Dream Five, Chapter Twenty-Six

(Anything in asterisks is meant to be italicized.)

I had the Amulet make the Humvee invisible as we drove, making sure Lor knew that so he didn't accidentally crash into anyone who couldn't see us. He stopped a few blocks away and tossed some hoods at us, saying we weren't allowed to know where Ryodan's garage was, nor were we allowed to know where the back entrance was. Korrie blanched and I swallowed a protest before assuring her it would be fine.

Lor didn't remove the hoods until we were right outside Ryodan's office. Korrie had been in Chester's before but never up here and she looked around with interest, though she still seemed pretty dazed and scared. As Lor went for the panel to the door, I reached for her hand because the see-through floor of Ryodan's office can be disorienting.

It was a good thing, too, because she stumbled a bit and almost crumpled to the floor from the added shock when we walked in, but Lor and I managed to keep her on her feet. Ryodan gave me a look and I shrugged. "She's had a rough day."

There were a few other members of the Nine in the office. Ryodan is downright hot and Barrons is beautiful, but most of them are kind of scary-looking while still throwing off a basely sexual energy that attracted. Korrie's eyes widened as she took everything in and she had a death grip on my hand. She'd been in a room with multiple members of the Nine before, but not in such close corners. Their presence made the air feel charged and you could almost smell the testosterone of these intensely masculine men. They also seem larger than they are; their molecules saturate the air and seem to take up all of the space in the room, making you feel smaller.

Even though it was my hand she was holding, I noticed her inch closer to Lor as she looked around at them. No offense taken. If I had to choose between a me who was thirty-four weeks pregnant and the heavily muscled, tall, scarred, armed, blond-haired, blue-eyed, Viking caveman Lor for possible protection, I'd probably choose Lor, too.

"Are you alright, Korrie," Ryodan said as he stood up from behind his desk. I knew he wasn't thrilled about having her up here but the order had come from Barrons which meant it was happening. At least he was being civil.

Korrie was still pale-faced and looking around the glass room at all of the monitors and trying not to stare at the equally terrifying and exciting men or look at the floor. It was a few seconds before she registered that Ryodan had spoken to her.

"Mmhm," she said tightly with a nod. She couldn't seem to form words, though she had tried during her first attempts to answer him. This was too much for her. I could see her eyes slowly glazing over from shock.

"Are my parents here yet?" I asked Ryodan, who inclined his head. I turned to Lor and said quietly, "Would you mind taking Korrie to see them, please? I think she's beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed and could use some familiar, calming faces." Lor looked at Ryodan who inclined his head once more.

"Sure, Mac," he said with a nod before he smiled down at Korrie again. Unlike my husband and often my brother-in-law, Lor's smiles usually reach his eyes. So long as he's not the Bonecrusher. "Come on, honey. If we're lucky, Rainey will make hoecakes while she's here."

Lor is obsessed with my mother's hoecakes. But that was twice in one day he'd called Korrie "honey." He often addressed women that way and that's fine, but Lor is one of the Nine. They are basely sexual. None of them are what you would call handsome; that's far too simple a word. They attract. Most women stare at them with desire, most men with envy. And they're sexually addictive, too, although not to the point of being *Pri-ya*.

For me at least, sex with Barrons is a vicious cycle. I always want him. I feel his presence and I'm ready to go. I hear the sound of his voice and my body expects pleasure. (That's because when I was recovering and he was trying to get through to me, he would often talk after sex and tell me stories about myself and my sister and my family and friends and growing up in Georgia. Then we'd have more sex because endless sex seems to be the cure.) My need is satiated once he's in me, but I want him even more when he pulls out.

I was really going to need to get some answers soon because I'm not sure if I wanted to endlessly be having children for the rest of my very long-lived life. Children shouldn't be what fills their parents' entire lives. Children are meant to move on and find their own partners, leaving the parents to really start their lives together. I knew I'd love any children I had, but I was looking forward to getting that start-of-their-lives-together part with Barrons.

We hadn't really had a lot of time together. There hadn't been a dating period for us like most couples had. We met, it hadn't gone well, he came to my hotel room that night, we fucked, he made me forget about it until I could process it and not freak out, and he told me to leave the country or else.

Then he realized I was a *sidhe*-seer, moved me into the bookstore, and kissed me the first time I almost died. We came very close to fucking again in the Burren, we fucked endlessly for months when I was *Pri-ya*, I hated him for it, we got so close to fucking again when I brought him to the White Mansion but the residue of the UK's concubine (who was also my predecessor) got in the way, and we didn't fuck again until his son ripped out my throat in his lair and we realized I'm long-lived and hard to kill.

Most of that took place in less than a year.

