His head resting on her chest, Elian watched him watch her. Found conviction and a little fear behind his eyes, but nothing…veto worthy.

Remembering was like a glass of ice water over Elian’s head. She hated hard conversations. Hated the fear and anxiety that came with them. How had she managed to fall asleep in the middle of one?

“Try what?” she asked incredulously, her mind struggling to catch up. “To hunt,” Glen said quietly. “For you.”

Eyes still closed, lips turned up in a helpless smile, Elian pressed a kiss over Glen’s heart and snuggled up even tighter. “I want to try,” he said, startling her out of her descent back into dreamland.

In the morning, she was still holding onto him, but she’d been changed into pajamas and tucked into Glen's arms. She loved mornings like this—slow and sleepy, warm and safe. There had been a time not long ago where she’d thought she would never see another one.

Glen didn’t answer her that night. At least, not that Elian knew of. Her tactic of koala-ing him had backfired and put her to sleep within three minutes of the last thing she’d said to him.

Elian lowered her eyes. “I just…I know it’s hard for you, and I don’t want to make it harder. But I don’t want to insult or undermine you, either.”

Glen relaxed a tiny bit. Enough for Elian to renew her grip on him. “He said he would the whole time if I needed it, but that I should tell you no matter what. And I knew that—I was going to anyway.”

Glen stared at Elian blankly. “He took you out hunting. You’re pregnant and he took you out—” “No!” she said hurriedly. “He wouldn’t—because of that. He brought some back to me later.”

“I didn’t want to bother you with it,” she said cautiously, rising to her feet to allow him a little space. “And I knew…Dima hunted for Isa when she was pregnant, so I asked him to show me.”

She’d been so preoccupied with the first hurdle that Elian had almost forgotten the second. Glen didn’t tend to be as possessive as she was. He didn’t assign importance to most mundane acts of service, but…this felt different. Somehow. Even though she hadn’t told him yet.

Elian poked her bottom lip out and fluttered her eyelashes. “I had to try. And I felt so much better after—” He looked no less perturbed. “Where did you get it? 𝘏𝘰𝘸 did you get it?”

Glen sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with the fingers on his free hand. “You’ll have to—” “I know—I did.” “What?”

“I’m different,” he said, so low it was almost a whisper. “I thought maybe the baby could be, too.” “It’s okay that it’s not, you know? And it’s okay that your different and their different aren’t the same,” Elian coaxed. “There’s nothing wrong with what it needs.”

Glen fought with himself on whether to answer her question or ask some of his own, but in the end, as he usually did, put himself second to what she wanted. Elian wished he wouldn’t—wished he would prioritize himself, for once.

“It might not need blood,” Glen muttered, his hand gone lax beneath hers. “We don’t know.” “I 𝘥𝘰 know,” Elian corrected as gently as she could. “And it 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴. Why wouldn’t it?”

Glen looked down at the same time that she looked up at him, wondering if that little hint was enough. There was no guarantee—if the thought had been anywhere close to the forefront of his mind, Layla probably wouldn’t have needed to be the one to tell Elian.

“So there are parts of me,” Elian thought aloud. “And parts of you.” “That 𝘪𝘴 how babies work.” “Looks,” she rambled on, ignoring his sass, “build, talents, weaknesses, strengths, diet…”

Elian nodded, to him and to herself, lacing her fingers through his once more. “The baby—𝘰𝘶𝘳 baby—it’s a hybrid, you know.” “I did know that, yes.”

“I don’t like doing it,” she returned. “But I have to.” Glen pressed his lips together. “I won’t leave.” “Promise?” “I promise.”

Elian looked back at Glen and found him frowning, confused pink eyes staring from beneath a furrowed brow. “I don’t like when you do this,” he said.

“Promise we can talk about it after if you don’t like it,” Elian insisted. “If it makes you upset, I’ll give you space, but don’t…don’t leave me, okay?”

“I want to tell you something,” she forced herself to say. “Tell me,” he said, voice already slowed and thick with sleepiness.

There was a lull in conversation after that—Elian no longer liked the approach she’d intended to try. But she couldn’t wait much longer if she wanted to tell him tonight. He’d fall asleep if it was quiet for too long.

“You’re eleven weeks and three days,” Glen said, shrugging when Elian gawked at him. “You put my number into eight apps—they text me every day.” “Oh,” Elian chuckled guiltily. “Oopsies.”

“I talked to Layla some about it,” Elian said, stroking the back of Glen’s hand as his thumb tentatively copied the movements against her belly. “Mostly about how I was feeling and how far along I was.”

Elian smiled. He 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 interpret the questions as coming from some sort of warped possessiveness. Ordinarily, he probably wouldn’t have even been wrong. She could be…territorial. But never with his family.

“So I might have been there,” he mused, “but I wouldn’t say I really experienced much of anything. Definitely nothing like what I have with you so far.”

“And you were still doing that when Isa was pregnant,” Elian teased. Glen smiled and shook his head. “Yeah. Most of what I remember from that is Lucian and Vincent crying and screaming.”

Glen shook his head. “We didn’t know Lacie was pregnant forever—they were so busy when they did find out that there wasn’t much time for hanging out and swapping stories. And with Isa…I was busy learning to keep Vincent alive.”