Charlotte

When Falcon gave us the news on Vigo, I knew Nora was going to lose it. "Men, please go plan and shit for our move. Nora and I need girl time." I gave them a look that said not to question me. They left the room after Falcon kissed Nora once more. His expression of helplessness crushed me more than Nora’s sadness. I led her to the settee and held her until the sobbing stopped.

“This is all my fault,” she wept. The truth was it wasn’t. She didn’t attack Vigo, they targeted him now that the timing had been right.

“It’s not yours. Stavros was going to do whatever he could to get to the cure. I hope that he doesn’t kill Vigo, but you must understand that it is war. The Lamians will do anything they can to win.”

“How can you be so strong? Can you see the victory for us?” she asked. They always wanted to know if I had answers. The inside of my head was messy. The only thing that kept me leveled was my music and now Draco.

“I can’t. Not all visions are clear and are usually based on other’s decisions.”

She nodded, accepting my words, but her sweet, loving heart was still in pain. I rocked her, trying to comfort her. Since the moment Falcon and Draco entered our lives, it’d been a wild and dangerous adventure. They had been wonderful to us, but everything else had been one big pile of shit. I needed a way to calm her down, but the more I left her to her thoughts, the more it would make things worse.

I had a plan that would push things forward, but I needed her to find her strength. The strength I knew she had inside. “Nora, let’s think about the babies. We haven’t really got to talking about them. We should be gushing and planning for them.”

“Yes, we should. With everything going on, for the first time I forgot about this little one. Do you know what we’re having?” She’s asked me twice now. I rolled my eyes at her because it was getting a bit ridiculous.

“No, I don’t, but it would be funny if neither of us had a girl.” There was a thought. As much as I wanted a little angel faced girl, I didn’t want the added weight of the responsibilities.

“Or if we both did.” I liked that she was suddenly a lot happier. Her bright eyes were round and her whole being seemed enthusiastic.

“Have you thought of names?” I asked her, trying to lighten the mood some more. We needed a bit of joviality in our lives. It had been one miserable moment after another. War was dirty, painful, and stressful. Thinking about the lives to come were a spot of brightness in this dark world.

“No. You?” she asked me.

“No, it’s not even something I considered. Strange, right?”

“Our whole world is strange. One crazy thing after another. I feel so drained from all the insanity around us.”

“Yes, it is, so let’s see if we can get some of this spotty internet to show us some baby names.”

“I’m on board with that, but don’t you think we should include the guys?”

“They’re busy. Besides we can pick the ones we like the best and then force them to choose the one we really want.”

“I like your way of thinking, Charlie,” she replied, nodding her head with a wicked grin. Since we were in my room, we decided to share my laptop. When you were fast, the normal or even fast paced things seemed slow. My brand-new i-7 core processor seemed to move like a 1994 PC with a floppy drive and AOL dial up.

“Wow, do you need a new computer or is it just me?”

“It’s us. This puppy is fast for normal people, but we’re special now,” I teased.

“Do we need like baby clothes like for weeks or things like that? Do the babies walk right away?”

“Damn, we need to talk to these females. They have to know this shit.”

There were about twenty different sites with names. Since our men are Italian, we figured an Italian or common name would do. I had the top boy names and they weren’t that great, but who knows what Nora liked. “How about a Michael or Anthony?” I asked, Nora. She scrunched up her nose at me.

“With our men being named such bad ass warrior type names, I think the boys should match them.”

“Well, how about Axel?” I started at the beginning. There were thousands of names, but we isolated it by category.

“That sounds tough.”

“It reminds me of Guns and Roses.”

“Of course it does, maybe a music legend name for your baby? Jimi, Robert, Mick, or Keith?”

“Haha. I’d still have to get it past Draco, and that man acts like he was just transported from the 1800’s to the present. Like he’d never heard of classic rock or anything. Let’s keep looking.”

We perused the list for about twenty minutes, names just not sticking. Then she hit on some cool ones. “Davio, Demitri, Donatello.” Immediately the teenage mutant ninja turtles theme song came to my head and I started singing it.

“You and your music.”

“Tell me about it, but you don’t have much room to talk. What are you going to do, name him after a book character? Heathcliff, Edward, Edmund, Hamlet, Othello?”

“Really, that’s the best you got? I mean they are old like our men, but damn, no new literary characters?”

“Sorry, haven’t picked up a book unless it was a homework assignment. And Sigmund is the one that pops into my head.”

“I worry for you. Maybe once this all settles down, I’ll take you on a cultural tour of Europe.”

“That’s awesome, I’m sure I’d love to see where the Beatles lived or maybe even The Stones.”

She rolled her eyes at me for the hundredth time since we started the search, but it got her mind off of Vigo and the lab. I slammed the laptop close because my stomach was roaring, demanding sustenance. I mentally called to Draco.

Busy? I asked.

Never for you. What do you need?

Food, I’m starving.

Will do. Anything special?

Chocolate covered strawberries.

Okay.

“Earth to Charlie, Earth to Charlie. You there?” Nora asked, waving her hand in my face. I swatted it away, then turned to her with a snarl.

“Brat, I was getting us chocolate covered strawberries,” I told her, giving her a squinty-eyed pout.

“Wow, nice. I’d love some strawberries,” Nora said with an exaggerated moan.

“Other soon-to-be dads would be jealous if they knew how easy it was for Draco to get cravings to us.”

“Another upside, I’d say.”

“I agree. Are you ready to finish this? Or should we just scrap the idea?”

“I want to finish so I can take a nap. I feel like falling out,” Nora muttered. I could see the fatigue on her face.

“How about you take a nap and then we continue this when your head is clear?”

“Okay, but don’t eat all the damn strawberries.” She got up and moved to the large sofa and rested there.

Draco appeared before me with my goodies. He caught sight of Nora out the corner of his eye. “Tired?” he asked.

“Yes, she needs a nap.”

“Are you okay?” he questioned, sitting down next to me and wrapping one arm around my waist.

“I’m well. We were just talking about baby names.”

“Oh really? I’ll leave that to you,” he said.

“Smart man.”

“I may have been virginal, but I’ve seen centuries of marriages. ‘Yes, dear’ is the best response.”

“Well, you are a wise man. Thank you for my berries.”

“I love you, Charlotte.”

“I love you, too, Draco. Now go before you wake her up,” I commanded but pulled him back for a long, deep kiss.

“Later,” he muttered before teleporting from the room. I leaned back with my laptop to the side as I maxed on my strawberries. Moans escaped my lips with each bite, the flavors hitting my tongue with intensity. Damn, being a vampire really had some perks to the deal. But in minutes, I dozed off as well.