“It’s Marian,” Lucivar said. “She’ll keep Surreal company until your presence is requested.”
“Will it be requested?” Daemon asked softly. “She’s hurting, and it’s my fault. She’s having my baby, and she kicked me out of the room.”
“Like I said, she doesn’t like you much right now and doesn’t want you around every minute, but that doesn’t mean—”
“Sadi!” Surreal shouted. “If you want to keep that overrated cock of yours, get your ass back in here!”
“—she wants you to go too far away,” Lucivar finished.
Daemon rocked back on his heels and stared at the partially open door. “So she’s going to keep flipping from wanting me with her to wanting me gone? For how long?”
Lucivar put both hands on Daemon’s back and gave him a light shove. “For as long as it takes to birth this baby.”
“Mother Night.”
“And may the Darkness be merciful. Show some balls, boyo.”
“That’s what got me into this in the first place,” Daemon muttered. But he went into the birthing room and found Surreal looking teary-eyed and vulnerable—and ready for a few hugs and cuddles.
Lucivar wandered over to the window farthest away from the door. Moments after Daemon walked into the birthing room, Marian walked out and closed the door between the rooms.
“How are they?” he asked when Marian wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned against him.
“They’ll be fine, but your brother is going to need you today,” she replied. “Surreal is focused on having the baby, but Daemon seems . . . shakier, more vulnerable.”
“Until the Birthright Ceremony, the child isn’t legally his. He’ll spend years raising that child and loving that child, but it won’t be his until that day.”
Marian leaned back enough to look at him. “You’ve never worried about that, have you?”
He brushed her hair away from her face. “No, but that’s you and me. It’s not going to be as easy for Daemon to trust.”
“That’s not fair to Surreal.”
“No, it’s not, but that’s how it is.”
Marian hesitated. “Have you ever wondered . . . ?”
He sighed. Then he nodded. “I don’t know if Jaenelle wasn’t able to have children or if it just never happened for them.”
“I think there was a concern—a fear—that she wouldn’t survive childbirth,” Marian said quietly. “Nothing was ever said; I just had that impression the couple of times her moontime was late. It seemed like Daemon was relieved when the moon’s blood started.”
“Could be. It would have destroyed him if she had died that way.” He huffed out a breath. “Maybe that’s why it never happened. Hell’s fire, I was able to make myself infertile for centuries and did it so thoroughly I know I never sired a child until the night we made Daemonar. And Daemon had suppressed his sexuality and fertility even more than I did for most of his life.”
“He wasn’t unreceptive to having a child,” Marian said. “At least, not until Jaenelle got hurt.”
“Not until Jaenelle’s body was healed and remade through a tangled web,” Lucivar corrected. “After she came back to him, he had a hard time dealing with her being in any kind of pain—and took care of whatever was causing the problem.” And maybe had taken care of more things than he’d intended to.
Lucivar kissed Marian’s forehead. “Doesn’t matter why things happened the way they did. Today we focus on helping Surreal get through childbirth without killing her husband.”
Marian froze for a moment, then looked at him with wide eyes. “Someone did remember to take away all her knives. Don’t you think?”
Lucivar released his wife and headed for the birthing room door. “I think I’ll slip in and take a quick look around.”
She felt frightened, feral, and more than a little possessive. Ignoring Helene and the Healer’s assistant as they cleaned her up, Surreal kept her eyes on the man who stood too far away from the bed, cradling her child in his arms. She wanted to tear the baby out of his arms—and tear off his arms in the process.
“Drink this,” the Healer said, holding a cup to her lips. “You need to drink this now.”
“Trying to drug me?” She flicked her eyes to the woman’s startled face, then focused again on the man who wouldn’t even look at her.
“It’s a tonic to provide you with some quick nourishment. A couple of swallows is all. Your body will use it all up; it won’t get to your milk.”
Milk. The baby needed milk.
“A couple of swallows, Lady,” the Healer said.
She took the cup and drained it.
“There,” Helene said as she smoothed the bedcovers. “You should be able to rest easy now.”
The man immediately looked up, looked at her, and she realized he hadn’t been ignoring her; he’d been giving her privacy while they cleaned her and the bed. Now he watched her as she watched him, but there was wariness in his eyes.
What had she done to make him so wary?
Warlord Prince. Husband. Daemon.
With each word that identified who he was, her head cleared a little more and images and sounds flashed by in memory, jumbled and distorted—the pain, the Healer’s encouraging voice, a male voice promising it wouldn’t hurt much longer, the thin cry of a baby, the man lowering her to the pillows and moving toward the child a woman lifted from between her legs, and her sudden attack to keep him, and everyone else, away from her baby. Hands holding her down while she fought and screamed—and the woman, the Healer, rushing to the far side of the room and handing her baby to ...
Surreal raised a hand, touched her shoulder, and flinched.
“You’re going to have a few bruises,” the Healer said quietly. “Prince Yaslana wasn’t trying to hurt you, but you had to be restrained for your own safety and the child’s.”
She stared at Daemon. “Was anyone hurt?”
“No,” he said quietly. “But we all learned some things about the Dea al Mon side of your nature.”
He was lying. She could feel it. Someone had gotten hurt, but she knew he wouldn’t tell her if she asked him. At least, not right now.
