Adrian was confused until he saw that they were now holding hands, eagerly waiting for his answer. He nodded and said, “Yes, the prince and I are mated. And it may take a while for others to accept it, but we are going to make sure everyone knows that it is okay to be with the mate destiny chooses for us, no matter man or woman.”
They rushed forward and embraced him until Kassie whined, “Hey you’re squishing me.”
They backed up quickly and both apologized.
Adrian
said, “Congratulations, you two. I hope you are happy together.” He pointed at them and threatened, “But don’t ever hug me again.”
With that, he led Damian and Shana to the OR while he carried Kassie.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Nikkos
was pacing in front of the OR doors when they arrived but stopped to draw Adrian and Kassie into his embrace. He held them tight until Kassie whispered, “Don’t worry, Daddy, Mommy will be okay. She just found me. She won’t leave us now.”
Nikkos
pulled back to look at the child. “How did you get so smart, little one?”
She pointed to Shana. “My other mommy is a good teacher. She
teached
me lots of stuff. Is my mommy like you and this daddy?” She patted
Adrian
on the chest. “And like Damian, or is she like me? I want to be like you, can I be like you? Damian can do cool things, and I wanna do cool things like him. He said that I couldn’t be like him, but Mommy is
kinda
like you, right? So when I get bigger can I be like you?”
Nikkos
just shook his head and chuckled, and then looked to Damian. “She is just like you. How many times did you make an exchange with her?”
Damian looked down at his shoes in shame and whispered, “Too many times, apparently.”
Then a tear slipped down his cheek when he looked back up at
Nikkos
. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know what could happen, and I just needed to stay connected to her. I knew deep down I was meant to protect her and be able to find her. That’s the only reason I did it. Please believe me,
Kyrios.
I never meant to hurt her in any way.”
Nikkos
looked his brother in the eye and place a hand on each shoulder. “I thought we went over that whole
Kyrios
thing. You are my brother. None of us blame you for anything that happened. I told you we are happy that you did what you did. We would have never found Kassie if it wasn’t for you. You did the right thing, and we don’t know for sure what will happen to her when she’s older. And if she does turn, we will handle it when the time comes. It won’t be bad, I promise. Anstice has already made up her mind that she wants to finish the bonding with
Adrian
, and if she turns, that is fine with her. She wants to be like us, and it will probably be even easier if Kassie is like us. We are all family and will be together no matter what.”
He gave a mischievous grin before he added, “Just don’t forget that you have to help keep track of her when she is a teenager.”
Damian laughed and looked over at the small child. He couldn’t imagine her being a teenaged female vampire but knew he would do anything to protect her and keep her out of trouble. “Can we lock her in her room when she turns twelve until she’s about thirty, please? I don’t want any males anywhere near her. Although with you and Adrian as her dads and me as her uncle, I’m pretty sure no one will be stupid enough to try anything with her.”
Nikkos
agreed as he embraced Damian. “That’s right, brother, and don’t forget how strong her mother is. I think all the boys will be too scared of her to worry about who her dads and uncle are, but we will all be there for her.”
He let his brother go, took Kassie from
Adrian
, gave her a kiss on the forehead, and handed her to Damian. He needed his mate right now while the doctors were in the OR working on saving Anstice’s life again. He wrapped his arms around
Adrian
and brushed a kiss across his lips before finding his mating mark on the other man’s neck and softly kissing the sensitive area.
Adrian
groaned and nuzzled into the top of
Nikkos’s
head.
Shana, who had been quietly waiting behind Damian, spoke up. “Okay, I know I’m just a prisoner to you, and you are probably going to kill me when you get a chance, but can someone please explain what is going on here. I think I have a right to know what this is all about. You are talking about the little girl I have raised for the last two and a half years and love like she is my own. I know you are going to take her away from me, but please can someone just explain this all to me. And why are you two kissing? I thought you were with the woman in there, not each other.”
Kassie looked over to her. “Don’t worry, Mommy, they won’t hurt you. I’ll explain everything to you when you’re older, I promise.”
They all burst out laughing at her, and Damian arched an eyebrow at Shana. “Say that to her often, do you?”
Shana blushed. “She always wanted to know where she came from and where her real mommy and daddy were. I always thought I had all the time in the world to explain it to her when she was older.”
She looked down and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “Guess I won’t be getting that chance now, huh?” Damian placed a finger under her chin and gently made her look at him. “No one is going to hurt you. I already told you no one will do anything to hurt Kassie, so if she wants you around, you will be with us and you will be safe.”
Nikkos
stepped up behind Damian and looked over his shoulder at him. “That’s right, as long as Kassie wants you to be around, you will be staying with us. But remember this. If you do anything to hurt her or her mother, no one will be able to save you from me.”
Shana’s skin paled, but she nodded her understanding.
