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not me—not with Liander as the father, anyway. I’d known for a while that my own vampire genes and the drugs forced on me by a mad former lover had made me incapable of bearing children, but there’d always been that slither of hope that at least part of the dream would be achievable. That I would still find a way to have children with the man I loved.
    That hope was gone, buried along with Kye.
    But with Liander and Rhoan’s relationship stabilizing and deepening, they’d both developed a hankering to become dads. Liander’s sister had volunteered to become a surrogate, and I’d had eggs frozen before my body had totally betrayed me—and my eggs were as close as my twin was ever going to get to having children of his own, since he’d gone sterile long before me.
    Of course, Liander had dreams of a big family, with at least a dozen little Jenson-Moores running around. I wasn’t so sure I could handle that many kids, as much as I’d always dreamed of a big family myself. And the sudden reluctance might have something to do with little Risa—who’d been the sweetest thing going—suddenly hitting the terrible twos and becoming a demon child.
    “You’d better hope she has twins, because after seven of her own, she may not want to go through the whole process again for us.”
    Liander snorted. “Trust me, Emalee loves being pregnant. She’s already said she’s up for a second round of surrogacy.”
    She might be saying that now, but she hadn’t yet gone full term and made it through the birth. None of us knew what effect the drugs I had been given might have had on my eggs. Or whether those changes would affect Emalee herself. This could still go horribly wrong, as so many other things in my life had. Which was why the doctors were monitoring Emalee carefully.
    But I kept my doubts and fears to myself, not wanting to dampen Liander’s infectious happiness.
    “Oh, that reminds me,” Liander added, accepting his coffee with a smile. “Emalee has her first ultrasound on Thursday. She wants to know if we’re all coming.”
    “Too bloody right,” Rhoan said, handing Liander a croissant before squeezing past him to grab his coffee. He glanced at me. “I’ve already told Jack we aren’t available that afternoon, no matter what happens or how many crazies appear.”
    I raised my eyebrows. “But you were supposed to be undercover. How were you going to get around that?”
    “Given that’s no longer a problem, it doesn’t really matter, does it?” He gave me a grin, then took another croissant out of the bag. “I’m betting we have a boy—mainly because I don’t think the world could stand two Riley Jensons.”
    I snorted softly. “Better another me than another you .”
    “It can’t be the image of either of you, because thankfully it will have my genes in the mix. Which ultimately means it will at least be sensible,” Liander commented. “And I don’t care if it’s a he or she, as long as it’s healthy.”
    “Amen to that.” I leaned past him to grab a croissant for myself, then spotted Quinn coming through the door.
    “Hey, handsome. About time you got home.”
    He gave me a grin and snagged one of the towels from the clean laundry basket that was perpetually sitting in the living room. A fine sheen of sweat clung to his face and darkened his blue T-shirt, molding it to his lean, muscular body. Hollywood would have everyone believe that vampires had no need for bodily functions, but that was nonsense. They might not eat the same way as the rest of us did, but they still had to drink to survive, and what went in had to come out in one form or another. And while they didn’t sweat that much, it happened.
    Quinn had recently added long-distance running to his fitness regime. He was getting fit for the baby, apparently—which said a whole lot more about his anticipation of the impending birth than my staid old vampire’s often blasé attitude would have us believe.
    Liander shifted to