“Twenty-one,” Crypt corrects. “I already got our goddess started on her birthday orgasms.”
Baelfire snorts. “If I’d been the one who stayed behind with her, she wouldn’t need any more. I mean, we’d still give you more,” he adds, grinning at me.
I roll my eyes. “You four are ridiculous.”
“Ridiculouslyin love,” Bael flirts, bouncing his eyebrows at me.
“May!” Kenzie squeals happily, the first guest to approach.
“Whoa,” I blurt on accident when I see her belly.
It’s been about a month since I saw her last, and I swear that thing has fucking doubled in size. I guess that makes sense, since two babies would take up more space. Kenzie sees me staring at it and bursts into laughter as the rest of her quintet waves and smiles at me from their table.
“Hey, now. Remember, you once said I’m the sexiest pregnant lady that you know. You have to stick to that because after six fucking months of this, I’m already beyond ready to get these little crotch goblins out. I want to see my feet again and not have to pee every sixteen seconds. Hey, do you think they’ll start letting legacies join professional sports teams anytime in the next few decades? Because if not, we should start our own league or something because I swear these kids think my ribs are a soccer ball and I’m ready to?—”
“There’s my favorite sister-in-law!” Cace Decimus cheers, approaching with a smile. “How’s the hunt for fiends these days?”
“She slaughters them with ease and waters the ground of the Nether with their blood,” Crypt smiles, squeezing my hand.
Cace doesn’t seem to know what to say to that, but Brigid Decimus and her quintet are right behind him, greeting me and once again gushing about the fact that Declan’s quintet is having a baby. It’s definitely Declan’s, which means that the scales Baelfire gave to Silas to work on the dragon shifter fertility problem worked. For the first time in over two decades, another dragon shifter is finally on the way.
Brigid Decimus is also thriving in her new position as the headmaster of Everbound University. She and her quintet took up residence there and are changing a lot of the old tradition and beliefs about needing to weed out weak legacies.
When the Decimuses and Kenzie return to their tables to eat pizza and chatter happily, the next person to greet me with a shy smile and big brown eyes is Heidi—no, Elise.
I keep forgetting she prefers to go by Elise, her middle name.
My ice elemental’s sister is unbelievably sweet and happy, despite the things she’s been through. She’s also been incredibly useful. After the final battle of the Nether, the type four empath let Everett know that while she was incarcerated in the Nether, she sensed people asleep far beneath the citadel. I’d never heard of anything below it, but word spread to Felix. Ever since, we’ve begun excavations to discover what or who could be down there.
Whatever it is, it’s been thousands of years since they were put to sleep. Felix, Silas, and several others have been heading the excavations, and they’re excited to finally be getting close to whatever Heidi was sensing.
Everett’s sister beams at me and hands me a small gift wrapped in sparkly pink wrapping paper.
“Happy birthday,” she chirps. “Go ahead, unwrap it!”
I do. It’s a pair of gloves. Really soft, black gloves.
I thank her and she returns to the rest of the party as Baelfire leads me over to one of the tables that has two dome-looking things on it.
“Maven’s going to cut the cake,” my shifter announces loudly. He removes the first dome-looking thing to reveal?—
A cake with a picture of green Jell-O on it.
I look at him. “You’re mean.”
He bursts into laughter along with the rest of my quintet and everyone else at my birthday party.
“That one is ice cream cake,” Baelfire tells me through his laughter.
They make ice cream intocake,too?
Genius.
“This one is the cake you’ll be cutting,” Everett adds, removing the other dome from the table.
I study the black heart-shaped cake, appreciating how simple it is. Crypt hands me the cake-cutting knife and murmurs, “Stab it, love,” in my ear.
Stab it? Okay.