Just then the doctor came out of the OR and cleared his throat. “She is going to be fine. We removed the bullet. She needs rest and probably blood, but she will be able to go home soon and will heal before too long.”
Everyone gave a sigh of relief, and
Nikkos
asked, “Can we see her?”
The doctor replied, “Yes, but only her mates for right now. I have some questions I have to ask you. First of all, how is she more vampire than human?”
Shana heard this and gasped. “Did you just say vampire? What are you talking about? There’s no such thing as vampires. Is there?”
Nikkos
didn’t have time to explain, so he looked to Damian. “I know I have asked a lot of you in the last few days, but could you please sit down and explain everything you can to her while we go see Anstice? I will get you and Kassie in to see her as soon as we answer the doctor’s questions.”
“Of course, brother, I’ll explain what I can,” Damian replied.
Nikkos
and Adrian followed the doctor into the recovery room, where Anstice was just starting to come out of the anesthesia. The doctor started asking questions, but the boys didn’t hear anything. They needed to touch her to make sure that she was really okay. With one on each side of the bed, they each held one of her hands.
She opened her eyes a little to look that them. “Hey,” she whispered. “Is everyone okay?”
Nikkos
chuckled. “You just came out of surgery and had to have a doctor save your life for the third time since you met us, and you wanna make sure everyone else is okay? You are an amazing female, you know that? We love you so much. I think we’re going to lock you in our room for the rest of your life so you stay safe.”
Adrian spoke up. “Please don’t ever scare us like that again. We wouldn’t be able to go on if we lost you.”
She shook her head as much as she could. “I’m not going anywhere. I love you both so much that I could never leave you.”
They each bent and brushed their lips across hers. The doctor cleared his throat again. “Can you please answer some questions now? She really does need to rest.”
Adrian replied, “Okay, but we’re not leaving her.”
The doctor was fine with this. “I need to stay with her anyway to make sure there are no problems. First of all, how are both of you mated to her? Also, when I talked to your doctor at home, she said to make sure that if she needed blood, not to give her human blood. She told me that if she needed blood to tell one of you and you would take care of it. I thought she was human? But when we did the routine blood work, it showed some human properties but mostly vampire DNA. How is that possible? Is there something I should know?”
Nikkos
answered, “The answer to your first question is easy. We are not just her mates, we are mated to each other. And before you go off and think that men should not mate and tell us we are going to hell and all that happy-happy-joy-joy shit, remember who you are talking to. I make the laws of our race, and I’m going to start by making it law that anyone can mate with who destiny chooses for us, not who the society thinks is the right person.”
He paused long enough to let the doctor argue with him if he chose to be stupid. Apparently he was smart, because he just nodded his head.
“To answer your second question. We’re not really sure what’s going on with her. This information will go no further than this room until more is known, is that understood?”
The doctor nodded.
Nikkos
continued. “The night we met her, she was fatally injured, but we both knew she was our mate and could not let her die. So we took her home with us, and our Mikhaila saved her life with the help of my blood. Then a few days ago I was injured, and she gave me blood. I took too much, and she again had to be given more blood. This time, Mikhaila was afraid if we did a transfusion it would not work, with her already having my blood in her system, so my brother Damian gave her blood.
“Later that day
Adrian
was feeding from me, and we got a little carried away, and she drank from me, too, before we realized that she shouldn’t want to. She was showing signs of becoming a vampire, so Lucian did some research and found ancient information about humans being turned. We’re not sure yet if that is true, but all the signs are pointing in that direction. When she is healed and we take her home, she will complete her bonding with
Adrian
and may turn. We don’t know.”
The doctor stayed quiet through the entire explanation, and when
Nikkos
was finished he asked, “I would like to help in the research if you would like. Being a doctor of both vampires and humans, I have always wondered why we could not give humans our blood to save their lives. It would be of great benefit to both our races, but I never tried because of the laws. Now I understand why it was made illegal. We would be turning the human population into vampires if we used our blood to save someone that was dying. I have some vacation time coming and was going to do some traveling. Maybe you could talk to your doctor, see if she would like some help with her research?”
Nikkos
nodded and said, “I will talk to her and her mate and see if they would like your help and be in touch. Now, is it possible to bring her daughter and my brother in to see her?”
“Sure, I’ll leave you alone and tell them they can come in,” he replied and left the room.
* * * *
Damian was explaining what he could to Shana when the doctor came out and told him he could go in and see Anstice. The two guards he had met in the ER when he first got there were waiting outside the recovery room, and he asked them to keep an eye on her. They nodded, but the doctor spoke up and said he would sit with her and explain some more about the vampire race.
He was going to argue, but it wouldn’t have mattered. The doctor seemed to have eyes only for Shana. Damian shook his head as the doctor gently took the woman’s hand and led her to a sofa. He looked to the guards and told them to watch them both and to come and get him if there was trouble. With that, he walked into the recovery room carrying Kassie.