I blinked at him and said, very calmly, "A lot of the clan tigers were pushing me to date you more seriously because you have most of the bloodlines."

Damian's hand tightened a little around my and Nathaniel's hands as if he were afraid I'd say the wrong thing. I didn't plan on it. Nicky's hand stayed neutral on my leg as if he knew better, or didn't care about Ethan's feelings; it could go either way with him.

Ethan nodded. "I remember; it was a way for you to not choose among the clans but marry most of them. My mixed heritage that had made none of the red clan want to mate with me was suddenly an asset."

"I know the clan that raised you treated you like shit," I said.

"You rescued me," he said with a smile.

"I'm sorry that after I rescued you my dance card was too full for the romance you wanted, but I saw Nilda kissing you good-bye in the parking lot. I didn't know she had that kind of happiness in her. I really thought she was too crazy to date. I'm glad I was wrong and that you found each other," I said.

Ethan smiled that smile you get when you're first in love. "All the ancient werebears are a little crazy, but Nilda just needed love and couples therapy."

"You went to couples therapy when you'd just started dating each other?" Socrates asked, turning in his seat to look at the other man.

"She was on the list for mandatory therapy or she'd be fired from the guard. It scared her to go, so I told her I'd go with her if it would help, and it turned into couples therapy after a while."

Socrates shook his head. "You must have wanted to be with her bad, or you're just a better person than I am. When my wife asked for therapy, I said no."

"She was in the parking lot kissing you good-bye. Did she forgive you?"

"No, she left me. I think I wanted her to leave when I first became a shapeshifter. I thought I was a danger to her and our son, and then the hyena group in L.A. was crazy violent. It wasn't until I came out here that I thought I had a job and a life that wouldn't endanger them."

"You're lucky she waited for you to come to your senses," Kaazim said.

"Very lucky," Jake said from the seat beside him.

"She didn't wait for me. I mean, she was dating. In fact, she was dating one guy seriously when I asked her to try again."

"Then you are doubly lucky," Kaazim said. Jake just nodded.

"I am. You saw her: She's beautiful and could have anyone she wanted. I so don't deserve her after all I put her through."

"I'm glad you felt safe enough to bring her and your son to St. Louis," I said.

Socrates smiled at me. "Me, too."

"When is the baby due?" I asked.

"Soon, and we just found out it's a girl."

Appreciative noises were made. Fortune called from the backseats that she and Echo were sharing, "That's wonderful to feel safe enough to have a family." I remembered what Sin had said, that Fortune had talked to Nathaniel about being his baby momma. There was a spurt of jealousy, which wasn't an emotion I felt much.

The jealousy went straight to anger, which was usually my default for any negative emotion. Damian's hand squeezed, but this time Nicky leaned in closer, running his hand up my thigh. It wasn't sexual, more comforting, but he'd unbuckled his seat belt to do it so that I was suddenly looking into his face almost close enough to kiss. I knew he felt my emotions, but not my thoughts. What did he think had made me feel jealous?

The peacefulness began to seep away on the conflicting emotions. I was suddenly anxious and afraid and . . . Damn it, if I felt that way about Nathaniel having a baby with someone else, what did that say about me, about us? Fortune was even our shared lover. It was a nice, practical solution for everyone, so why didn't it feel nice or practical inside my head and heart?

Nathaniel leaned in and kissed me gently on the cheek. It made me turn and look at him. I realized that he didn't just get my emotions, but sometimes my thoughts. How much had he gotten just now? My pulse was suddenly in my throat and my chest was a little bit tight, but it wasn't fear of being on the plane. Nope, relationship baby panic and not the kind I'd always feared. I'd sat in the bathroom and stared at a pregnancy test and prayed for it to be negative. I'd even had one false positive when I first got all my inner beasts. But staring into Nathaniel's eyes from inches away, I suddenly realized something. I did want to have a baby with him and with Micah. It wasn't a possibility with Micah-he'd had a vasectomy years before we met-but Nathaniel and I could. I just hadn't known until that second that I wanted to do it. Fuck, it was such a bad idea.

Nathaniel gave me a smile that lit his whole face up. He just glowed with happiness, which meant he knew exactly what I was thinking and feeling. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

"Why do you think it's such a bad idea?" Damian asked, and I realized that the three of us were all too interconnected in that moment for him to be left out.

