Epilogue
Five years later...
Chardé paused while stirring her pasta to realize that the house was awfully quiet. Too quiet to be living in a house full of men. She turned off the oven and set the pot to the side before peeking around the corner into an empty living room.
"Malachi? Maleek?"
She absentmindedly ran her hand over her pregnant stomach. The same stomach that her two childish lovers didn't know bore their seed.
"These idiots," she mumbled as she made her way up the stairs. The second floor was equally as quiet as the first. Her first intention was to check their bedroom, but her eyes flickered to the closet across the hall.
She smirked, slowly crept towards it and, after counting to three, opened the door to find her five year old son, Moriah, wrapped up in saran paper and a mouth full of marshmallows.
"What the hell? Where are they?" She sneered after she had removed them all from his mouth.
"I don't know. They wrapped me up and shoved me in here before they hid. They say I always get them caught, so they stuffed marshmallows in my mouth to shut me up."
Furious, Char stormed in and out of every room on the second floor, with Moriah in tow. With no luck, she made her way downstairs and down into the basement. She stormed into the game room to find five pairs of amused, brown eyes staring back at her.
"You think this is funny?" She screeched.
Malachi instantly went on high alert. Usually his wife would laugh and joke around about their whole, disappearing act, but she was far from joking.
"You shove marshmallows in his mouth and wrap him up in a closet like it's okay. Then you have the audacity to smile in my face like it's funny? He could have died!"
Maleek instantly stood up and stepped towards her.
"Don't touch me," she pulled away. And after a moment of silence, she burst into tears.
Maleek pulled her into a tight embrace and massaged small circles into her back, "We're sorry, baby girl. We didn't think about it like that," he whispered.
Malachi came from behind and wrapped his arms around her waist while laying his head on her shoulder. His hands immediately stopped once they grazed across her slightly plump belly.
How could they have not noticed?
Her increase in breast cups, the excessive eating, weight gain. Her mood swings. They had seen it several times before, so why hadn't they noticed?
"Are you pregnant, baby girl?" Leek asked, reading his brother's mind. The bond, they had once shared as boys, had grown stronger over the last few years, so things like reading each other's mind and feeling the other's emotions was second nature to them.
Char's cries grew silent as she let their familiar scent of Polo cologne calm her.
"Twelve weeks," she whispered, but they heard her loud and clear. She smiled as all of her other favorite men ran and joined their hug.
"Can it be a girl this time," Micah, Moriah's twin, asked.
"Yea, can it?" Their four year old, Matthew, added.
"I sure hope so. That way I won't be the only one dealing with you all anymore," she joked, unwrapping herself from their embrace.
"Where's Mace?" Short for Maceon, their two year old.
"He fell asleep in the process so we put him in the guest room," Malachi answered once he'd stepped away and jolted his thumb towards the guest room door.
