than all the pupils of every rave attendee ever. I think it might be time soon.”
“I told you so.” Alec huffed, and I rolled my eyes.
“We’re here now. It’s all good.” I rubbed his arm in a half-apologetic gesture. We’d all been giving him shit.
“Hey, kitten.” Marcus gave me a kiss on the cheek, then gave Alec one of those thumping man-hugs.
I gave Kyo the same greeting, but he just stood in front of us looking kind of dazed.
“I’m going to be a father,” he stated in a monotone, then blinked once. Alec and I shared a look.
Lucian was still the managing director of Melior Group, but he was looking to retire soon, and he was grooming Kyo to replace him. Having that kind of responsibility didn’t seem to faze him, but the prospect of becoming a parent was proving a little intimidating.
“Yeah, man.” Alec slapped a hand on his shoulder. “That’s how this works.”
“So am I,” Marcus piped in from his spot next to Dot. “We’ll figure it out.”
Dot was having twins. After two years of trying to conceive naturally without success, they’d decided to try IVF. Dot immediately decided she wanted a baby from each one of her loves and insisted she be inseminated with both embryos. “Plus,” she declared at family dinner one night, “it’ll be good to get all my breeding out of the way at once.” Miraculously, it worked.
“Shit.” She cringed and leaned forward.
“Ace, you’re up.” Marcus took Dot’s hand and waved us over with the other.
Alec rushed to his cousin’s side and took her free hand. I held on to his arm and transferred the perfect amount of Light so he could take her pain away.
We’d perfected this process.
From time to time, after a really bad natural disaster or in a situation where it was difficult to get people to proper medical care, Alec and I volunteered our time to help manage pain—if it was safe, of course. Their protectiveness never really waned.
Alec had toyed with the idea of somehow making it his full-time work, but that would’ve required me to go with him everywhere he was needed, and I had my own scientific goals to kick. He’d also realized pretty quickly that he actually didn’t want to spend that much time surrounded by people in pain. Even if he wasn’t the one inflicting it, it still triggered bad memories. Yet he didn’t want to stay with Melior Group either.
After Alec spent a few months moping around the house and bemoaning how useless he was and how he could just be “the house husband,” Tyler slapped a pile of college brochures down in front of him and told him to get his shit together.
He was in his second year working as a specialized counselor at Bradford Hills Institute. He worked exclusively with kids with rare, dangerous, or isolating abilities. No one understood them like he did. He was kind of perfect for it.
Despite Dot’s colorful evaluation of what stage of labor she was in, she actually wasn’t ready to push for another few hours. We stayed with her the whole time, managing her pain through the contractions and then through the delivery.
Both babies were the picture of health, twenty little fingers and twenty little toes, wailing to announce their arrival into the world.
Alec and I stepped out to update the rest of the family while the nurses did their thing. Charlie and Ed had arrived too, and they all swarmed us for information.
“A boy and a girl.” I grinned. “Both healthy. Dot did amazingly.”
We all knew they were having one of each—Dot had left no aspect of this pregnancy a mystery—but it still felt as if I was announcing a surprise.
Henry started crying, which got Olivia going too. Charlie pulled a sniffling Ed into his side. Ethan got misty eyed, and Alec was somewhere between dazed and ecstatic after witnessing his first birth.
It was my first birth too, but I’d researched the fuck out of it. As soon as Dot announced she was pregnant, that became my side project. We even got together one night and watched a bunch of birthing videos together, a giant bowl of popcorn balanced on her giant belly.
Kyo and Marcus came out, kicking off another round of hugs, shouts of congratulations, and more tears.
We took turns going in to visit with Dot and holding little Jamie and Nina. I made sure I was sitting down when one of the fragile little bundles was handed to me, desperate for a