Bonded

Chapter 23

"Tell me."

"Stay."

"Tell me."

"Stay."

Kaya groaned, "Leah, come on, don't do this. You know this is already so hard for me."

"I just don't know why you can't stay. They gave you a heartbeat; they should just let you stay here with us," I said, furrowing my eyebrows. Kaya and I were sitting on the couch, some random reality show on in the background, painting our toenails on a chill Wednesday afternoon. Jacob and Ephraim were sparring in the backyard, having their own little bonding moment. After Jacob and Billy made another one of their strong suggestions that everyone take a few days, take a breather before we get back to our regular trainings, I decided that I wanted to spend as much time with Kaya as possible. "If I tell you the baby's name, you'll leave us."

"I have never been more excited for someone to have a baby since when I found out that Sue was pregnant with you. When your little boy gets here—,"

"You think it's a boy?" I interrupted.

"You don't?" she looked at me a little intrigued. "Ooh, that would be a game changer. The first child ever born of two shape shifters: female. That would honestly be perfect. There's too much testosterone around here."

I chewed on my bottom lip as I twisted the top on the nail polish bottle. Not So Bora-Bora-ing Pink. Who names these things? We had two names picked out and I knew Kaya was itching to know what they were. I wasn't ready to say though.

"You know," Kaya spoke again. "I could just pick the name out of your head."

"But you won't," I smirked. "You would have done it already, if you really wanted to."

She scoffed, "I hate that you're right..." she mumbled. "I know you're stalling. Eventually, we will have to leave, little wolf."

"Why?" I asked defiantly. "You love it here."

She chuckled, "That's very true. But I've already lived my life. You and Jacob need the space to lead, to make mistakes, to live the way we got to. And you have the chance to do it better than we did. We'll be watching all of you grow. Just look for a sign. I'll always be there with you. Every step of the way."

The backdoor swung open and in walked Ephraim with his hair sitting in a man bun on top of his head, and then Jacob who had finally cut his hair back down. After running through a low hanging tree on accident, he was so frustrated with all of the twigs in his hair, he had mama cut it as soon as I got them all out. They were both sweating from sparring and breathing heavy. "I'm very impressed," Ephraim praised Jacob. "You showed me some new skills today. Your instincts are spot on."

Jacob swelled with pride. He'd always looked at Ephraim as a hero; getting a compliment from Ephraim was everything to Jacob. He was trying to keep it cool, but I could tell that spending so much time with Ephraim was like a dream come true. Watching the two men, identical in every physical way possible, I was amazed at how in sync they were. They moved as one, completely in step with each other.

When Jacob finally recovered, he was ready to jump back into it and felt like Ephraim could teach me so much. At one point, I had to talk him down because he was following his great-grandfather like a little puppy dog. It was super cute, but I didn't want Ephraim to feel overwhelmed.

Ephraim took Kaya's face in both of his hands and placed a kiss at the top of her head. She beamed up at him as she scooted to make room for him on the couch. "How was training?" she asked him. I loved that even all of these years later, they still looked so in love. It was just so easy for them. They never even thought about it.