“I’ll be back in a little while to answer any questions you may have,” the Healer said. “For now, why don’t the three of you get acquainted?”
Helene and the Healer’s assistant left through the outer room while the Healer went into the adjoining room, no doubt to report to Lucivar and Marian.
“I guess I must have gone a little insane?” she asked.
“Something like that.” He sat on the edge of the bed near her knees, still wary of her and ready to move out of reach. He also had a shield around himself and the baby so she couldn’t touch either one.
She scraped her fingers through sweat-damp hair. “Hell’s fire, Sadi. What do you want me to say? Things got fuzzy toward the end.”
“Sometimes you’re a scary woman, Surreal.” Daemon studied her. “Still feeling fuzzy?”
“No.” Now she felt scared as she realized how badly she’d unnerved him. He was keeping the baby away from her. Was he going to take her child? Had she done something that made him think she would hurt the child? Mother Night. “The baby?”
“She’s fine.”
She. Daughter. “She has the right number of fingers and toes?”
He smiled. “Yes, she does. I didn’t have a chance to look at everything, but I saw that much.”
We’re both afraid, she thought. Both afraid of being shut out by the other. And I don’t know what I did to make him so wary of letting me near my own baby.
“I hadn’t decided on a name for a boy, but I know the name I’d like to give our daughter—with your consent,” she said.
“Unless it’s outlandish, I doubt I’ll have a problem with any name you choose,” he replied.
“Jaenelle Saetien. I would like to name her Jaenelle Saetien in honor of two people who meant a great deal to me.”
Shock. Pain. And then, gratitude. “Are you sure?”
Surreal smiled. “I’m sure.”
She watched his shoulders relax as he studied his daughter.
“Jaenelle say-tee-ehn,” he said, pronouncing the name as she had. Then he gave his girl a loving smile. “Hello, witch-child.”
The right choice, Surreal decided as she watched Daemon relax enough to unwrap the blankets and get a better look at his baby. She wanted to touch them both, and she couldn’t until he trusted her enough to drop his shield.
His eyes wandered leisurely over that small body that had come from hers. Then he studied the head and his expression became bemused.
“Her ears are pointed,” he said softly.
Suddenly self-conscious, Surreal pulled her hair over her own delicately pointed ears.
Daemon’s smile turned soft and silly. He shifted position, moving up so that she could finally see her daughter and share this discovery.
She reached out to move the blanket to get a better look—and couldn’t touch it. He tensed, but he dropped the shield. When she did nothing more than touch the blanket, he relaxed and shifted his body to include her.
“Look,” he said, sounding enchanted. “Her little ears are pointed. She’s going to be beautiful, like you.”
A prick of tears. She blinked them back before he noticed.
Jaenelle began crying. Surreal saw Daemon change in a heartbeat from a soft man to a predator ready to protect his own.
“What’s wrong?” Daemon’s gold eyes were cold and glazed as he raised his head and looked at her.
The temper wasn’t aimed at her, she realized. If he couldn’t deduce what was wrong with his child quickly enough, he expected her to point out the problem so that he could take care of it—permanently.
That was the moment she understood that her part of the job wasn’t so much to protect the child as to push Sadi back the necessary half step that would give his girl some breathing room from the instincts that would be honed to a lethal edge from now on.
Uncle Saetan hadn’t had the leash of a partner when he’d raised Jaenelle and stood as the coven’s protector. Looking at Daemon now, she began to appreciate just how formidable the old man’s self-control had been.
“I think she’s hungry,” Surreal said.
A heartbeat. Two. Then Daemon blinked and looked around as if expecting to find a table of food that would appeal to his girl.
Surreal touched his sleeve. When he focused on her, she tapped her chest. “For the next few months, her kitchen is right here.”
He looked at her chest and blinked again. “Oh.”
She held out her arms and waited.
Hesitation. Reluctance. But he finally settled the baby in her arms.
When he sat there, waiting, she turned shy. “I know you’ve seen my breasts before, but this is different.”
Another heartbeat. Two. “You want me to leave?”
She nodded. “Could you ask Marian to come in?”
That request melted whatever resistance he had for leaving her alone with the child. He brushed a finger over the baby’s hand, then leaned over and kissed Surreal with a tenderness that made her heart ache.
“Thank you,” he said.
She grinned. “She is pretty wonderful, isn’t she?”
“She’s her mother’s daughter. How could she be anything else?”
She sat there, stunned by the words, as Daemon slipped out of the room and Marian slipped in.
The moment Daemon stepped into the adjoining room, Lucivar caught him in a hard hug and held on while his brother shook with the effort to control his emotions—and probably control the pain he’d been hiding.
“Is Surreal all right now?” Lucivar asked.
“Yes,” Daemon replied. He eased back enough to rest his forehead against Lucivar’s. “What in the name of Hell happened?”
“Damned if I know. Marian got bitchy during labor, but she settled down once the baby was born. Surreal acted like a wild she-cat, and we were the bad humans trying to take her kitten.” He paused. “How’s the arm?”
“Not bad. The bleeding stopped.” Daemon looked down at his right jacket sleeve. The illusion spell hid the tears and the blood.
“Liar. Come over here and strip down. I’ll wash the arm, and then we’ll have the Healer take care of it.”
“I don’t need—”
“Bastard, what part of that sounded like a choice?”