Lost Paradise (36 page)

“Why is this happening?” Theo shouted, his
eyes yellow.

Devlin dashed for the bathroom. Water began
running.

“Last time, the dhamphir had trouble
controlling its temperature as it developed,” Stephen said. “It was
too hot first, and then too cold. This time, I’m guessing the
werecougar fetus has been keeping the dhamphir’s temperature
steady. But the werecougar is too big now. It’s making the dhamphir
overload on heat. Sar’s body is overheating because of—”

The water abruptly stopped. “You know what we
need to do, Danial,” Devlin said quickly. “Come with me. Titus,
take us to the guard barracks here.”

I passed out then and don’t remember much of
what happened next. I heard later that Theo put me in a bathtub
full of cold water, and packed ice around me with Cia and Terian’s
help. Though that stopped my temperature from rising, it didn’t
make it go back down. Within a half hour, the ice had melted from
my body heat and I was delirious.

When I came to, I was in fresh clothes in
Danial’s bed lying next to a body as cold as a block of ice. I was
cool though, wonderfully cool. It flowed into me, easing away the
heat, letting me fall back into a deep sleep.

Sometime later, I woke back up, feeling much
more like myself. Danial was beside me, awake and freezing cold to
the touch. When he reached for me, it took him a long time to move
his arm. I eased my body closer to him, then hugged him. “Thank
you.”

Danial hugged me back. An hour later, he’d
unthawed to the point he could talk and move normally. “Are you
feeling better?” he asked slowly, his voice raspy. “Are you still
hot?”

“Yes. But I’m not anywhere as bad as I was. I
felt like I was cooking.”

“You were,” he said, afraid. “Devlin and I
froze ourselves. Our bodies don’t absorb heat easily, and we lose
it rapidly. He thought this would work, and it did. He is there
now, doing it again for you. Titus should be bringing him back
within moments.”

Just as Danial finished, Titus appeared with
Devlin in his arms, and quickly laid him down next to me on the
other side. Then he disappeared, before the heat from his demon
body undid what we were trying to do.

I eased myself closer to Devlin. His eyes
were shut. There was ice in his golden hair, and on his eyelashes.
His skin was covered in a layer of frost, his arms folded over his
chest, with more heavy frost coating his clothes.

“He can’t move,” Danial said softly. “He
won’t be able to talk to you, Sar, not for an hour at least. But he
can hear everything we say.” He got out of bed. “I’ll go tell Theo
that you’re okay. Stay here with him, and call out if you start to
get cold. Stephen is outside, waiting to make sure you are fine
before he leaves. He said once you got cool that you should be
fine, but I’m not taking any chances.”

I clasped his hand, then kissed it. “I’ll be
okay now, I think. I’ll call out, if I’m not.”

Danial kissed me softly once on the cheek,
then left. I moved back close to Devlin, letting his coldness
soothe me.

“Can you hear me Dev?” I said softly. “I hope
you can.”

Devlin didn’t move.

“Serena told me that you had been with her.
But I understand why you said you hadn’t been. To you, what you did
was necessary, to make sure she would do what you hired her to do.
It wasn’t sex for pleasure. I’m telling you this because I want you
to know I know, and I understand it. But you still should have told
me you had been with her before. I would have understood, if you
had told me why it had happened.”

Devlin didn’t move, or give any sign that he
had heard.

“I’m sorry that you aren’t getting the boy
you wanted. But I’m glad to be having a girl. I’m not going to have
any more children, Dev. No matter what you say. Not after this, all
of the last months, everything with Lash, and The Lust. It’s been
too much. But I thank you for having this child with me. I wanted a
girl very much. She’ll be beautiful for certain, with your genes.
And I hope she has your eyes, Dev. They are so much more beautiful
than mine.”

Again, Dev gave no sign he had heard.

“It’s funny,” I said, snuggling close to him.
“I feel more loving toward you like this than when you are awake. I
know like this, you aren’t going to be angry with me, or say
something cutting when I don’t do as you say.”

I felt bad immediately, hearing my words
aloud, even if they were true. I reached up and touched his face
gently. Even like this, covered with frost and motionless, he was
utterly beautiful.

