Healing Ties (Ties, Book 2) | ✓

Chapter 28

Slone wandered off and Morren took Fanner back to his house and sat him down at a wooden table. A young girl sat down next to him, hair still mussed from sleep, and eyed him suspiciously. Without warning, she slipped out of her dress and shifted into the form of a grey wolf pup, then crawled under the table and started sniffing at his legs.

"He's a mage, Amela," Morren told her as he searched through a cupboard. "Sniffing him won't tell you anything more than that."

The girl shifted back and tugged her dress on. "He's scared. He smells of it."

"If you can't tell that much by looking, you need to learn to read people better. Not every emotion has a smell."

"Is he scared because he's small?"

"You're smaller than me," Fanner countered, then immediately regretted it when she gave him an offended look.

Amela frowned at him for several seconds longer, and then asked, "Why is your hair all shiny like metal?"

Fanner didn't know how to answer that question. "Because my parents had hair like this, I suppose."

"Ame," a female voice scolded, and Fanner looked up to see a heavily pregnant woman come in through the front door. She gave Morren a look, then aimed an uncertain smile at Fanner. "Sorry."

"It's okay," Fanner murmured. He still wasn't used to people who weren't fellow mages being polite to him. It was an entirely foreign concept and he still wasn't quite sure how to respond to it. Theoretically it made the most sense to act as he would towards another mage, but it didn't feel right. Nothing felt right. Maybe it never really had and maybe it never would because of who he was as a person.

"This one's here with Yore," Morren told the woman. "Fanner, this is my wife, Lusa."

"Oh! Um, it's nice to meet you, ma'am," Fanner said.

"Yes, I'm pregnant," Lusa said, not unkindly, and it was only then that Fanner realised he'd been staring at her protruding stomach, not her face.

Fanner ducked his head and pressed a hand over his face. "Sorry, I'm... sorry."

"Boy's been through some things, I imagine," Morren said.

"Well, I suppose you would have been," Lusa said. "Have you not seen a pregnant woman before?"

"No, I have. I'm sorry. I'm just bad at..." Fanner shook his head and swallowed thickly. "A lot of things."

"Were you wondering how pregnancy works for us?" Lusa asked.

Reluctantly, Fanner nodded. If he were honest, his mind had been swarming with curious and entirely inappropriate questions. He dared to ask one of them, though. "Is the baby a human or a wolf when it's born?"

"They start shifting when they're still in the womb, so they can be born in either form," Lusa said, giving her belly a rub. "Amela was born a wolf and until she could walk on two legs, she was happier having four. A wolf pup is a lot more mobile than a human baby."

Fanner had intended to leave the questioning there, but he found himself probing further. "Can you shift?"

"Not right now. We lose that ability for the last couple of months of the pregnancy and then we have to carefully readapt to shifting so that we don't hurt ourselves."

"Like how Yore did," Morren contributed. "That young man is too noble for his own good sometimes. Let this happen to him, and for what? To save someone he didn't even know?"

"Morren," Lusa said, gently chiding.

"Don't get me wrong, I respect the man," Morren said. "You can't always do the right thing, though. Sometimes you have to put yourself first and do what you have to."