She nodded. “Yes. Well, and conceivably even in mated couples if wanted.”
“Immortal divorces. Not sure I like that.”
She’d figured he’d be concerned. “Freedom matters, King. You know that.”
“I agree.” He sighed. “Though you haven’t tested the new serum with mated people still alive, now have you?”
She couldn’t help but smiling. “No.”
Triumph filled his gaze. “So it might not work—I mean, if both parties are still living.”
She winked. “Thanks to everyone’s hard work, we have so many vampires healthy and living now. Finally some peace.”
“It is good to be alive.” Dage’s graze dropped to her barely swelling tummy. “Speaking of life, how are you feeling?”
“Better.” She’d thrown up for the first three months of her pregnancy, leaving Dage worried and as grumpy as a wounded bear. “The moment I hit the second trimester last week, I just felt hungry. No more nausea.”
“Thank God.” He finished the drink and tossed the empty into an antique trash can.
Emma rubbed her belly, warmth cascading through her. “So long ago, when we were running through that scary forest from the Kurjans, did you think we’d end up like this?”
“Like what?”
She glanced down, her heart expanding. “Happy?”
The king strode toward her and dropped to his knees between hers. One large hand flattened over her abdomen. “Yes.”
She looked up into shining silver eyes streaking with blue. The blue was just for her. The most powerful being in the world, possibly ever, knelt in front of her, giving her everything. Giving her him. “I love you,” she whispered.
The blue overtook the silver. “I dreamed of you for centuries, and the reality of the true you blows every fantasy I created out of existence. Without you, love, I don’t have a life.”
The words slid right into her soul. “Dage—”
“With you, I have the universe. Only you, Em. Always.”
Sarah Petrovsky straightened up the lesson plans spread across the kitchen table, taking a moment to feel the vibrations from an old stack of geography maps sent by a shifter teacher in Wyoming. Warmth and happiness cascaded from the paper. Apparently the elderly wolf liked teaching as much as Sarah did.
“Milaya?” Max strode into the room, holding a bouquet of yellow daisies.
Sarah gasped, pleasure sparking through her from the nickname as well as the flowers. “For me?”
“Of course.” Max handed them over. “My pretty one.”
The name sounded just as lovely in English as Russian. “Thank you.” She inhaled the flowers’ rich scent and plunked them in a vase on the counter. “I love them.”
His massive shoulders relaxed. “Good.” He tugged his shirt over his head and turned for the laundry room. “Do I have a dress shirt anywhere?”
“Hanging up and already ironed,” she said, her gaze eating him up and landing on the jagged tattoo of a phoenix winding over his right shoulder. Those shoulders, fully healthy now, could probably shield a village.
The scars lining his lower back, raised and white, spoke of his difficult childhood.
He reached in and grabbed a pink shirt, and the smile he flashed spoke of a happy adulthood. With the Kayrs family and with her. “I am not wearing pink.”
“Come on. Hope giggles whenever you let your vampire eyes show.” While all vampires had a secondary eye color, only Max had pink. A beautiful, stunning, sizzling pink that was only a shade lighter than it had been before the virus had nearly taken him away.
Max scratched his head. “Yeah, she does. Well, okay.” He shrugged into the shirt and rapidly buttoned it up.
Sarah grinned. Even in the delicate color, the vampire looked deadly. A strong and rugged face with messy brown hair swept back made him look like he’d never even been sick a day.