“I’m sorry, if I ever made you feel like I
didn’t care about you. I do care, very much.” I paused. “I do love
you, and I never stopped. But it’s better if we aren’t together,
because when we are, we hurt each other. I have missed you, these
months we have been apart. I appreciated the flowers you sent me,
and the lessons you have been giving Elle. I used to listen to you
playing and think about—”

I stopped abruptly. Here I was getting
charmed just thinking about him. He hadn’t changed. In an hour, he
was going to be his same old demanding self. “Thank you for doing
this, for being here for me when I needed you,” I said softly. “It
means a lot to me.” I laid my head on his shoulder, and slept.

When I awoke hours later, I was alone, and
Devlin was gone.

* * * *

I didn’t talk to Danial in the days that
followed about what had happened. I could see he was waiting for me
to ask about Dev, but I didn’t, knowing Danial would press me to
let him visit. The heat didn’t return, for which I was
grateful.

In those last days of my pregnancy in the dog
days of August, I was absolutely miserable. I felt swollen, too
uncomfortable to move. Adding to that were Theo and Danial, who
were afraid to leave me alone anymore. They took turns lying in bed
or watching TV with me. Danial read to me as well, mostly poetry
from his older books, the ones I’d put by his bedside years ago
when I’d first moved in. Most of them were the older poets, like
Byron, Frost, and Tennyson. And the inevitable happened.

Danial and I were lying in bed one morning,
him reading to me from a collection of poems, when I heard the
following familiar lines:

“We have lived and loved together, through
many changing years.

We have shared each other’s gladness, and
wept each other’s tears,

I have never known a sorrow that was long
unsoothed by thee,

For thy smiles can make a summer where
darkness else would be—”

“Jefferies, right?” I interrupted, glancing
at him.

Danial stopped and looked over at me. “You
know this?” he said innocently.

It was a plot; a brotherly plot, no less.
“Danial, if you want him here, say so.”

“Only if you want him here, Sar,” Danial said
neutrally. “I told you I would not make you see him unless you
wanted to.” He looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

“Tell him he can come if he wants to,” I
said, letting out a sigh. “He has a right to be here. Any day now,
it’s going to happen. He should be here when it does.”

Danial beamed, then got up immediately and
left. I turned onto my side, away from the door, groaning as I
shifted my weight.

Minutes later, the door opened. I breathed in
Devlin’s scent, that scent that was better than all other scents
almost, the scent of myrtlewood trees. He lay down next to me,
behind me, but didn’t speak. While I was debating how to open a
conversation with him, I drifted back to sleep.

I awoke with a gasp, feeling sharp pains
across my stomach. This was it. “Dev!” I gasped, another
contraction hitting me. “Dev, wake up!”

Devlin woke up immediately, his sleepy
expression changing to excitement and panic. “Is it time?”

Another contraction hit me, making me groan.
Why were they so close together already?
“Yes! Get me to the
doctor.”

Devlin picked me up carefully. “Your water
has broken. Lie still.” He got me to the door, shouting, “Danial!
Theo! It’s time! Get down here!”

Suddenly, everyone was there. Terian and
Titus got Devlin and I to Dr. Camlyn’s office in record time. As
they carried me inside, I saw Lash was there, too, talking to
Devlin. He was dressed in black armor. As I was carried into the
delivery room, my last view was of Lash shutting the doors behind
us, a wicked looking automatic rifle with a scope in his arms as
strode away.

“Get me some drugs,” I hissed.

“Stephen’s coming,” Devlin assured me. “Lash
and Titus are outside on guard. Just relax.”

“I’ll relax when I get some drugs,” I replied
grumpily.

By the time Stephen arrived a half hour
later, I was screaming, crying, and swearing, the sweat pouring off
me. Then Stephen administered the anesthesia, coupled with a
magical sleeping spell, and I dropped right into a blissful
sleep.

* * * *

When I woke up, it was over.

Theo was holding a tiny cougar cub in his
arms, feeding him from a bottle. The cub was squeaking a little,
and lashing his tail, his eyes closed. Theo looked every inch the
proud father.

Devlin was also cooing over his child, Danial
right next to him. I wanted to ask if the baby girl had his eyes or
mine, but then I remembered it was probably too soon to tell.

Stephen came over. “How do you feel?”

“Tired but good,” I said, managing a smile.
“Did it all go okay?”

