“This is a separate thing. And attendance is mandatory.”
Ethan smiled slyly. “I may be sick that evening.”
“Vampires don’t get sick.”
“In fairness, they aren’t supposed to be pregnant, either.”
He had a point, so I smiled at him. “We’ll figure it out.”
Just as we’d done before, and just as we’d undoubtedly do again.
He caught my face in his hands, pressed his mouth to mine, and, on the steps of Cadogan House, kissed me madly, deeply. “I do love you, Sentinel.”
“I love you, too, Sullivan.”
We walked into Cadogan House. And this time, I hoped I wouldn’t need my sword, if only for a little while.
EPILOGUE
THE REMAINS OF THE CAKE
Twenty-one Months Later, Give or Take
Chicago, Illinois
Hands on my hips, I looked down at the year-old girl who bounced on chubby thighs, her tiny fingers gripping the edge of the coffee table. Her golden curls moved as she did, bouncing up and down around her cherubic face, punctuated by emerald green eyes.
This beautiful little girl was stuffing Cheerios into her mouth with wild abandon, bouncing up and down on plump little legs that poked out beneath a blue dress sprigged with tiny white flowers. “Ree!”
It was her favorite sound, the word that meant “Yes,” “Cheerios,” “Here,” and every other phrase she couldn’t quite manage to articulate.
I nodded. “Like those, do you?”
Brow furrowed as she worked, she scooped a handful of Cheerios from the coffee table and offered them to me. “Ree.”
I walked to the coffee table, went to my knees, and slurped Cheerios out of her unsurprisingly sticky hand. She squealed happily, jogged in place on unsteady feet, and grabbed more Cheerios. Then she lifted the few she managed to corral to my mouth. I obliged her and munched them. Tasty, but five or six were more filling for a toddler than for a thirty-year-old vampire.
“Are you ready?” her father called out from the next room.
“Almost,” I said, and pulled a barrette from my pocket, used it to clip back one side of Elisa’s hair. It would keep her curls out of her face—and her sticky hands from getting tangled in the thick blond locks.
“Dress!”
“I know, sweetheart,” I said, smoothing out the skirt of her blue cotton dress. She was a rough-and-tumble girl, and she’d destroy the dress by the end of the evening, but she looked lovely in it now. I tucked her into white Mary Jane shoes. “Do you like your dress?”
“Pretty,” she seriously said.
“Yes, it is. Are you ready to go see Aunt Mallory and Baby Lulu?”