Page 45 of Taken By the Twins

Besides, there are things I must discuss with my mate that I’d prefer no one else overhear…

I know my mate. Shannon has explained to me her reasons behind the two of us staying in Jericho, the mortal village where she has no clan but for the coffee shop she visits and the bookstore that Loki’s female gifted to mine. I am immortal. After the essence exchange, my mate is, too. She will never age. She will never get sick. Never die unless either Duke Haures commands it, or she chooses to end her existence.

She won’t. In all my years, I have never met one who is as full of magic as my mate, or with a thirst and joy for life. But that means she will spend the rest of her days in Sombra. Until she must leave, once it is clear that sheisimmortal, she wants to linger in the human world.

Our child changes everything. The wee female will need her mother, and though Duke Haures’s first law makes it clear that I must forever be Shannon’s secret in the mortal world, how can she hide our child?

She might have been able to conceal that she was expecting, but depending on what features of mine our spawn had, and which belonged to her beautiful mother, she would have to be hidden away to keep from breaking Duke Haures laws—and catching the attention of some of the crueler humans who live in the mortal realm.

There are those in Sombra who will hate my mate and our daughter because of their human blood. Now I see that she looks nothing like a Sombra demon at all—with the exception of the most powerful of us… and before he was the duke, Haures was left to the shadows because of his lack of any. I don’t deny thatdemons can be as cruel as humans, and I only hope that Nuit is free of those bigots.

If not, I have learned much about hunting from Nox. To provide for my mate when we are in Nuit, I barter my art and skills, but Nox reminded me that I have a family to protect. This close to the edge of the shadows, if a demonic creature—one without any essence of their own—attacks, I need to be able to shield Shannon, plus our new daughter.

I will. She may be different from the rest of the worlds, both demon and human, but she is ours, and she is precious.

Shannon’s brow is furrowed. Her heart has slowed its drumming to a more content beat. Our spawn is wrapped in a soft dark yellow blanket that Shannon packed in her bag before we left our home. She said it reminded her of my eyes, and now it matches the only spot of color on our tiny daughter.

“She’s beautiful,” whispers my mate.

I brush a claw over her forehead. “Of course, my flower. She is your spawn.”

Exhaustion has stolen much of my Shannon’s sharp tongue. Her eyes are half-closed, a hum in her throat as she holds our spawn close to her chest. Instead of teasing me, she nods slowly. “She’s yours too, Mal. She’s ours, baby.”

Baby. In Shannon’s human language, the word refers to spawn, but when she uses it for me, it’s as much a term of endearment asfiore miin Sombran is. She is my flower, I am her ‘baby, and our spawn will be?—

“Alana.”

“What’s that?”

Shannon has a list a hundred names long, all of the possible names of our child. She has them separated by male and female, and of them, only a handful are my suggestions. Part of me was still so surprised that this beautiful creature is my mate. That she lies with me, that she sleeps with me, and that we’re building afamily together. If she wanted to be in charge of the naming, that is her right as our spawn’s mother.

But only during an emotional moment on Christmas Eve, when I showed her the decorating I did as part of her gift—painting a mural of Sombra on one wall of our spawn’s future nursery, a mural of New York on another, all so that the child will know they are from both worlds equally no matter where we live—did Shannon admit that she was undecided when it came to our child’s name.

She couldn’t share her pregnancy with her family. For many cycles, she hid it from her friends. Just like how Duke Haures’s first law insists that I am hidden from the mortals in her realm, the same was true of our child. They would be half Sombran no matter what features they received from the both of us, and it was as important to keep the secret of the demon realms from the human world.

I kissed her on the forehead while sitting together next to our indoor, decorated tree, and told her that, when we saw our child, we would know.

And I do.

“Alana,” I repeat. “I think we should call her Alana.”

Shannon will need to understand that our child is unlike anything I expected. I am Sombran. Iamshadows.

And my daughter has none.

She will have horns. She has my golden glowing eyes. But the rest of her… she is as colorless as Duke Haures.

Rumors have run for millennia that the duke was blessed by the gods with powers that allow him to rule, but unlike his people, he has no shadows. Neither does our spawn.

What sort of powers have the gods granted her?

“Alana,” echoes Shannon. “I like it. It’s pretty.”

“It’s the name of the Queen of Demons,” I tell my mate. “Before Duke Haures, we had King Yelios. But before there wasa king ruling Sombra, there was Queen Alana, the most powerful demoness to ever live.”

Shannon lets out a soft whistle. “History, too. And you think it’s fair to name our kid after a legendary queen.”

She has no shadows. I think we must.

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