Mal should be running the other direction in stark terror. One time, under similar circumstances back in the dusty days of his misbegotten youth, he damn near did. Fortunately, Becky Wilkinson got her monthlies (albeit a bit too late for Mal’s comfort), so he did not have to run away from the business end of a shotgun wedding.

Even so, for far too long, the thought of the word “pregnant” followed shortly by the word “yours” would have been enough to make him want to bolt all over again. He’d managed to buy into the notion of him as a mean old man, not suited for human company, let alone to raise a child.

Until.

Until those two words fell out of Inara’s mouth, with her eyes all big and scared, like she wasn’t sure which way he would go with it. Honestly, given his own father’s track record, he couldn’t fault her for being gunshy.

Charles Reynolds had been a fancypants Core dandy, thought he’d set himself up as a country gentleman. Got himself a ranch, a herd and the prettiest gal in town. Until the first hard winter on Shadow, when half the herd froze and he decided mebbeso he was better suited to city life. So he up and left it all behind – the ranch, the herd and the girl. Not to mention the baby in her belly.

So it was not as though Malcolm Reynolds had the best of experience in what it took to be a father, having not had one of his own. The ranch hands had all looked out for him. Taught him the things a boy growing up on Shadow needed to know – riding, shooting and branding cattle. Still, he’d been acutely aware that he was treated as the son of the ranch owner, and not as one of their own. And truth be told, those things the hands never taught him, Becky Wilkinson had been more than willing to school him in.

Yet now he was faced with the prospect of having to take on a role for which he’d had no schooling or example to look up to. He could see that all in Inara’s eyes. Wondering if he was up to the task, or even wanted to be.

But somehow, once he got past the initial shock, he was almo