Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 110600 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 553(@200wpm)___ 442(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110600 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 553(@200wpm)___ 442(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
He’s such a good man. And I know I’m emotional and hormonal, because my eyes fill with tears at the thought. I love him so much.
I clean the kitchen and put away the dishes, poking at the occasional bite of my food. My stomach is still unruly, so I give up on eating and sip some hot tea instead. I’m not about to squander a few quiet minutes to myself, though, and pull out my datapad. I write for a good hour or two on my latest book—a gladiator romance. My chapters have become fewer and further between now that raising three toddlers has taken over my life, but other women have taken up stories, too, and in-between we message each other with tips about babies and life in general. Our farms are so spread out that visits are not frequent, but I imagine that will change now that my children are getting older. Some of the other half-human children on the planet are, too, and that means there’s going to need to be a school of some kind. I’m not sure if the thought of alien kindergarten in a few years makes me excited or terrified. I know Lord va’Rin’s wife has a couple of children about the age of mine and has expressed interest in future playdates. It’s something I need to talk to Nassakth about and just haven’t yet. He’s very protective of the children and something tells me he’d want to be there through the entire playdate, scowling at everyone.
Then, because I can’t help myself, I log into Bethiah’s profile on the bounty hunting guild’s database.
She gave me the passcode to get in years ago, as long as I promised not to touch anything. Once I’m logged in, I cut and paste a particular set of symbols I have saved, and then look for updates on the bounty logs. It’s the same as ever—an old, outstanding bounty request for information on Nassakth—the same one his parents put in years ago. It’s still flagged with a little red symbol that Bethiah told me means the clients are unwilling to pay despite the amount offered. As such, the bounty’s pretty much dead in the water. She’s told me this a dozen times, but I still check it from time to time because I like to be certain. Satisfied that all is as it should be, I log back out, put my datapad away, and get to my feet.
The moment I do, Nassakth comes into the house with three crying children.
“Oh no. What happened?” I ask, picking Laina up as she runs toward me, arms outstretched. I hold her close and stroke her hair and Elkha clings to my legs, sobbing, so I touch her head, too. Keth holds tight to his father’s mane, his small face buried under Nassakth’s wealth of hair. “You guys didn’t get into the bull pen again, did you?” The last time they did, Nassakth grew furious with them, even though the proper alarms had gone off and the meat-stock bull had been re-routed to a safe pen automatically. It still frightened the over-protective father in my mate.
“Daddy wouldn’t let me hit the button!” Elkha wails.
“We have had this discussion before, cubs,” my mate says in a tight voice. “When Daddy tells you to do something, you do it. The barn is dangerous.”
All three just wail harder.
I fight back a smile. Something tells me that our impulsive little ones went into the barn and merrily hammered on buttons no matter what Daddy said, and Daddy finally had enough. “You know you have to listen to your father,” I say in a soothing voice, stroking Elkha’s hair as she sobs against my thigh. Laina’s grip is chokingly tight around my neck but I ignore it. “Have you all apologized to your Daddy? If you do, I’m sure he won’t be mad.”
Elkha—our little instigator—immediately flings herself against her father’s legs and weeps a tearful apology as only a three-year-old can. The other two babble something snot-filled and incoherent, and then Nassakth is given equally snot-filled kisses and all is well in the children’s world again. I wash faces and hands, make lunch, and then it’s time for the afternoon nap.
Naps are the best part of the day. It’s a few quiet hours in the daytime before the children wake up again. I tuck them into their bed, kissing all three heads before escaping the room. They have a round bed like myself and their father, each with their own special little blanket. Laina has yellow, Elkha a fiery red, and Keth a soothing green. When they were infants, we tried keeping them in three separate rooms, but it became too much work between feedings to scurry back and forth, so that didn’t last long. Now that they’re old enough to sleep in a bed, they don’t like to be separated. Instead, like the praxiian part of them demands, they pile atop one another like kittens and snuggle. When they get older, we’ll get separate beds. For now, it helps them to sleep to cling to one another. I watch them doze for a moment and then go into my bedroom. There’s dishes to be done, and so much laundry that even the bots can’t keep up. The floors are sticky from breakfast—I don’t know how they managed to get syrup everywhere, but they did—and the whole house needs a good dusting. I’ve found that the bots handle a lot of the cleaning but some things just can’t be done electronically, and dusting is one of them.