Page 89 of Death Dance

He continued to stare at me. “Why are you acting like I’m going to be at all upset over this?”

“Well, we skipped the family planning portion of this venture. Adding children to the mix is more than what I should be doing entirely on my own.”

“I’m pretty sure I was a willing and eager participant in all activities required to create this situation,” he replied, and he chuckled. “I was hoping to ask you if we could start the process to try at the end of our honeymoon. Will your checkups cause any problems with that?”

“It won’t. My father did not like having to install extra equipment on the ship to make certain I can get all the care I need at his whim, and we had to bring an extra doctor for the venture, but it’s early enough I can romp around the world without issue.”

“And what would you like to name our boy?”

I grinned. “Our girls, and there are two of them.”

He blinked. “Pardon?”

“There are two, and they are girls. My father thinks that, during our trip to the Amazon, I got a heavy dose of magic, as did you, resulting in the development of two girls. There’s no other explanation, especially as you have been sperm tested, with several sperm sorting tests to determine your percentage of female sperm. You have approximately two female sperm per million, and they aren’t typically strong swimmers. The current theory is that the magic made the female sperm stronger swimmers and capable of busting through the egg casing on their own, essentially guaranteeing a girl. If we had you sperm tested, it would have let the cat out of the bag. My father didn’t want you to find out about the pregnancy until we were able to determine if there was anything wrong. The fetuses are now old enough for heartbeats and the preliminary development of organs, and so far, everyone is doing fine.”

“Your father has good reason to worry, and he’s right to be cautious. However, I would have liked to provide support!”

I smiled at his complaint. “You can be supportive moving forward. If we had known the experiment came with a chance of pregnancy, we would have involved you. However, I’m concerned you would have involved yourself through daily seductions until you got the result you wanted.”

He took his time thinking about that. “You’re not wrong.”

“My most of family, excepting my mother, is aware of the twins, as is Ben, whom I brought into our scheming to keep you busy when I needed to deal with ultrasounds. Yesterday was my last day of any work whatsoever according to Ben. In reality, Breanna will be handing off only the important things to me, which I’ll help her with. I’ll get overly bored if I’m not doing something. You’ll be expected to pull most of your weight until I’m at seven months, after which you’re expected to be my slave.”

“I can be your slave starting now. I do not mind this assignment. But accidents don’t happen with vampires, Pepper!”

I laughed at his tone, which indicated I’d blindsided him and he had urges to start handling every potential issue immediately. “Your current assignment is to keep me company, enjoy our ceremony, praise Edgar when his excitement surely gets the better of him because he gets to carry the rings tonight, and otherwise prepare to spend all day proving your prowess and serving my every need. My father wants me getting six hours of sleep a night to start with until the pregnancy hormones insist I need more sleep. He is of the opinion I should sleep in puddles of sunlight, so he forced me to test every single chair he had suitable for being put on the deck until I found the one I like the best for napping. He’s opened the stairwell to the top of the stack, and I’ll be expected to go up to take my naps throughout the cruise unless it’s raining. If it’s raining, I get to sleep wherever I want.”

“Let me guess. You’ve been stealing naps on the roof.”

I grinned and bobbed my head. “I know better than to argue with my father at this point. For the death dance portion of the evening, we get to roleplay at being brutally murdered, everyone will immediately blame Ben—rightfully so, mind you—but nobody will actually accuse Ben until shortly before the ceremony because they’re vampires and they respect our desire to demonstrate just how lazy we’re willing to be. My father is notifying everyone of our impending little ones upon boarding through the death dance role cards along with why there’s no alcohol being served aboard. Apparently, if I can’t drink, nobody can drink.”

I’d attempted to argue about that part, but then my father had made an excellent point: if there was no alcohol aboard, there was zero chance of accidents.

As vampires couldn’t handle much in the way of alcohol anyway, it worked well.

“I’m fine with this. And upon finding out why, nobody will care. But girls?”

“Two of them, yes.”

“I was unprepared for a boy,” he informed me in a solemn tone.

I considered my husband and suspected he had many urges to run around and expend energy and excitement, but as he worried, he restrained himself in fear of possibly hurting me or the babies. “At this stage of pregnancy, it is perfectly safe to throw me on the bed and do whatever you want with me. Which is, for the record, part of your present for after the ceremony.”

Emerick took his time looking me over. “I’m disappointed I don’t get to tear you out of that dress.”

“This dress cost a small fortune and will be carefully removed so it can be kept and reworn many times. The wedding dress, however, you can tear to ribbons with my blessing. I have ten of them. Ten. My father is convinced that the first six aren’t long for this world, and if he acquired ten, one might survive to serve as a memento. And no, you may not carefully preserve the one being worn tonight. It is fated to be ripped off me in a display of sexy vampire strength.” I twirled, grinning as the skirts of my dress flared out and the bazillion amethysts sparkled in the light. “You can reward me for my cunning and experimentation after the ceremony.”

“Do you have any other dietary restrictions?”

“There are no restrictions outside what pregnant woman shouldn’t normally eat. The blood requirements are ridiculous, so while this method is working, it might be even more challenging than how the brood normally handles pregnancies. We’re using Japanese Wagyu, and we bought an entire herd of them to make sure I have the blood supply needed. Our herd is entirely female, and the Japanese are teaching us how to enhance the blood with magic. The blood from pregnant cows is standing in for the human blood, and because I’m drinking so much, it’s expensive.” I heaved a sigh. “I’m going through a gallon of blood a day.”

Emerick whistled. “That’s insane. Your father wanted to see if giving you extra blood would help with the predation issue for the children?”

“Yep. And it’s working. It just takes a lot of blood. Right now, I’m drinking an entire liter before bed, once I get up, and then the rest throughout the day. The only thing I like about this is not ever being thirsty.”

Emerick smiled, waited for me to stop playing with my gown, and caught me in his embrace, pulling me close and holding on tight. “Let me guess. The pregnancy hormones are behind much of the crying lately.”

“I mean, anyone sensible would cry over getting the papers for both ships. I have zero shame about crying over that.”