Dev shook his head. “No. That was the problem. He needed to feed and he was being stubborn about it. Summer went to feed him. I offered to do it myself but he turned me down.”
Marcus could be picky. And he and Dev had their problems over the years. “You know why he did that. You have to step back and let things play out the way they will.”
Dev’s jaw clenched and he stared out over the yard.
Daniel put a hand on his arm. “I understood about Evan, but Summer is an adult. She has to be allowed to make her own choices. If Marcus is truly her fate, would you have her miss it because of something he did years ago? He’s tried to put his prejudice away. I need you to do the same, Devinshea.”
Dev’s whole being seemed to soften in the wake of Daniel’s words. “I don’t want to lose her when we’ve only just found her. Their relationship will be intense, and it could be years before she’s got room for anyone else.”
“Then that’s how it will be, and we’ll patiently wait for our time with her,” I replied. “We can’t change the past. We can only deal with the present we’ve been given, and how we handle this situation will define our relationship with her. She’s not a child. She was never a child for us so our relationship will be different than with Lee and Rhys and Evan. If we don’t accept that, we could lose her all over again.”
Dev stroked a hand over my hair. “I’ll support her in whatever she chooses and try to find a way to have a relationship she is comfortable with.” He was quiet for a moment. “Do you think we’re done?”
I knew what he was asking about. If there was one thing Devinshea loved, it was being a father. He adored our children from the moment of their conception. Dev would spend hours holding me while I was pregnant, rubbing his hand over my growing belly and whispering to the baby cradled there. “Probably not.”
I’d put up a stop sign after Evan was born. It wasn’t that I minded being pregnant. When you’re on vampire blood, the normal issues of discomfort don’t really come into play. Yes, I get big, but it’s super easy to bounce back when you’ve got an elixir of health fed to you once a day. But I wanted to be able to focus on the children we had, to give them everything they could need, and I didn’t mean materially. They needed my time, and three is a lot.
But I also didn’t have to worry about fertility and age. I was married to a fertility god and that elixir kept me young. Dev and I could have more children down the line.
It struck me suddenly that eating wasn’t the only thing that had changed when Daniel’s body had.
I turned to Dev. “Is Danny… Can he…”
I couldn’t say it out loud for fear that this was all some kind of mistake. Turning Daniel human had been a trick to make him vulnerable, but I might be able to find some joy in it.
Dev’s eyes widened as he figured out what I was talking about.
“Can Danny what?” Daniel asked, far slower to catch on than Dev.
Dev’s eyes rolled and Bris’s suddenly stared back at me, a grin curling up his lips as he placed a hand on Daniel’s chest. “The king is fertile, my goddess. I promise if you choose, there is nothing my host and I would love more than to aid you in bringing a child of his into the world. A child born of our love.”
Our love. Mine and Daniel’s and Dev’s and yes, Bris’s. The gentle god had more than proved himself to us over the years. We’d learned how large a capacity our hearts could hold, and not for the simple love we’d been promised as children. It had been difficult to open ourselves for this odd love, but it had been worth it. So worth it.
Danny was staring right at me. “I have working sperm?”
I felt a smile of infinite joy cross my face. “I think you do. You know what that means?”
Danny lowered his head to mine, rubbing our foreheads together. “I want to try, Z. Don’t get me wrong. I have to find out if I can become a vampire again, but that might have to wait until