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“He doesn’t refer to her as his daughter. It’s my daughter. To him, she’s mine, not ours.”

Phury made a disgusted sound. “FYI, I’m trying to resist the urge to pound him out right now.”

“It’s not his fault. I mean, after all he went through . . . I should have expected this, I guess.” She cleared her throat. “I mean, this whole pregnancy thing wasn’t planned, and I wonder . . . maybe he resents me and regrets her?”

“You’re his miracle. You know you are.”

She took more tissues and shook her head. “But it’s not just me anymore. And I won’t raise her here if he can’t come to terms with the two of us. . . . I will leave him.”

“Whoa, I think that’s a little premature—”

“She’s beginning to recognize folks, Phury. She’s starting to understand she’s being shut out. And he’s had three months to get used to the idea. Over time, he’s gotten worse, not better.”

As Phury cursed, she lifted her eyes to the brilliant yellow stare of her hellren’s twin. God, that citrine color was what shone out of her daughter’s face as well, so there was no looking at Nalla without thinking of her father. And yet . . .

“Seriously,” she said, “what’s this all going to be like a year from now? There is nothing more lonely than sleeping next to someone you’re missing as if they were gone. Or having that as a father.”

Nalla reached up with her fat hand and grabbed onto one of the tissues.

“I didn’t know you were here.”

Bella’s eyes shot to the doorway. Zsadist was standing in it, a tray in his hands bearing salad and a pitcher of lemonade. There was a white bandage on his left hand and a whole lot of don’t-ask on his face.

Looming there, on the verge of the nursery, he was exactly as she had fallen in love and mated him: a gigantic male with a skull trim and a scar down his face and slave bands at his wrists and neck and nipple rings that showed through his tight black T-shirt.

She thought of him the first time she’d seen him, punching a bag down in the training center’s gym. He’d been viciously fast on his feet, his fists flying faster than her eye could track, the bag being driven back from the beating. And then, without even a pause, he’d unsheathed a black dagger from his chest holster and stabbed the thing he’d been pounding, ripping the blade through the bag’s leather flesh, the stuffing falling free like the internal organs of a lesser.

She’d come to learn that the fierce fighter wasn’t all there was to him. Those hands of his had great kindness in them as well. And that ruined face with its distorted upper lip had smiled and looked at her with love.

“I came down to see Wrath,” Phury said, getting to his feet.

Z’s eyes flicked to the Kleenex box his twin held, then went to the wad of tissues in Bella’s hand. “Did you.”

As he came in and put the tray down on the bureau where Nalla’s clothes were kept, he didn’t look at his daughter. She, however, knew he was in the room. The young turned her face in his direction, her unfocused eyes pleading, her chubby little arms reaching for him.

Z stepped back out into the hall. “Have a good meeting. I’m going out hunting.”

“I’ll walk you to the door,” Phury said.

“No time. Later.” Z’s eyes met Bella’s for a moment. “I love you.”

Bella hugged Nalla closer to her heart. “I love you, too. Be safe.”

He nodded once and then he was gone.

TWO

As Zsadist came awake in a panic, he tried to calm his breathing and figure out where he was, but his eyes weren’t much help. Everything was dark . . . he was enveloped in a dense, cold blackness that, no matter how hard he strained his vision, he couldn’t see through. He could have been in a bedroom, out in a field . . . in a cell.

He’d come out of sleep like this many, many times. For a hundred years as a blood slave, he’d woken up in a panicked blindness and wondered what was going to be done to him and by whom. After he was free? Nightmares caused him to do the same thing.

In both cases it was such bullshit. When he’d been the Mistress’s property, worrying about the who and the what and the