Page 127 of Roping Her Alien Ranchers

“I’ve been thinking,” Cyro said suddenly, his voice taking on that careful, measured tone he used when presenting controversial scientific hypotheses. I shifted position so I could face him, just as a tentacle emerged from his human arm, extending toward my face with careful precision. The tip brushed against my lips, making me shiver. “About our own reproductive compatibility.”

The words hung in the scented, stable air between us, weighted with implication. I felt my breath catch, Sassafras and her miracle foals fading into the back of my mind.

“What are you saying?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

A flush of deeper lavender spread across his cheeks, his human disguise momentarily slipping to reveal the true iridescence beneath. “I’ve been running simulations,” he said, each word carefully chosen. “Our physiologies are surprisingly compatible. Young ones are possible.”

“We’ve—” I stopped, my brain cycling through steamy images of all the times each of them had locked inside of me, spilling alien seed, my body never catching— “if I was going to get pregnant, wouldn’t I have already?”

Vantor shifted beside me, his body suddenly tense. I looked from Cyro’s hopeful expression to Kalith’s wide eyes, then to Vantor’s carefully controlled features.

“We did not risk fertilizing our spermatophores,” Cyro explained, the lilac of his cheeks deepening to nearly a royal purple.

“So… you’ve been purposefully shooting blanks?” I finally managed, my pulse still tripping over itself.

Cyro nodded, a tentacle reaching to take my free hand. “We would have to proceed with caution. The children of our world are born into the waters, and they stay water-bound until the age they can surface. But we do not know what our offspring here will require.”

“Half-human, half-cephalopod children,” Kalith murmured, his eyes lighting up with that particular gleam that meant he was calculating a hundred and one possibilities.

Vantor’s deep voice cut through Kalith’s excited rambling. “Would you want that?” he asked, his hazel eyes fixed on my face with unusual intensity. “Children with us? A family?”

The question wrapped around me like their tentacles had that first night we were together in the stables—overwhelming, wonderful, slightly terrifying. I reached for them all with hands that weren’t quite steady. My fingers grazed over Vantor’s hand, Cyro’s tentacle, Kalith’s shoulder. I touched them all. Small, intimate caresses.

“Yes,” I said, the word carrying certainty.

I felt sure of them, of us, just as I’d felt sure when I signed the buyer’s paperwork for Sunflower Hills. Had I been scared to death? Yes. Had it all been worth it in the end? Also, without any doubts, yes.

“More than anything, I want us to be a real pack in every way. I want our bond marks to never fade.” I held up my hands, showing off the bracelets of sucker scars. “I want to never be apart. I want to hold our babies in my arms. I want to grow old. My hair gray. Your beautiful skin hues dulled with time. I want everything that’s possible.”

Their scents surrounded me—ocean depths and forest floors, sweet marshland and clean rain—mingling with hay and the miracle of birth. The tapestry of smells surrounding us threaded together so perfectly that I couldn’t tell where one ended and another began. Just like us, unlikely lovers becoming something greater than our separate parts.

Outside, impending sunrise lightened the dark sky with unspoken promises.

Of a love that transcended the stars.

Of a future so achingly wonderful that I could scarce breathe around the bloating of my happy, happy heart.