I clap my hands over his mouth this time, scandalized and delighted in equal measure.
"That's a BAD WORD! Shhh!"
He laughs behind my palms, the sound vibrating against my fingers, his eyes crinkling with the kind of pure joy that I'll spend years trying to recapture and never quite managing.
"Don't tell Mommy," he whispers when I finally release him. "Okay?"
"Okay," I whisper back, solemn as a vow.
Our shared secret.
Our small rebellion against the rules.
The door opens.
I spin on Dad's lap, already knowing who it is before I see her—because I can feel her, somehow.That bone-deep awareness of my mother's presence that I'll later learn is early scent bonding, the way children imprint on their parents before they even understand what it means.
She's beautiful.
Alwaysbeautiful.
But right now she's also sweaty, her dark hair escaping from its practical braid, her workout clothes clinging to muscles that most people don't expect an Omega to have. Her dual swords are sliding into the sheaths at her back—that same practiced motion I'll spend years mastering, that same lethal grace I'll inherit along with her eyes and her stubbornness.
"Don't tell Mommy what, huh?"
Her voice is suspicious.
Amused.
She knows us too well to think we're innocent.
"MOMMY!"
I launch myself off Dad's lap with zero concern for his comfort, racing across the room toward her with arms already outstretched.
She groans.
"I'm sweaty, Sera?—"
"Don't care!"
I crash into her legs, wrapping my arms around her thighs, pressing my face into her stomach despite the workout-damp fabric.
She smells like exertion and blade oil and something sweet underneath—cherry blossoms, I'll realize later. The same base note that will become my own scent, inherited like her eyes and her temper.
"Up!"
"Sera—"
"Up!"
She sighs—the put-upon sigh of a mother who knows she's already lost this battle—and bends to scoop me into her arms. I wrap myself around her like a koala, legs around her waist, arms around her neck, face pressed into the curve of her shoulder.
Safe.
So safe.
"Your father is corrupting you again," she accuses, but there's no heat in it. She's looking at Dad over my head, one eyebrow raised in that expression I'll learn to replicate perfectly. "What conspiracy are you two plotting now?"
