Dream Five, Chapter Fourteen

(Anything in asterisks is meant to be italicized.)

I was late.

Not to arrive somewhere, but biologically. It happens on occasion, but it had been very nearly two months. Barrons can smell it on me. He can smell it before I even start and he knows what ovulating does to me. The day before, the day of, and the day after Mother Nature tries to insist I reproduce. He loves to indulge the attempts we both know won't work.

And if my math was right, I should be in the middle of those three days, but I wasn't feeling it like I usually do. It concerned me, but I wasn't worried. Too much.

But enough that I called Dani's cellphone, only for Ryodan to grumpily remind me that she was off in space with Y'rill. He hadn't been allowed to go this time. Dani had been disappointed by that, too, because she had been enjoying learning not just from Y'rill, but occasionally from the Unseelie King's—so now Ryodan's—personal Hunter K'Vruck. I have a soft spot in my heart for K'Vruck. I quickly covered my reason for calling by saying that I was just going to leave her a nice voicemail message for when she got back. I think he bought it.

I considered calling Kat but realized that if I was worrying for nothing, then I was going to feel incredibly embarrassed. So I went out myself. I had to check several pharmacies before I was able to find what I was looking for, and then a few more just to get a couple more in case I needed to be certain. The feeling of premonition I sometimes get thanks to being the Queen of the Fae and the possessor of the True Magic was telling me I wasn't worrying for nothing. That's what scared me.

When the walls came down after Halloween and I had recovered from being *Pri-ya* and had dealt with several other things, I stockpiled whatever I thought I might need and filled two rooms on the top floor of Barrons Books & Baubles. I hadn't thought I'd need these. Although I had stockpiled about ten years' worth of birth control and condoms, but we had never once used the latter. I also fell behind on the former because my life isn't exactly filled with routine and I didn't consider the fact that they'd eventually expire.

Instead of sharing my concerns with Barrons, I said nothing. Chalked it up to stress. He didn't say anything either about the fact that I was late. If the tests were negative, I'd tell him and we'd laugh about it. I didn't want to think about what would happen if they were positive.

My friend Korrie had moved to Dublin. She was sleeping a few doors down from my room. At least, whenever I was sleeping in my room. Sometimes I ended up falling asleep on my favorite Chesterfield sofa. Sometimes I slept in Barrons's bed in our underground lair. Occasionally I ended up falling asleep in our basement sex dungeon.

I had built a cafe for her as a part of the rooftop garden, but sometimes she ran the bookstore for me, too. At some point I was going to have to consider hiring more help. I'm not at the bookstore often enough anymore. Maybe I could hire a *sidhe*-seer or two from the abbey. There was no way I was going to consider hiring one of those "See you in Faery" girls from Chester's.

Korrie had agreed to close the bookstore for me that night. She sensed I was distressed but didn't press me to tell her what was wrong. That's one of the best things about someone you've been best friends with for forever. They know when to ask and when to just leave you alone.

I gave her instructions that didn't feel fair, but I asked her to stay down in the bookstore until Barrons came back from wherever he had been that afternoon and to tell him that I needed to see him up in my room, then to wait until we came back down before going upstairs. That was the part that didn't feel fair because she lived there, too.

After about an hour of pacing, I had texted him and asked when he'd be home that night, hoping he'd think I was just eager to spend a night in his bed again and was feeling impatient. He'd said he'd be back around eight.

I had started pacing again at 8:10.

By 8:20 I had pulled out my photo albums of Alina and was looking at them while seated on the floor.

I was crying by 8:25 because I missed her so much and felt like I needed my big sister now more than ever.

By 8:30 I had tossed them aside because I couldn't stop crying and they were only making me feel worse. I had also moved from the floor to sitting on the edge of the bed, clutching at the bedspread.

He finally walked in at 8:34.

Barrons was immediately knelt down in front of me, his large hands dwarfing mine as he took them. "Your distress is palpable all the way outside. What's wrong?"

I had managed to calm myself down within those four minutes, but I took one look at him after lifting my head and started crying again, throwing my arms around him and burying my face in the hollow of his neck.

There was a time he would have gotten irritated with me for crying, but the only other times I'd felt anywhere near this level of distress were easily tallied: The Burren, Halloween, the first time I'd watched him die, when the Book dumped me in Mallucé's lair. He found me (or had at least been present) three out of those four times. There was no way he wouldn't rush to my side the moment he was close enough to feel me. I'd been through so much since meeting him that there wasn't much that could make me cry anymore.

His arms felt so safe and secure around me that I just cried harder, feeling such an overwhelming amount of intense and conflicting emotions. He still hates it when I cry.

All of the Nine hate it when women cry, I think. At least Barrons, Ryodan, and Lor do. It's like a weakness. They can't handle tears from a woman. It's one of the best ways to get what you want from them if you use it sparingly. Lor once told Dani when she was still a teenager and working for her now lover that a crying woman is Ryodan's weakness. Lor's said he can't stand it, either.

