“Thank you for not calling it begging.”

I grinned. “I was going to, but changed my mind at the last minute.”

“Because it would have been cruel.”

“But a really good play on my part. I’d have gotten a lot of points for that.”

“Are we keeping score?”

“Yes. Redeemable for Mallocakes.” They were my favorite chocolate snack cake, although I hadn’t had one in a few weeks. Not since the Night of a Thousand Mallocakes. Which was why I was willing to give them to Ethan.

“I have no interest in your Mallocakes.”

“I’m going to hope that’s not a euphemism.”

“It isn’t, obviously.” He lowered his mouth to my stomach, nipped playfully.

“I remember the first words you ever said to me,” I said. “It was the night I was attacked. You had your arm around me, there on the grass, and you told me to be still.”

He rose onto his elbows and stared at me. I’d never told him that I’d remembered that much of it, of what had happened, and what he’d said. But those words—those two small and impossibly huge words—still had the same power.

“You remember that.”

I nodded. “I think that’s important, Ethan. I think that matters. I don’t remember anything he said or did, just the pain he caused, that he ran away like a coward.” Like he always seemed to do. “But I remember what you said to me. Those two words were, I guess, an incantation.”

He balanced his head on his curled fist, reached up to brush hair from my face. “I remember how pale you’d been, and how lovely. I was afraid we’d been too late. But we weren’t. And you grew angry, and then you grew to accept who you were.”

“And you grew to accept who I was. Except for those times you’re still overprotective.”

“I’ll never stop being overprotective. Not because I don’t believe in you, or trust you. But because that’s who I am. That’s what being a Master is all about.”

“And yet you named me Sentinel. The one person whose job is to argue with you.”

“Not just argue,” he said with a grin. “Although it often seems that way.”

Taking a ploy from Mallory, I thumped him on the ear.

“Ow,” he said with a laugh, and pulled his earlobe. “It’s about checks and balances, Merit. The point of all this is that we’ve changed. We’ve grown and evolved since the night I met you, and the night you met me.” He put a hand on my stomach. “And someday, we’ll have a child. A family. That won’t be easy—having a child, having a vampire child, and having the first vampire child. But we’ll manage it.”

“How, exactly, do you think that’s going to happen?”

He shifted into Master vampire. Mouth slightly quirked in a grin, one eyebrow arched imperiously as he looked back at me. “I’m fairly certain you know exactly how it happens, Sentinel.”

What was it with people and the conception jokes? “You know I didn’t mean that. I meant, you know”—I circled a finger toward my lower half—“the unproven mechanics of vampire gestation. To not put too fine a point on it, what’s going to keep him or her in there?”

His face went utterly serious. “Sentinel, I honestly do not know.” He pressed his lips to warm skin. “Shall we try to let nature take its course?”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

SALEM’S FIRE

Jonah’s message was waiting the next evening, a single question mark that somehow managed to query and chastise at the same time.

It was so easy to have opinions, and so much harder to actually do things. Which was one thing I planned on talking to the RG about.

I offered a time that would give me a chance to get dressed, changed, and fed. I still felt low after the past night’s battle, despite the good that being on the same page with Ethan had done.

After grabbing a breakfast wrap in the cafeteria with Lindsey and Juliet, I stopped by Ethan’s office. He, Malik, and Luc were chatting when I walked in.

“Did I miss a meeting?” I asked.

“No,” Ethan said, Malik and Luc splitting apart to let me join their circle. “We were reviewing the photographs of last night’s perpetrator.”

Ethan extended the portrait-sized color photograph to me, and I could feel him watching my reaction.

Luc had been right last night. The video was grainy, but it was definitely him. The brooding eyes, the beard, the muscles.

“Yeah.” I looked at Ethan first, nodded just a little to assure him that I was okay. “Recognizable enough. Does he look familiar to either of you?”

“Not to me,” Malik said. “Not as a Novitiate or an attacker. It was dark that night, and he moved quickly.”

“No dice for me, either,” Luc said.

“Nor me,” Ethan said. “You’re going to talk to Noah?”

“I’m working on a meet, yeah. Can I borrow the photograph?”

“Take it,” Luc said. “I’ve printed a few more, and we’ve alerted the Houses. We’ll also run it against the database of Housed vampires, just in case. It’s always possible he was a Housed vampire once upon a time and left.”

“Not unlike Caleb Franklin, who was an official Pack member once upon a time,” I said. “Thank you again.”

“Think nothing of it,” Luc said. “He threatens you, he threatens the House.” He patted my arm. “You’re one of us, Sentinel. For better or worse.”