Dev leaned over the back of Damian's seat and asked, "What is a bad idea?"

Nathaniel looked up at Dev with that shining, happy face. "Anita wants to have a baby with me."

Dev let the surprise show on his face. "Wow, that's . . . unexpected. Great, but . . . wow."

"Wanting to have a baby with someone doesn't mean you do it," I said, a little desperately.

"I thought that's how it worked," Fortune said.

I was suddenly angry with her, because her willingness to get pregnant had made me think too hard about it. I was furious with her in that moment.

"That's not fair, Anita," Nathaniel said.

"Would you really get pregnant with someone else?"

"I want to have a baby with you, but you told me that wasn't ever going to happen and I want children."

"You're not even twenty-five yet. What's the rush?" I asked.

"It doesn't have to be now, but I thought you'd feel differently if it was a woman in our poly group."

"So did I," I said.

Fortune said, "If this is what I think it is, it's about Nathaniel and me. We weren't seriously talking about him and me, but more that I could stop using birth control and keep having sex with everyone. As Harlequin we were not allowed to breed unless the Mother chose us for it, and then, like Socrates, we did not feel safe enough to have me incapacitated by carrying a child."

Echo took her hand and said, "We felt safe enough to contemplate it, but it is not Nathaniel's child we seek, but our own."

I nodded. "I get that-I really do-and you totally don't deserve my anger, but it's just thrown me that I feel this way at all. I mean, you said it: incapacitated is how pregnancy would be. I wouldn't be able to do my job."

"Nor I, late in pregnancy," Fortune said.

"But the baby will be born and you can both get back into warrior condition," Echo said.

"But then we'd have a baby that would be like the greatest hostage ever," I said.

"To take the child of Jean-Claude and Anita Blake would be suicidal," Echo said.

"It's really unlikely that Jean-Claude would be the bio-dad. He's over six hundred years old. Most vampires aren't fertile after a hundred or so," I said.

"Legally you will be marrying only Jean-Claude, so in the eyes of the world, it will be his," she said.

I glanced at Nathaniel. "You okay with that?"

He grinned at me. "Of course, the baby will call all of us Daddy."

I said, "Jean-Claude would probably be Pere," which was French for "Father," and thanks to channeling him I even pronounced it correctly, which I could never have done on my own.

"Probably we'd have different dad-isms for all of us," Nathaniel said.

"What do you mean, dad-isms?"

"Jean-Claude could be Pere, but we could use Dad, Daddy, Dada, Papa, Pa, Pop, Poppy, all the slang for Father."

"You've really thought about this," I said, and not like I was happy about it.

"Anita, I've been trying to think of all the arguments against it so that when we finally talked for real I'd be prepared. I never thought it would come up like this."

"It doesn't matter who's Dad, or Poppy, or whatever; the kid would still have a sign around its neck saying, Kidnap me and use me against my parents, please."

"Echo already said it would be suicide," Giacomo said.

"Yeah, but people do stupid things all the damn time."

"Anita," Nicky said.

I looked at him so close to me, felt the weight of his hand on my thigh, the nearness of all that muscled willpower. "For your baby to be taken they'd have to get through me first."

"And me," said Dev.

"And me," Pride said.

The plane filled with the sounds of all of them saying the same thing.

"Yes, the baby would be a hostage if it could be taken," Echo said, "but the likelihood of anyone, or any group, slaying all of us and taking the child is almost zero."

"And when Echo says that, she means only those of us on this plane," Jake said. "If you add all the rest at home, then there are few children on earth safer than one you would have."

I shook my head, afraid but not of being on the plane.

"All children of powerful people are potentially at risk," Magda said, "but few are as well protected as any we might have."

I looked at her. "We?"

"I do not think I wish to have one, but if Fortune can get with child I think more of the female Harlequin would consider it."

"There is no guarantee that I can get pregnant at all. I mean, I'm over a thousand years old. My body looks like I haven't seen thirty, but I've seen so many more years than that. Now that I have people who can help me not shift form for the time it would take me to get pregnant, which is what lets the clans breed at all, and a safe place, it still may be impossible," Fortune said.

"One of the best things about having the tiger clans come to stay in St. Louis is them helping the other wereanimals through pregnancies," Nathaniel said.

