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“No more parting ways in the morning to spend long hours in the lab or gardening or training soldiers. Spend the next two months with me. The four of us. In bed or running the tunnels. Eating, talking, laughing, touching, I don’t care what we do, I just want to do it together.”

Their somber, thoughtful gazes caressed my face, and my fingers trembled, aching to strangle my fate. Each beat of my heart felt like a leap toward the final one, when I would no longer stare into their eyes or feel their breaths on my neck.

Fingers entwined, Michio carried my hand to his lips. “You didn’t need to ask.”

For the next two months, they gave me the most valuable gift of all. We spent every second together, and time flowed in a river of smiling, bickering, fucking, kissing inseparable intimacy. Not a moment was wasted.

It was the best two months of my life. And probably theirs as well. Jesse and Roark strengthened in speed, and when their fangs came in, so did their cravings. Sips of my blood quenched them, but they also drew from each other. Their blood would sustain them, and maybe the vials I’d been saving could be used to create a vaccine or cure. I hoped.

At the end of August, Shea gave birth to her baby. When he inhaled his first breath, the air didn’t kill him. Either the nymph virus was gone or recovered nymphs were able to pass along their immunity. He had ten fingers and toes and perfect, healthy human organs. With his thick black hair and huge eyes, he looked just like Paul. She named him Eddie.

My guardians didn’t hold him, their demeanors guarded, hesitant, and their eyes full of dread, as if his arrival was a harbinger of the darkness that was to come. That night, they fucked me gently yet with so much trembling desperation it scared me. They were scared. It was like they knew.

The next morning, I woke with an overwhelming urge to watch the sunrise, so on our way to breakfast, we stopped in the garden at the bottom of the dam.

Crowds still gathered in the thousands around the canyon, a revolving congregation of people coming and going, searching for a glimpse of me and my massive belly when I made my daily trips to the surface. The sheet-metal walls around the garden provided privacy from all the eyes peering through the barricades around the dam, but the open rafters allowed sunlight to nourish the vibrancy of greenery within.

The gardener, Ronnie, worked on the pipe system in the far corner. Darwin darted over to him with enthusiastic sniffs and licks, while the four of us walked through the rows of plants. Rich, shimmering hues of green exploded beneath the golden breath of dawn. Beyond the garden’s metal supports, the sun peered over a red-rock bluff, casting the sky in a fiery glow and warming my skin. It felt like the beginning of life.

As the shimmering rays chased away the shadows, my guardians stood strong and glorious under the strengthening twilight. Mother Nature’s most beautiful creations. Just looking at them made me lightheaded. The deep jade pools of Roark’s eyes. The reddish hues of Jesse’s strong, whiskered jaw. The symmetrical angles of Michio’s sculpted face. But none of that was as beautiful as the souls beneath their perfect forms. How lucky I was to have loved them.

We reached the center of the garden when a fist of pain clamped my stomach. I shouted out, stumbling forward, shocked by the violence of it. My cervix had been dilating normally, and I wasn’t due for another week. Fuck, why did this hurt so badly? My previous births had been gradual, small cramping, before building into active labor. This…this was too sudden. Too violent. Something was wrong.

Jesse and Roark grabbed my arms, their eyes wide with terror.

Michio put his worried face in mine. “Breathe, Evie. Slow and deep.”

But the next contraction was already bearing down on me, cutting my breath and robbing the strength from my body. The pressure between my legs hurt worse than anything I remembered, and the need to push overpowered all thought.

I couldn’t resist it, could feel her stretching, breaching, trying to wrench her way out of me. “I need to push!”

The contractions hit me one right after another, each stronger, longer, and closer together than the last. My legs cramped, and nausea gripped my body. I needed to sit. Fuck, I needed to push. But Jesse and Roark held me up, attempting to shuffle out of the garden and into the dam.

“Wait.” Michio grabbed my shorts and yanked them down, crouching as he touched between my legs. He looked up, his shock clear in his wide eyes. “Send for the obstetricians.”

“We need to take her to them.” The fear straining Jesse’s voice punched a different kind of pain through my insides. “She needs to be in the room with all the equipment.”