d snuggled in quick, all chubby and warm and perfect, finding her favorite place in his neck. Closing his eyes, he breathed in deep and smelled Desitin, fresh Huggies, and Aveeno baby wash—and when her little sock-covered foot dug into his belly, he mostly kept his wince to himself.

“No, I’ve got her,” he said to Blay. “I’m okay. And gimme another kiss.”

After a brief contact and a shared smile with his mate, Qhuinn reached up and touched his son’s soft and round face. Immediately, Rhamp grabbed on to the forefinger and yanked back and forth, as if he were making Qhuinn wave to himself.

“We were so worried,” Layla murmured.

“I don’t ever want to scare you guys.” Qhuinn smiled as Rhamp started talking, all the babbling like the kid was giving him a lecture to stay safe in the field. “Really? Tell me more.”

“He’s on a roll,” Blay remarked with a smile.

“When this big guy starts stringing actual words together, we’re going to have quite a ride.”

And he couldn’t wait. He wanted to know what his son had to say. His daughter, too.

“Where’s the last quarter of our fantastic foursome?” Qhuinn asked.

“Xcor’s still out in the field.” Layla sat on the foot of the bed and settled Rhamp on her lap. “He wanted to be here, but I told him you’d rather he stay on shift.”

“Damn right I would. We need everyone out there right now, and I can see him when the sun’s up.”

“That’s exactly how I thought you’d feel.”

“You know me too well.”

There was a momentary quiet, and then Blay and Layla started talking about the upcoming human holidays, and some kind of Party Planning Committee run by—God forbid—Lassiter. As they clearly made an effort to get back to normal, Qhuinn was glad things moved away from the drama. He’d had to work hard to keep his mind from going into the I’m-going-to-die swamp, and he’d just as soon start putting distance in whatever form it came in between him and the stabbing.

On that note, he shifted Lyric around so she lay cradled in the crook of his arm. Then he smoothed her Boston Red Sox onesie and gently poked her tummy. As she giggled, her newly acquired baby teeth showed, two on the top, two on the bottom.

“I’ma do it again,” he murmured to her. “Watch me. Here it comes… gotcha.”

The onesie was, naturally, a gift from Uncle V and Uncle Butch, who had made it a personal crusade to outfit every kid in the mansion with bureaus full of Red Sox merch: Bitty. The twins. Nalla. Even George, Wrath’s dog, was decked out with a collar and a cold-weather sweater with the red B on it.

You might have been tempted to tell the guys they’d have even better luck brainwashing the next generation into hating the Yankees if they put flashing neon signs in the front foyer with pictures of Big Papi and bowls of candy in front of ’em. But then you’d run the risk they might actually do it.

“Who’s my smart girl?” he said as he booped Lyric again. “Who’s daddy’s smart girl?”

As she smiled even wider, her eyes, her big green eyes, shone up at him.

Staring into them, he went back into the past. To that moment when he had died and gone unto the Fade.

To that moment when he had seen her face in that shadowy door.

Maybe it was the fact that he had collapsed out on the street in the snow only an hour or two ago… maybe it was because life felt extra special when you woke up out of surgery… maybe it was a brain fart caused by the lingering anesthesia… but for whatever reason, he returned to that night the Honor Guard had been sent after him.

His parents had finally kicked him out of the house. No news flash there. The see-ya-later had been long in coming, and given that Luchas had survived his transition, the social stakes had been even higher. Who the hell was going to mate the guy, considering what his brother was? What well-bred female was going to volunteer to throw her DNA into a gene pool that had already coughed up a corker with mismatched irises?

So Qhuinn had been removed from the family tree, given the boot from the family house, and left to walk off into the night with nowhere to go.

Except his best friend’s house, of course.

He hadn’t made it to Blay’s, though. Four males in hooded black robes had intersected his path, and he could still picture them clear as day, their faces hidden, their role clear: an Honor Guard sent to punish him and avenge his family’s name. And the purpose of the concealment of identity had not been because the males were behaving unlawfully and didn’t want anyone to know who they were. On the contrary, they had been sanctioned in their brutality, and the purpose of the masking was that they represented all of the glymera. They were the generalized shaming and shunning of the entire aristocracy, not a mere quartet of it, but a hundred of the species, not just Qhuinn’s own bloodline, but all of them.

As the attack had commenced, he had put up a fight, as was his nature. But the numbers game had not been in his favor, and once he went down to the asphalt, the beating had really taken off with those clubs.

And then a voice, in the midst of the raining blows.

We aren’t supposed to kill him!