“Hmm.” That was interesting. Invisible alien chains. Who knew? “Well,” I said, changing the subject, “Mindy abducted me, trying to rescue me. It wasn’t the best start for us.”
Seth nodded again. He took a peek at the tablet next to him, and I felt like the worst host in the world. I was boring him. But then again, I knew very little about either of them.
“Don’t worry,” Caleb commented. “He’s checking on the baby.”
“You have a kid?” Caleb had mentioned a baby in the medbay, but I hadn’t put two and two together that they were talking about Seth’s baby.
“Not yet,” Seth said with a soft smile. He slid off the couch and held out the tablet. A tube with green liquid on the display appeared. A tiny fish with legs twitched. Alien? Animal? I had no fucking clue.
“What am I looking at?”
He chuckled. “Mine and Kal’s kid. They’re still little.”
My gaze whipped back to the fetus. “You and Kal, like genetically?”
“Yeah. Same-sex couples can have biological kids here.”
“I was more questioning the inter-species thing,” I remarked.
Seth flushed, and Caleb chuckled before commenting, “Some species are compatible to reproduce, and others are not. Humans and drakcol are extremely compatible.”
“Humans and drakcol,” I muttered, touching the screen while my heart pounded loud enough to drown out all the other sounds. It was possible for Serlotminden and me to have a baby if we wanted, which I did. I’d always wanted one. Adoption had always been the plan, and we could do that as well. But I wanted to look at a baby and see Mindy. We could do both, multiple times. I’d always hoped to have a large family. A vision of a horde of half-drakcol and full drakcol kids surrounding me and Mindy made my pulse quicken.
Fuck, I wanted that.
“Was it hard?” I asked.
“No,” Seth replied. “They took samples of… you know.”
I rolled my eyes. Semen. It was not a hard word.
“Then spliced them together. I don’t know exactly how it works, but after some testing, we had a viable fetus within a couple of weeks.”
“I want one.” My fingers traced the screen.
“No,” Caleb said with a dramatic flair. “Be like me and Fyn, the cool uncles.”
“You can be a cool uncle to our kids,” I remarked. I almost pictured a tiny baby with his purple scales and green eyes as well as my black curls. “I think we’ll wait, though.” Mindy and I hadn’t been together very long, and I needed more time with him when it was us alone.
Seth shrugged. “There’s no rush. Me and Kal have been together for three years. I didn’t even want kids at first, but he did. Now,” he took the tablet back, “I can’t wait.”
“You have a cat?” I asked, grasping for something to say.
“You’ll never meet her,” Caleb cautioned.
“Why not?”
Seth frowned at Caleb. “You’re making me sound like a stingy asshole. Lucy’s shy. She doesn’t like new people. I’m not hiding her away.”
“Ah.”
“But you can get a cat if you want,” he offered.
Cats were not my thing, and I was fairly certain Pookie would eat a cat. Not that I was going to tell Seth that. I glanced at Pookie, yet again. I’d had to turn up the heat in the living room so we didn’t freeze, but we still didn’t know if Pookie would be safe living at a higher temperature. So far she seemed fine, but I planned to keep a close eye on her. Currently, she was curled up in her nest, a beheaded plushie in between her front legs, and her snout twitched with her dreams.
Refocusing on Seth, I said, “That’s cool.”
Silence descended again.