"I'm not sure I'd put that in the best thing category," I said.

"But I would. It's made so many people so happy."

I smiled at him. "We both want that."

"Everyone to be happy," he said.

I nodded and couldn't stop from smiling more. Then I frowned.

"What's wrong?" Nicky asked.

I looked out the window of the plane. The sky was still black and star-filled, but I felt the press of dawn. It was the same way I could feel it deep underground in the Circus, or in the pitch-black of a cave when I knew that if I could just fight until dawn the vampires would collapse where they were and we could kill them. Of course, now I knew that if the vampire was old enough, strong enough, and underground far enough they might not "die" at dawn. Damian wasn't the only vampire I knew that could daywalk either. If you read the original book Dracula by Bram Stoker, he has Drac walking around in the daylight, only adding a pair of darkened glasses, so dawn isn't a guarantee of safety from vampires and it does nothing to protect you from their servants and allies, but dawn still meant good things to me. It didn't to Giacomo and Echo, though. Damian didn't burn in the sunlight anymore, but the light still frightened him.

Damian said, "Anita is feeling the sun start to rise."

Fortune and Magda started closing all the blinds over the windows. Ethan started to help. Since one of my issues with planes is that I'm claustrophobic on top of being afraid to fly, it didn't make me happy. In fact, my pulse started to speed up, the first beginnings of panic pumping through my veins.

"Look at me, Anita," Damian said.

I looked into his green eyes, but I didn't fall into a peaceful place again. The fear continued to bubble through me. My breath started to get too fast. "It isn't working this time," I said.

"I'm sorry. I'm afraid of the dawn too."

"Sunlight doesn't hurt you," Nathaniel said.

"But that's a new power for me, Nathaniel. I spent centuries terrified of the light; that kind of fear doesn't just go away."

"You can walk in daylight now. It should make you brave," Giacomo said.

Damian looked up at the other vampire. "It should, but right now it doesn't."

Ethan had stopped closing the blinds and was looking at me. "I understand Damian being afraid, but you're afraid, really afraid."

I nodded. "I don't know if I can ride in the plane with the windows shut."

Giacomo said, "I cannot ride with them open, nor can your beautiful Echo." He had finished closing the windows just behind me, so that the only window left open was the one by me. I was leaning toward it like a flower anticipating the sunrise.

"I know we have to close them. I'm just saying that my claustrophobia is kicking in, that's all."

"We could strap Giacomo, Damian, and me into seats in the back of the plane and you could have your window open," Echo said.

I looked up into that delicate triangle of a face, those blue eyes that could look as light as cornflowers, a blue that was so rich it was almost violet. I unbuckled and all the men let go of me so I could move out into the narrow aisle and reach her. She took my offered hand. The plane wavered slightly in the air, and I had to swallow and clutch a little tighter at her small hand, almost as small as mine. Nathaniel steadied me with a hand on my hip. I patted his hand and then put my hand against the soft paleness of Echo's cheek and kissed the small bow of her mouth. She hesitated and then wrapped her arms around me and kissed me back. I thought, as I always did when I kissed her, how small her mouth was; only Jade's had been smaller, but it may have been the difference in how they reacted to a kiss. Jade had kissed like she did most bedroom things, tentatively, waiting for me to take the lead. Once I made my intention clear, Echo melded her body against mine and didn't need to be led anywhere.

We broke from the kiss at almost the same time, so that we were staring into each other's eyes from inches away. I wondered if I looked as startled as she did. I studied her face and the feel of us holding each other, arms still wrapped around each other's backs. In my high-heeled boots I was almost the same height as she was, and I liked that, too. I had enough tall in my life.

"I value this face more than I fear the window being closed," I said.

She gave me the smile that seemed shy but managed to fill her eyes with pleasure. I was never sure if it was a real smile or one that she thought would please without committing too much emotion. A lot of the older vamps got to a point where they had very few natural facial expressions, because raw emotion had been punished out of them. Jean-Claude had been cautious around me at the beginning, too. I wanted someday to get a smile from Echo that made me sure it was really what she was feeling.

"We should be perfectly safe in the back of the plane," she said.

I shook my head. "Accidents happen, so not worth it."

"So, you do not admire my beauty, too," Giacomo said, and struck a pose, tilting his face up and to the side to show off the scar that cut across his eye.