Barrons used to get mad at me when I cried. Now he's holding me until I can get myself under control. The brand he placed on me without my consent that has since saved my life multiple times and provides our connection also allows him to feel my emotions. He knows something is deeply wrong but I've temporarily closed my mind to him so he can't pick it up.

It took another ten minutes for me to stop crying, but I didn't move once I did. I just sat there for a couple more minutes, inhaling the scent of spices and taking comfort from his love and strength. There is nothing that could ever happen that would cause this man to abandon me. He'd raze worlds, reverse time itself, do whatever needed to be done to ensure our future together.

"Who even uses words like 'palpable'?" I at one point managed to say. He smiled against my neck, but I knew the smile hadn't reached his eyes.

Once I was ready to face the truth, I pulled him up onto the bed next to me before muttering something about needing a minute and going into the bathroom. I grabbed a tissue and splashed some water on my face before I grabbed what I had to show him with a shaking hand.

He was still sitting there when I emerged, intently watching the door and trying to decide what was wrong but waiting patiently for me to tell him on my own time. Tears wanted to overwhelm me again but I kept them at bay as I kept it fisted behind my back.

"I don't know how it happened," I told him as I slowly approached him, feeling and probably looking very stunned. "I understand the mechanics of it, but I don't know *how* it happened." My free hand reached for his and I put the test in his hand. He studied me before looking down at it. He looked at it for a long time with an unfathomable expression. His voice was soft when he finally spoke again.

"You're—"

"Pregnant," I finished for him in a whisper. It was the first time I said it aloud. He kept staring at it before he stood up and pulled me back into his arms. I almost lost it again. There was a slow, rhythmic pounding in my ear; he'd eaten.

We stood there like that for a few minutes before I lifted my head and looked up at him. "Jericho, I don't know how this happened," I told him. "I mean, we've never used protection and I don't always take my birth control because it's not like I'm consistently in the same place every night when I fall asleep and I don't carry it on me, but unless I somehow don't remember you forcing a birth control pill down my throat every day while I was *Pri-ya*, I figured Cruce's elixir did what the first elixir did when it made the Fae unable to reproduce. We have a *lot* of unprotected sex," his lips twitched a little at the corners, "and I've never once had a pregnancy scare."

He looked at me for a long while and I could practically see the wheels turning in his head. Then his expression turned dark. Crimson pooled into his eyes as his fangs slid out. A snarl escaped him as his face started to elongate. I placed my hands on his cheeks and channeled my love for him into our connection. "Stay with me, Jericho. Stay with me." It took a minute for him to contain the beast. Once he had, my hands were suddenly holding nothing as he moved in that fluid way he does without displacing any air. His back was to me as he stood by the window.

When he finally spoke, he growled, "It took several millennia for the elixir to do that to the Fae, Ms. Lane. No, I never 'forced' your birth control down your throat in that basement."

"I'm still...fertile, then," I said, needing to speak out loud in order to think in that moment. "That's why when we thought the black holes were going to devour the earth you told me to transfer the magic, go off world, find a husband and have…"

"I wanted you to *live*, Ms. Lane," he said. "Not just survive, but *live*. That's why I told you to follow those dreams you'd once had."

Somehow, I was more stunned as his meaning dawned on me than I had been earlier.

"Jericho," I eventually said softly as I approached, "I suspected long ago that a future with you didn't hold children but I didn't care. I don't need kids to be happy or feel fulfilled or alive." I put my hands on his face again and turned his head so he'd see in my eyes that what I was saying was true. "I just need you. *You're* my dream."

He smiled a little and one of his hands covered one of mine as he said softly, "I know. You made that clear when you were so foolishly determined to die beside me." The smile eventually faded. "Mac, whose—"

"I don't know," I admitted as something caught in my throat.

"You haven't—"

"No!" I snarled as I pulled my hands from his face and glared up at him, suddenly furious because he even felt he had to ask that. "Even if I had, you would've felt it, wouldn't you?" He inclined his head in a nod. I stalked to the other side of the room as I spoke. "Then I don't even know why you felt the need to ask that! As if anyone could possibly compare to you."

I felt more than heard him laugh and lobbed a pillow at him. It bounced off harmlessly.

"Seriously?! You're choosing to be an arrogant jackass *now*?!"

Tears pricked my eyes again as I turned and sat back down on the bed, my face in my hands. He was in front of me again, his hands pulling at my wrists. As I lifted my head, he leaned forward and kissed me. It had an unbelievably calming effect.

"Did you have any dreams where someone else…fucked you?" he asked softly, pausing to momentarily close his eyes before finishing the question in a growl. I vigorously shook my head no. "Not even when Cruce had you?"

"No, he wanted me awake for that part," I said bitterly. "Besides, Masdann was there the whole time to make sure the reprogramming dream went right. He would have told you if that had been a part of it, wouldn't he?"

Barrons snorted. "He wouldn't have let it happen," he told me, but I didn't really hear him because something was surfacing in my mind.

