"With child?" John repeated.

"Pregnant," Mitchell clarified with a grin. "With twins."

"She didn't say anything about that when we were there..."

"She wasn't pregnant when you last visited," Kale said. "She-"

"How pregnant is she?" Sheppard asked, his face an interesting mixture of pale and flushed, and confused. Melony hid her grin.

"How pregnant?"

"How far along, he means," Melony said, looking at Weir, who was looking at John Sheppard with a slightly suspicious look in her expression. She'd heard all the stories, of course, and had definitely heard most of the rumors, of what had happened on the planet between some of the people of Sheppard's team and the Light Ones, but here was her first actual confirmation – and wasn't it just a doozy?

"How many weeks since your visit?" Kale asked, unaware of the stir he was causing.

Melony snorted. Sheppard's face had just gone paler. He looked over at her, scowling, and she didn't bother to hide her amusement. She outranked him, after all. It wasn't like he was going to be able to give her some shit detail for enjoying this.

"Don't look at me, Major. I was injured and had nothing to do with any of it, as I recall."

"You got one of the Light Ones pregnant?" Weir asked, incredulously.

"He is not the only one," Kale said, looking at Rodney, pointedly. McKay paused in the middle of taking a bit of his soup, his eyes suddenly wide, and his face just as awestruck as Sheppard's.

Ford snorted, and Melony looked over at him, snickering as well.

"It isn't funny," Weir snapped, scowling at the two of them. "We're not in this little corner of the galaxy to add to the population growth. We're here-"

"Derna's pregnant?" Rodney asked, still stunned, but wanting to make sure he was the one Kale had been talking about.

Kale nodded.

"We should have brought cigars," Mitchell said.

Ford snickered again, trying to hide it since Weir looked pretty pissed, but unable to.

Weir scowled at him.

"And how many of them did you impre-"

"Oh, no, Ma'am," Ford said, shaking his head, grinning. "I kept my little soldier in my pants."

Melony snickered again.

"The females took advantage of the rare visit by new males to add to our gene pool, Doctor Weir," Kale said, realizing finally that Elizabeth wasn't looking pleased by the revelation of the pregnancies. "They are responsible for the pregnancies – if they hadn't wanted offspring, they would not have enabled reproduction and activated the seed of the males."

Which wasn't really the topic for a dinner conversation, Melony thought. Of course, considering what the Light Ones usually did for dessert, it shouldn't be that surprising that they discussed sex and reproduction so openly.

"The-"

"Kale says the females control when they become pregnant," Melony explained, getting her amusement under control. The looks on the guys' faces was too priceless, but she didn't want hard feelings between Weir and Sheppard and McKay.

You said hard

She snickered again, giggling at Talon's silent words, and had to catch her breath.

"Colonel Mitchell is correct," Kale said. "The females-"

"What about the... um... babies?" Sheppard asked. "We should-"

"Do the right thing..." McKay's face was pained. It was obvious he hadn't planned on anything like this – and hadn't even considered it. Who knew the Light Ones could breed with Humans? Of course, now that he was thinking about it – and boy was he ever thinking about it, now – he realized there was Human in their ancestry, or they wouldn't have human forms to go along with the other forms they had.

"The right thing?" Kale asked, confused.

"You know... um... marry them..."

"Marry?"

"Mate with them," Sheppard clarified.

"You already mated with them..."

Melony's giggles were turning into snorts, and Ford's eyes were watering. Weir wasn't at all amused – she was in the middle of probably the worst thing that could happen to her team just then. Sheppard and McKay were both valuable members of the expedition, and she was either going to lose them to the Light Ones, if they had to move in with the females and start raising up little aliens, or she was about to add two pregnant aliens to her population – and baby aliens once they were born. What was she going to do with little aliens running around?

"It's not funny, Colonel."

Melony wiped her eyes, shaking her head.

"It's not as bad as you think it is, Doctor Weir. The offspring are raised by the colony. Usually a female will fly to another colony when she's ready to have children – to keep the bloodlines diversified – but then she goes back to her home colony, and the males who are the fathers have nothing to do with the raising of their offspring. Major Sheppard and Doctor McKay aren't supposed to do the right thing. It's not the way things work with the Light Ones."

Kale nodded. He and Mitchell had already discussed this and he knew she understood how it worked.

"We expect nothing from Major Sheppard or Doctor McKay. The offspring will look nothing like them anyways – as our appearance breeds true on the females' lines."

"So no little Rodneys running around, changing into birds and crashing into walls trying to learn how to fly," Melony said, smiling. "Just a few more tall naked aliens."