Damn it, Blay thought finally. He couldn’t keep avoiding the kids. Bracing himself, he made a pile of napkins and forks and knives and other stuff and walked over.

He tried not to look. Failed.

And the instant his eyes drifted over the young, he was stripped of his self-protection: All those lectures about how he needed to remain a disinterested third party to them so he didn’t get hurt ever again went out the window.

As if sensing his presence, the pair woke up, looked at him, and instantly did that pinwheeling thing with their arms and legs, their cherubic little faces becoming animated, soft clicking noises coming out of their mouths. They clearly recognized him.

Maybe even had missed him.

Slowly lowering whatever the hell he was carrying—it could have stuff to eat with and on, or maybe a toaster oven, a snow shovel, or a television—he leaned down.

He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. His throat had closed up.

So he was going to have to rely on touch to communicate. Which was fine. They couldn’t talk, either.

He went to Lyric first, stroking her cheek, tickling her soft neck. And he could have sworn she giggled.

“How’s my girl?” he whispered in a broken rush.

But then he realized the pronoun he’d used—and squeezed his eyes shut. Not my children, he corrected himself. These are not my kids.

Yeah, sure, Qhuinn was back on the family train. Except how long was it going to last? When was he going to get triggered by the Layla thing again and go off the rails? The smart thing to do was take the hit once, heal the wound up tight so the pain never had to happen again—and never look back.

On that note, he focused on Rhamp. Such a chunk, such a little tough guy. Blay strongly believed that the traditional sex-role thing was bullshit, and that if Lyric wanted to be an ass-kicker like Payne or Xhex, he was on board with that. And likewise, if Rhamp decided to be a doctor or lawyer and stay off the field, that was fine, too. But man, they were so obviously different—although it was critical that that not define them. He believed it was vitally important that kids be free to—

Shit. He was doing it again. Forgetting where the boundaries were. The sound of forks and knives knocking into each other brought his head up. Qhuinn had taken over the plate-setting thing, making nice with the napkins and the silverware, his head bowed, his face somber.

Blay cleared his throat. “I can do that.”

“It’s okay. I got it.”

At that moment, Rhamp let out a stink bomb that was enough to make a grown male’s eyes water.

“Oh … wow.”

“Yeah,” Qhuinn said. “You should have smelled him right before I came over here. It’s why I was late. Would you do me a favor and check him? Maybe we’ve lucked out and it’s just gas.”

Blay locked his molars. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell the guy to do it himself, but that seemed churlish. Besides, in his heart, he wanted to hold the young, and his parents were over there, watching while trying not to watch.

As everything seemed to freeze in place, he abruptly felt as though his whole life and his concept of family boiled down to this moment—and it was weird how life came at you like that. You went along, building ties or breaking them, moving forward or backward in relationships, riding out the sea of your emotions and the emotions of others—but for the most part, it was a trees-for-the-forest kind of thing, a piecemeal one-step/two-step dance of choices and decisions more trail than marker, more random direction than compass.

Except then, suddenly, the camera aperture opened so fast you got existential whiplash, and you were forced to look at everything and go, okay, wow, so I’m here.

All over a kid that had taken a crap in his pants and who was going to deal with it.

Qhuinn came around and set a place right in front of Blay. In a voice that didn’t carry, the male said, “I miss you. They miss you.”

“I’m an uncle,” Blay heard himself say. “Okay? Just an uncle.”

With hands that shook, he released the straps and scooped up Rhamp. Holding that baby butt high, he put his nose right in there and breathed in deep.

“We’re clear, Houston,” he said roughly. “Repeat, that was a gaseous cloud. There has been no breach of the force field.”

Transferring Qhuinn’s son into the crook of his arm, Blay took a seat and played the fingertips-in-front-of-the-eyeballs game.

“Who’s hungry?” his mother said cheerfully. Like she’d decided all would be well just because he was holding a kid.

“Look at those reflexes,” his dad remarked as Rhamp’s hands moved from side to side and grabbed with astonishing accuracy. “Qhuinn, that is your kid, isn’t he.”

“Yes,” Blay chimed in. “He really is.”

Layla lost count of how many times they made love. Twice on the sofa. Then in the shower. Three more times in the bed?

As she lay side by side with her male, stroking his heavy shoulder, feeling him breathe into her neck, she smiled in the darkness. Insatiability was an asset when it came to having a lover in your life.

And Xcor was a very, very hungry male.

The insides of her thighs ached. Her core had a hum in it from all the friction. And his scent was all over her, inside and out.

She wouldn’t have changed a thing.

Well, maybe one thing—“What ails you?” he asked as his head popped up. “I’m sorry?”

“What is wrong?”

She shouldn’t have been surprised that he could read her mood even half asleep and in total blackness. He was amazingly in tune with her, and not just sexually.

“Layla,” he prompted. “I just don’t want you to go,” she whispered. “I can’t bear the idea of not …”

As she let her voice drift, his head lowered back into position and he kissed the side of her throat. When he didn’t say anything, she wasn’t surprised. What words were there? She had her young, and as much as she loved Xcor, she was not going to take them to the Old Country. They needed their father.

And Qhuinn would never allow that, either. “Do not think of it, my female.”

He was so right. She had the rest of her life to miss him. Why start now when he was still with her?

“I know so little about you,” she murmured. “How you grew up. Where you have traveled. How you came to be here.”

“There is naught to tell.”

“Or is it that you don’t want me to know.”

His silence answered that question. But it wasn’t as if she couldn’t extrapolate from what she had read of him up in the Sanctuary. Indeed, her sadness at the cruelty shown to him was an ache that went right through to her soul—especially as she thought of Rhamp. The idea that a parent could decide to turn away an innocent young simply because they had a defect not of their own doing?

It didn’t bear thinking about, and yet she couldn’t stop. “We don’t have much time left,” she said softly—even though she had just promised herself not to dwell on the parting. “As soon as you find your males, you will bring them unto Wrath and they will swear their oaths … and then you will go. I need to live a lifetime in these nights we have.”

“You will go on.”

“And so will you,” she countered. “Just not together. So please let me in. While we have this time … spare nothing of both the goodness and the evil so that I know the whole of you.”

“If you don’t want to waste time, let us not talk.”

Except as he tried to kiss her, she held him back. “I am not afraid of your past.”

His voice dropped. “You should be.”

“You have never been hurtful to me.”

“That is not true and you know it.”

As she remembered how he had sent her away, he sat up, turned the light on, and swung his feet out from between the sheets. He didn’t leave, though.

She wanted to touch him, smooth her hand down his spine, ease him as he put his head in his hands. She knew better, however.

“I can feel your regrets,” she whispered.

Xcor was quiet for a long time, and then he said, “One can be influenced in directions that …” Abruptly, he shook his head. “No, I did what I did. No one forced me into any of it. I followed an evil male and behaved in evil ways, and I hold myself the now accountable for it all.”