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When I come, burying myself inside of her with a pained grunt, it feels just like death should be. Earned. Warm. Final. But Verity and I aren’t death. We’re something much more complicated and difficult to earn.

She and I are creators.

I touch the roundness of her belly, the reality of it banging around my ribcage like some wild, unfettered thing.

This is my son.

I brush my lips against hers.

This is my Princess.

I gasp for air, tasting the tang of blood and the edge of old, rusty death.

This is my legacy.

9

Verity

My first nightback in East End, I fall asleep so quickly that it’s hours before I realize Wicker and I aren’t alone in the enormous Princess bed. A part of me was afraid to even expect Pace and Lex. Before I left, neither of them would sleep in here, both practicing their own forms of obsessive vigilance.

But that was before Pace took me to bed in the Royal Ink loft, sliding so carefully inside of me that he never moved an inch once he was seated. On the other side of the door, Lex was saving Nick Bruin’s life, but for Pace and I, the world was whittled down to the curl of his body against mine as I finally fell asleep.

It was also before Lagan emerged from slumber, rough and desperate. Possessive. But not cruel. Not like Lex was so afraid he’d be. To Lex, I’m a duty, but Lagan sees me as his woman. I think both of us understand this now.

So I’m more surprised than I should be to hear their quiet, gravelly voices through the fog of sleep.

“Wicker,” Lex whispers. “Shut up.”

Since Wicker is wound around me like a vine, his voice is louder, my ear pressed to his sternum. “I didn’t say anything.” He sounds confused.

“I can hear you thinking.” Lex sighs. “It’s like nails on a chalkboard.”

Against my other side, Pace mutters, “Seriously. You’d think someone who just got spectacularly laid wouldgo to sleep.”

“Don’t blame me,” Wicker hisses. “Lex is the one who instituted the ‘only one fuck per day’ rule, and both of you got some long before I did. Fair’s fair.”

My lips twitch, but I don’t give away that I’m slowly rousing.

“We have to go easy on her cervix.” Lex’s voice is imbued with a familiar exasperation. Truthfully, this whole ‘one fuck per day’ rule is news to me. Maybe that was part of the discussion they had when Wicker and I returned from the cemetery, bloody and lust-drunk. Lex had dragged his brothers off for what I expected to be a dressing down for the two of us going off territory without backup other than Ballsy.

There’s a flutter against my stomach and then the warmth of rough fingertips. “I was just wondering…” Wicker’s voice is stilted, hushed. “Do you think he’ll look like me?”

Lex answers this a little too quickly. “Statistically, without knowing her exact genotypes, there’s a seventy-five percent chance he’ll be blonde.”

Wicker’s touch on my belly lingers. “No shit?”

There’s a slight jostle behind me, and then Pace’s voice. “Green eyes, you think?”

Lex hums. “Eye color is more complex than a simple Mendelian trait, but for the sake of simplification, yes. Green eyes are inherently dominant over blue.”

“Fitting,” Pace says, snorting, and then I’m shaken as Wicker lobs a punch over my shoulder to his brother’s forehead.

“Don’t,” Wicker hisses, “wake her up. She went through a lot today.”

“The Princess goes through a lotevery day,” Lex replies quietly, “but what’s different is you asking about genetics and hereditary traits. Since when do you care about all that stuff?”

There’s a long beat where I’m sure he’s not going to answer, but then he does. “What happened in the mausoleum. It was… intense.”