath and sighs. He kisses first one then the other twin in his arms. “They can’t be certain. I have asked them repeatedly, but none can be sure of how many there were. When we went back in the morning, not all of the bodies were there. Dagda is dead, of that I am certain. But what the rest of his pack was and if any of them are still out there. I don’t have those answers. I’m sorry.”