Page 23 of Kailirex

“He said one for each of your fingers,” I reminded him.

“And I have eight fingers and two thumbs. And I refuse to have them all be babies when we adopt them.”

“I will convey this information to engineering. This will greatly speed up your quarter’s readiness.”

“That’s going to be a lot of empty bedrooms,” I said. “We’ll need to make sure we don’t fill them with junk before you get all those kids.”

“Before we get all those kids,” Kailirex corrected.

“Right.”

Piloris and Eric were staring at each other intently.

“How soon do you want a kid?” my brother asked him softly.

“How soon do you?” he countered.

And just like that, I knew they wouldn’t be childless for long. I grinned. I loved being an aunt and adored kids. It was why I’d chosen my particular career path after all. Was I ready to be a parent myself? I thought about it for a second and realized that I did want to wait awhile. I’d bring it up with Kailirex once we were alone. I was on the shot and it had two months to go on it still, so it wasn’t urgent. We had time to sit down and talk about it once the mating pheromones were mostly out of our system and down to normal levels.

And then a large ship was suddenly looming within our path, growing ever more gargantuan by the second.

“And there’s your new home, folks,” Tillin said cheerfully, before toggling something on the console in front of him and beginning docking procedures.

Nothing more was said as we cruised in and landed.