“You, too?”
“Me three,” Jane admitted, joining them.
Surprise flickered through Danika. Not that they hadn’t all been doing plenty of ‘practice’ at making babies, but it still seemed odd that none of them had gotten pregnant before and now three of them—at least—were. What were the odds?
Make that one hundred percent, because they discovered fairly quickly that that was definitely the case. They’d been on the verge of having a serious population boom in their little village! She supposed nobody had mentioned it because, like her, they weren’t completely certain and/or they were worried about it for a lot of reasons.
They didn’t have to make up an excuse, thankfully, to get tests run. They were told to report to the med-bay for a complete examination as soon as the ship cleared the solar system and had made the first jump.
Luckily, there was a programmed med-tech onboard because the moment the cyborg examining her announced that she was pregnant their medic-borg—Jane’s man, Joseph—went catatonic at the news and couldn’t do anything for a while but stare at Jane, or more specifically, her belly.
“We can … reproduce?” Joseph finally said a little hoarsely.
The medic sent him a strained grin. “The first child, a female, was born to Reuel and his woman. There have been many since.”
Joseph looked like he might faint for several moments. Finally, he staggered over to Jane and stared down at her. “You are also breeding?”
Jane reddened and looked undecided as to whether she was insulted by his choice of words or not. “Maybe,” she said finally, cautiously.
“I will check,” he said forcefully, looking around for a scanner not in use. It looked like he might fight Danika’s medic for the one he had in use, but fortunately, he finished with it before he had to do battle with Joseph over possession.
Danika cleared her throat. “Did you do a DNA?”
The medic nodded. “I will have to compare it to your men before I can ascertain who fathered the infants.”
It took that a few minutes to sink in. “Wait a minute! Did you say …. You said infant, right?”
“I said infants. There are two.”
A sense of wonder filled Danika … for all of ten seconds. Then images began to flood her mind of tending an infant. She’d been really young when her last brother was born, but she remembered the pure hell that had followed.
And she was going to have two! Double everything!
If the guys didn’t head for the hills the minute the infants produced a chorus of demanding squalls …!
She quelled the thought. Her men had had her back through hell and back! They wouldn’t abandon her just because of a couple of teeny, tiny babies!
In point of fact, although they were all stunned speechless when she finally made the announcement a few days later, and she could see that Basil and Niles were terribly disappointed when they discovered one of the babies was Seth’s and the other Dane’s, they actually looked more pleased and terrified than anything else.
She didn’t have a clue of howthathad happened, but after she’d thought it over she had decided that fate had actually smiled on her for a change. She was going to have one for Seth and one for Dane—at the same time. Two down! Only two to go and she’d be done with the whole business, nobody would be left out, and she wouldn’t have to worry that she’d disappointed any of them!
Actually, it didn’t go quite that smoothly. She’d finally decided that the best thing to do was to downplay the paternity of the babies. They were so damned territorial and competitive! “I have an announcement,” she’d said brightly when they’d gathered in their cabin for the night.
All four had looked at her in surprise. “What?” Seth asked.
“We’re going to have a couple of new members joining our squad.”
Within a split second all four looked as black as thunderclouds.
“We do notneedmore squad members!” Seth growled, clearly voicing the opinion of the entire group.
Ok, so maybe that hadn’t been the best way to put it. “I didn’t mean …,” she said testily and then broke off. “What I’m saying is … I’m pregnant!”
Four jaws went slack. They all looked perfectly blank.
“Breeding,” Danika clarified, then added, “little cyborgs?”
The four men exchanged accusing looks.
