And all of a sudden, Corbin knew. It was she. Their little girl. She wanted soup.
He put a hand on his belly, beaming at Evander, whose eyebrows went flying up. A huge grin broke over Evander’s face, his horns growing out some.
Cosmo stared at the two of them. “If you two are fixing to have a busy time, let us know and we’ll take the kids and go.”
“No, our little girl just spoke to me for the first time, Cosmo.”
“Oh my God, that’s so cool.” Cosmo got up and hugged him, kissing his cheek. “Did you hear that, Hawk? Isabelle is going to have a little girl to play with.”
Elliot grunted. “Boy too.”
“Oh, honey, I know you want a boy to play with.” Corbin reached over and stroked his little gray head. “That’ll happen sooner or later.”
Elliot rolled his eyes and blew out a breath as if he was blowing away little pixies, which he liked to do when he was in the Glade. “Boy, also,” he said again.
Evander’s eyes widened even more. “I think he means you’re having twins, love.”
Stunned, Corbin sat back, checking in with his body, seeing if anyone else was talking in there. He heard just the faintest voice, but it wasn’t the one he heard the first time.
Breathless, he reached Evander’s hand. “I think he’s right.”
Chapter
Fourteen
“Twins, Orion. We’re having twins.” Orion was helping him strip bark off a tree that had been felled in the Land of Summer for his children’s cradles. Once they got the bark stripped off, they’d be able to cut the pieces of log and then bring them inside where Hawk would help him haul them out and work on the cradles themselves. Hawk being a better woodworker than Orion.
“So you said about fifty times,” Orion grinned at him. “Congratulations, man.”
“Thank you. I’m incredibly proud.” Evander stopped for a moment, his hands still on the trunk of the tree. “But I’m worried.”
Orion raised one eyebrow. “About the vampire threat, yes?”
“Yes, exactly. The only word from Alyster is by way of this Forrest fae Mom sent to the Court of Bells. It seems that no one else there is infected. The ranking individuals of that court seem to think that if she was infected, it happened between the time she left their encampment and made her way to our mother-in-law’s court.”
Orion nodded to Evander’s hands. “More working while you talk, or we’re never going to get this done.”
Evander got his planer moving again, taking off the bark, snorting a little bit. Orion really was a pain in the ass.
Orion pondered what he had said. “Of course, they’re going to say that because they have to cover their own asses. But what if it’s true? Now, either that means that somebody bit her while she was on the road, which would probably be easier than a vampire waltzing into a full court and spreading their disease. Or she was given something like vampire blood while she was traveling.”
Evander blinked because that was something that he hadn’t even considered. “Can you poison someone with vampire blood?”
“I don’t see why not. It’s not like the blood of a living being. It doesn’t have to have a spark of life in it to carry whatever disease is infecting the end user, right? Vampires are dead, so one assumes that is their disease.” Orion’s voice remained steady, and he never once seemed to be talking about anything in more than an academic way.
“Huh.” Evander felt an itchy, scratchy feeling on the back of his neck, and he didn’t like it, because if that was true, getting a vial or a vessel of blood through the wards was probably going to be easier than getting a whole creature. And if that was true, compounding itself, then it would be relatively easy to mix vampire blood with fae people.
“I mean, we know it wasn’t you, because Corbin, Cullen, and Cosmo stopped you from going back through. In fact, they’re the ones who brought you to this house. You probably would’ve died before you made your way back here. So trying to infect a fae with vampirism and then have them come back across the veil, as the dragons call it. My fathers would call it the wards. Seemslike a tough proposition.” Orion had a real turn of logic about him. Evander kind of hated that about the guy.
“But surely those wards would kick out somebody carrying vampire blood too, wouldn’t they? Even if it was in a container.”
“Well, I know the ones that are here at this house. That doesn’t mean there’s not other portals. It depends on the vessel, doesn’t it? How much would it be spelled in order to get through?” Orion just kept scraping in this maddening rhythm, never once letting up.
“I think this is something we need to discuss with the others.” Evander said. “This puts a whole new light on things.”
Orion gave him a dark chuckle. “No, pun intended. Our mates make a pretty amazing vampire lamp.”
“They do. We should finish up.” He went back to work, scraping hard. Just over an hour later, they were ready to cut the pieces of log in half or thirds and take it into the house. But they would leave it for now.