It felt like even less time for me because I'd been in Faery for portions of it, or I'd been *Pri-ya*. Then I spent the next few years in that room where time moves differently as I learned to be queen. We hadn't had any time to do so many of the things I wanted to do with him. We were supposed to have eternity to do those things, but I wasn't sure we would if I kept popping out kids. It's not like either of us had any desire to resist the other.

I'm also not sure the Nine would allow me to keep having children, depending on what happens with this first one. Lyryka and Christian were still researching and had begun to study the former Unseelie King's and Cruce's notes. It was slow going because there were a lot from both.

My first priority was to find some sort of Fae birth control and to try and figure out how this happened because if we were right and Barrons is the father of my child, whatever the Nine did that prevented them from getting women pregnant had clearly stopped working for him. That was another conversation Barrons and I needed to have that I wasn't looking forward to.

Everyone else in the room was standing and as I began to move towards one of the empty chairs in front of the desk, Ryodan held up his hand and said, "No illusions on the private levels." He refrained from saying I was lucky he didn't confiscate the Amulet for the duration of my stay, but I know the thought crossed his mind.

Deciding not to antagonize him (for the moment, at least) because he had come back earlier than he was planning and was even allowing Korrie to stay, I didn't argue or make a fuss or even roll my eyes. Instead, I dropped the illusion as requested, and even went so far as to remove the Amulet from around my neck, putting it in my jacket pocket without a word. He nodded in acknowledgment of my decision not to irritate him in front of his men as I lowered myself into a chair, placing both of my hands protectively on my stomach when I felt all of them eyeing my belly.

These men were also beasts. I'd hope most men would view a pregnant woman as someone to protect. I assumed their beasts saw us as claimed by someone else, or extra meaty.

"Are you alright, Mac."

"I'm pissed as hell." I stopped before the temperature dropped more than a few degrees, closing my eyes briefly before opening them and continuing. "But unharmed." There was amusement in his cool, silver eyes.

"What did Barrons tell you."

"He said Kasteo was picking up my parents, Lor would bring Korrie and I here, that I should stay here and wait for him to come back, that he'd managed to get a message to you and you'd be meeting us here, and that he and Fade would see what they could track down while the rest of you stayed here for protection." Ryodan assessed me for a moment before he nodded to his men and they silently left.

When we were alone, he said a little gently, "Are you certain you're alright?"

A part of me registered that he'd added the proper inflection at the end of his question. He almost never does. It makes all of his questions sound like demands.

I smirked and said, "I'm not thrilled with the idea of getting myself completely worked up to the point that I go into premature labor and give birth in your club if that's what your asking."

"It is."

"I'll be alright. No offense, but I'd strongly prefer my baby not be born into the debauchery of your club. Again, no offense intended. It's otherwise a very nice club."

I was a little thrown off when he laughed. He sat down and assessed me again. There was a time I would have started bluffing because it unnerved me and he told me so.

I smiled and said, "I never would have admitted it but, yes. However, my eggs are no longer all in one basket. Gone are the days I only have Barrons standing between us; I've also got a Druid vow. And I know that nothing is more important to you than family. Except Dani, which is fine. My girl deserves the best and since Barrons is taken, I'd say you're the best consolation prize possible." I smiled when he laughed again. "We are now legally family, though I'd say we were family long before that. And if all of that wasn't enough, I'm the mother of your future niece or nephew."

"Very good," he said with a nod as he put his feet up on the desk and his hands behind his head. I'm not ashamed to say I preened a little under Ryodan's praise. It's not an easy thing to get. "Did Barrons say when he'd be back."

I shrugged. "Just said later. But he also told me to tell you to sift to him if he dies. Don't worry, he also told me not to get accustomed to it and that it was only because I'm this pregnant and could pop at any moment."

"Why couldn't you go get him."

"I don't know where it is the two of you resurrect, nor do I ever want to know."

I interpreted the look he gave me as an "atta girl." I'd once told him I was done asking questions about Barrons and the Nine, back when the Book was on the loose, because I had finally learned to trust Barrons by judging him by his actions, which is something Ryodan had once advised I do. Later I'd told Barrons I never wanted to know that information. The Book had been able to lift things from my mind.

"Mac, I'm going to offer you something I don't often offer you, though I offer it more than you think." I sat up a little straighter and waited curiously. "Trust."

My eyes widened. Ryodan never trusts me, at least not when I'm in his club. I have a penchant for snooping and this is my favorite place to do it. "I'm trusting you to only use that Amulet as you've been using it daily and not to snoop around my club. If I find you've been snooping, I will confiscate it, I don't care how pregnant you are or what Barrons says."

As if I had the energy or the stealthing abilities I usually had that were required to snoop, but he didn't need to know that. "Understood," I said with a nod.