I had started remembering the dreams where Masdann had been observing me and remembered the one where the Unseelie King's essence had swept him and Cruce out of my head to tell me that my deal to give Cruce the True Magic wasn't enforceable because those deals were only binding between members of the Light court.

There was a moment before the reprogramming dream Masdann had had to force on me so as not to draw any suspicion from Cruce that I had forgotten about because the reprogramming dream had been so horrific and what had followed was so astonishing.

His essence came to me again, his massive wings sweeping me up. There was the Dreamy-Eyed Guy, one of the king's human skins.

"You still owe me a boon, BG."

I blinked at him in astonishment. "You quit. How are you here?"

"Quit. Still exist. The boon. Better me than my successor."

"I don't know if you've noticed, but your twisted son decided now was the time to take me for himself. I'm not exactly in a position to do anyone any favors. And can we talk about the fact that you let him lock your granddaughter up for a quarter of a million years?"

"Favor *owed*. Difference."

"Kill Cruce?" I asked hopefully.

"Not death. Life."

"What?"

His gorgeous eyes became vast and ancient.

"It's a gift, Beautiful Girl. Do what the king and the concubine did separately but never truly together: create."

"Make another race of Unseelie?"

He smiled at me.

"Don't worry. Premonitions. King got them, too."

I felt myself asking something for a reason I couldn't understand, "Even about this?" It was like he was making me ask it.

"Even about this."

"He didn't," I said in a low voice.

"Who?" Barrons asked.

"The Unseelie King," I gritted as my hands fisted. When Barrons told me he was going to make Ryodan's life a living hell, not caring that he was now the Unseelie King and omnipotent and rode the thing that could actually permanently kill the Nine, I explained the two dreams I had had before his essence had finally chosen a successor.

"But you don't remember actually—" he started to say.

"No," I told him. "And I think I would have remembered that." There was a rattle in his chest and I rolled my eyes. "Again, no one can compare to you." Amusement glittered in his dark gaze. "And it's not like we can exactly do a blood test to figure this out."

"Ms. Lane, not only are you one of the most powerful sidhe-seers in centuries, you also possess the True Magic," he said as he stood and looked down at me. Amusement had been replaced with annoyance.

I glared back up at him before I closed my eyes and focused inward. I was pretty sure it was too soon for a heartbeat, but I could feel something there. Once I had isolated my own melody and the melody of the True Magic emanating from inside me, I listened.

There was something there, something pure but soft and quiet like there was another part of the song it was playing that I just couldn't hear. I listened harder but heard nothing. I coaxed the True Magic to see if it could shed any light on the subject, but it only made the part of the song I could hear louder in a way that made it even more obvious there was a part that I couldn't hear. This child wasn't just mine, but someone else's, too. The part that I could hear sounded similar to the song that emanated from me. If the father had been Cruce's or the DEG's, I would have heard the haunting melody of the old Unseelie, but I heard nothing.

My eyes flew open and I looked up at Barrons in wonder when it hit me, my mouth falling open just a little bit.

*It's yours*, I told him through our connection. It was the most astonished I've ever seen him.

"Are you certain?"

"As certain as I can be." I explained the melodies and that the Nine didn't have one. Everything did now that I possessed the True Magic, except for them. Ryodan had once said they were "anathema to nature."

I stood up and kissed him with a smile, his arms immediately wrapping around me as he kissed me back. "I'm still so nervous and terrified and I know it adds so many more complications, but I feel like a weight has just lifted because I don't want to carry and birth any baby that isn't yours."

There was joy in his smile when he kissed me again because that was one of the best ways I had ever managed to tell him that I love him.

"It does make it more complicated," he told me when he stopped kissing me.

"When I was invisible and snooping at Chester's, I heard Ryodan and Lor discussing how you all accused each other of breaking a covenant not to reproduce when Fade first spotted Dani on the streets," I told him. "But this has to be an extraneous circumstance." My eyes widened and I felt the color drain from my face. It took a second to force my vocal chords to speak. "If you hadn't saved me from Cruce when you did—"

"I know."

"Fuck," I said after another minute, my eyes managing to get wider. "What happens if this child ends up like you? Can the beast be passed on genetically?"

"We don't know for certain that it is mine."

"We're as certain as we can be in this moment. There've been ten of you for however long there have been. Dageus took the tenth spot. Barrons, what happens if there's eleven? What is the tribunal thing going to do? What are your men going to do?"

He pulled me tightly to him and held me there for a moment before he said, "There's nothing we can do about that now. And there's no guarantee that the child will be like me. I'm not the only one with strong genetics. You are an O'Connor, the queen of the bloody fucking fairies, and one of the stubbornest women I have ever met. Just look at Rae. Her father is Cruce and she got the gift to fix things." He tilted my head up. "You're mine, Mac. No one is taking you from me. And if this child is mine, no one is taking it from us, either." I nodded and he kissed me again.