“Yes,” Stephen whispered, nodding.
“Everything went fine. And I tied your tubes, also. You won’t get
pregnant again.”

I breathed a sigh of relief, then fell back
asleep.

* * * *

When I awoke again, I was back at Danial’s
house, lying in his bedroom. Theo was beside me, our child sleeping
in his arms.

“What do you want to call him, Sar?” Theo
said softly. “Your time for picking a name is up.”

“Devon,” I said hesitantly. “Would you mind
if we called him Devon?”

Theo looked at me, curiously.

“It was my father’s middle name,” I said with
emotion. “He didn’t like his first name, so he went by his middle
name.”

“Of course,” Theo said, relaxing. “Devon is a
great name. We’ll call him Dev, for short.”

“No,” I said firmly. “We’ll call him
Devon.”

* * * *

In a few days, when I felt well enough,
Terian took me to Hayden. “Titus said he would bring you back,”
Terian said with a smile. “I’ve got to go and meet Theo.”

I nodded, though inside I was grumpy. I
needed people to transport me now. As predicted, I had lost the
power to teleport when the vampire virus within me had spiked.
Worse, the virus would increase, according to Stephen, so my power
wasn’t going to return anytime soon. It sucked, big time. I’d
almost forgotten how to drive, and now it took hours to get
anywhere. But I held onto the hope that soon I’d have it back when
the virus eventually declined.

Serena was there to meet me. “She’s
beautiful, Sar,” she said, hugging me. “She looks like you.”

Hesitantly, I walked upstairs to the nursery,
but found it empty. So I went to Dev’s room next.

He’d put the baby’s crib in his bedroom. I
thought about remarking something about that cramping his style,
but thought it too rude, even for me. Especially as he was there
feeding her, looking as enthralled and loving as I’d ever seen
him.

“What are we going to call her?” I said
finally.

“Come in, please, Love,” he said softly.
“Come see our child.”

I went over hesitantly, and looked down at
the little girl with her wisps of light golden hair. Her eyes were
closed. “She’s lovely, Dev.”

“I’m…um, we’re going to call her Venus,”
Devlin said happily. “If that’s okay with you.”

He had to be kidding, right?
“You are
not naming our child after a Bananarama song,” I said, putting my
hands on my hips. “Pick something else.”

Devlin rolled his eyes. “I would call her
Aphrodite,” he said, “But everyone uses nicknames around here. I
don’t want her going by Fro, or Aphro.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, that would be bad.”

Devlin gave me a tentative smile. “It’s after
the Greek Goddess of Love, not the song. Though I imagine she’ll
like the song, when she hears it.”

“Why not Athena, then?” I asked. “She’s bound
to be feisty—”

“Because I’ve had enough of war,” he said,
his molten gold eyes staring meaningfully into mine.

I held his eyes for a second, and then looked
back down at our baby. “We’ll call her Venus, then. She’s certainly
beautiful enough.”

“She is,” Devlin whispered, stroking Venus’s
tiny face. “She is going to look like you, Sar. She has your hair.”
He put her down on her back in the crib.

“It’s not my hair,” I said, trying to smile.
“It’s yours, Dev. Mine is highlighted to be this color. Yours is
naturally lighter.”

“Sar, I’ve seen pictures of you when you were
little,” Devlin said happily. “Your hair was this light then. It
got darker as you aged—”

“Who showed you pictures of me when I was
little?” I said in alarm. “When?”

“That night I stayed to watch you for Theo,
more than a year ago now. When you went to bed, I was bored, so I
looked through your bookshelves. Although one shelf was
interesting—”

I blushed, knowing what shelf he meant.
My
softcore romantic porn shelf.

“—
I didn’t see anything worth reading.
But your photo albums were there, and your baby book. I looked
through them, to find out more about you.”

I was horribly embarrassed. He’d seen my most
embarrassing photo, that picture where I’d put my pants on my head
when I was six and was pretending I had long hair. I’d been raised
like a boy in my youth, and my hair had always been cut in a
pageboy style. So I’d used pants. I flushed deep red and redder,
thinking of the many embarrassing pictures he had to have seen. I’d
thought no one would find them there on the bottom shelf. Worse,
Devlin seemed to remember every single one.