“Huh?” Juniper had been on the verge of sleep, but those words snapped her wide awake.


    A sister? She''d never heard Shanley mention a sister. And seeing the grim look on his face, she worried it was his father...


    "What are you thinking about?" Shanley, seeing her mind wander, gently tapped her


    nose.


    "It seems my mother is pregnant," he said, his voice heavy with concern.


    "Oh." Juniper blinked. At least it was his biological mother. Otherwise, this would be... awkward.


    "My mother''s almost fifty," Shanley continued, his voice low as he stared at the ceiling. “That''s a high-risk pregnancy. It could be dangerous."


    Juniper listened quietly. He was right; it was incredibly risky.


    "From the sound of it, she seems overjoyed," Shanley said, his emotions a tangled mess. "They''ve always dreamed of having a daughter, and now their dream ising true."


    His mother, Miranda, was in fantastic shape from years of working out, but even so... he couldn''t help but worry aboutplications.


    What was his father thinking? He usually protected his wife like she was made of ss, so how could he let her take such a huge risk?


    Could his parents give him, their son, a single moment of peace? He was already managing theirpany and looking after his grandparents... and now it looked like he''d have a little brat to deal with, too. He wasn''t a workhorse they could just run into the ground!


    "Aren''t theying back to the country soon?" Juniper mused for a moment before offering a suggestion. "When they do, I can give your mother a check-up and prescribe some herbal remedies to help strengthen her body."


    A pregnancy at this age carried a lot of risks, but some of them could certainly be mitigated.


    "Okay." Shanley leaned in and kissed her forehead.


    "I trust your skills, Juniper,” he whispered. Then, changing the subject abruptly, he


    asked, “What about you? Do you like boys or girls? Or both?"


    The question was so out of left field that Juniper froze. She''d never considered it before, so she had no idea how to answer. To be honest, before she met Shanley, she had resigned herself to dying alone.


    "I don''t know." Juniper''s eyes were getting heavy again. She pushed Shanley away,


    rolled over, and turned her back to him.


    "Kids are too much trouble," she grumbled. "I don''t like them."


    "How can you say that?" Shanley frowned slightly, his voice a maic, husky


    whisper. "Have you spent much time around children?"


    Juniper kept her back to him, her eyes squeezed shut, refusing to answer.


    But Shanley persisted, the question clearly important to him. Was it that she disliked children in general, or... the idea of his children?


    "Juniper, you..."


    "You know perfectly well what a terror I was as a kid," she snapped, her cheeks flushing a faint pink as she mumbled, "What kind of well-behaved child do you think someone like me could possibly produce?!"


    Her grandfather and the masters at the sanctuary always said that raising her had taken years off their lives if they hadn''t been afraid of If


    her, they would have thrown her into a ck hole long ago!


    Shanley was speechless for a moment. So that was it.


    "That''s not true," he murmured, pulling her close and pressing his lips to her ear.


    "No matter what, Juniper, you''re the best thing in my world," he said, his tone full of adoration. “Even if you''re a little troublemaker, you''re my one and only little troublemaker."


    Juniper''s heart fluttered, a warmth spreading through her entire body. Damn! He''d guessed right. She was a troublemaker.