Shay had spent the last six weeks in a blur of trips back and forth from the safe house to the hospital as Lydia Nicole Underwood thrived. That would be Lydia Nicole Dimitrou as soon as Gadget and their colonel got all her paperwork straightened out in New Orleans. A real marriage was a rarity in Penton since most of the vampires were too old to have legitimate identification. Glory and Melissa were beside themselves, making plans.

But whatever she and Nik decided about the future, she wanted Lydia to have his last name as well as the middle name derived from his. Lydia had been the name of Shay’s grandmother, a strong, resilient woman who’d endured her own share of hardships.

In two weeks, with no more complications, Lydia would be able to leave the hospital. They would have to watch her closely the first two years. Learning disabilities were possible. Hearing issues. Vision difficulties. But she was alive, breathing on her own, and growing. And she might have no problems at all.

Shay pulled Nik’s new SUV, which he’d finally bought to replace the one lost in Atlanta, into the driveway of the safe house in an old, quiet neighborhood of Opelika. The bustle of the small city was so much less than New Orleans but so much more than Penton that it felt alien to her.

She left her latest bag of baby stuff in the already-crammed backseat and headed inside. Aidan’s midnight-blue sedan was parked in front of the house.

Today was what she and Nik had been calling The Meeting. Aidan had said he had a proposal for them, and Shay wasn’t sure what to expect. Nik said Aidan also had news about the official end of the vampire war. Frank’s heart and brain had both been punctured by the silver-coated bars of his cell, so he was finally and truly gone. Shay suspected Glory had played a little fast and loose with the collapse of the tunnels to make that happen, but nobody was complaining. Marianne had been shown mercy by Aidan and allowed to return to Atlanta after signing the loyalty pledge, only to be killed by a rival scathe master. Nobody complained about that, either. They’d found the body of the hybrid shifter, Shawn Nicholls, in her Omega cell, where Marianne had apparently killed her in a fit of rage after finding she’d been duped by Mirren.

Nik met Shay at the door with a kiss, and Shay hugged Krys and Aidan. They’d both come to visit her a few times since Lydia’s birth. In fact, most of Penton seemed to have shown up at one time or another.

Shay sighed. It was going to be hard to leave that.

“Okay, Aidan, you said you had a proposal for us. Let’s hear it.” Nik took Shay’s hand and they sat on the sofa, leaving the armchairs for Aidan and Krys.

“For the last few months, Mark has been making some real estate transactions for me.” Aidan spread out a map of the eastern half of Alabama. He took out a red marker and outlined a tall square on the Georgia line. “This is Chambers County.” He made a big X near the center and a smaller X a little north of it.

He pointed at the big X. “This is LaFayette, the county seat. It has about three thousand people, and is economically depressed. Real estate is priced to sell—or buy.” He tapped the smaller X. “This, of course, is Penton, about nine miles north.”

He outlined a short, wide rectangle below the taller one. “This is Lee County, where we are now. It’s about twenty miles to LaFayette and less than thirty to Penton. It’s one of the fastest-growing counties in the state and has a major research university.”

Shay knew that; she’d studied the maps when she first arrived, trying to figure out where she was. She hadn’t known about Aidan buying land in LaFayette, though. “How does that impact us?”

“I have a job proposition for you.” Aidan smiled. “You can set up an independent research lab, either in LaFayette or at the research park in Auburn, in Lee County. I’d like you to try finding a permanent anti-vaccine for the vampire population in the long term and, in the short term, work on ways to scale production of the version we have.”

Shay’s head spun. She could easily legitimize the research. The pandemic vaccine that zapped the vampires had made some humans sick, hadn’t worked on others, and obviously had a side effect in the blood no one anticipated. There would eventually be another avian or swine flu, and her work could help develop a more effective vaccine, and do it faster.

“Okay, I’m intrigued. But there are still issues, you know. The baby.”

“That’s the exciting part to me.” Krys leaned forward, her dark-brown eyes sparkling. “We’re going to start repopulating Penton back to its pre-pandemic population of about 300, and rebuild the town. But this time, we’ll allow familiars with children to join the community. The families can live in Penton, or they can live in Aidan’s properties in LaFayette. There are schools in LaFayette. Churches. Doctors.”

Aidan stood up and began pacing. “We’ll have to feel our way through it, of course. Families will have to agree to keep the vampires’ identities a secret, but lots of men work night shifts and aren’t around in the evenings.”

Nik grinned. “I could keep Lydia during the day while you slave away at the lab.”

Shay leaned back on the sofa, thinking of the reasons why it wouldn’t work. “Kids talk. They ask questions. How can you guarantee it won’t get out?”

“I think we can contain it,” Aidan said. “Say a kid tells his friend that his dad’s a vampire or Uncle Nik is a vampire. Who will believe the child? We’ll have to work with the kids so they don’t get bullied and understand why it’s important to keep it a secret, but if it slips out, master vampires can modify memories and do cleanup.”

Modify memories? First time Shay had heard that. She shifted a squinty glimpse at Nik, who shrugged. “I’m barely even a vampire. I’m sure not a master vampire. Don’t worry about me.”

“What do you think?” Krys said. “I wish you’d seen Penton before all this mess started. It was the best little town in the world.”

Shay could believe that, and realized it wasn’t just Nik she’d miss if she took Lydia back to New Orleans or started over somewhere entirely new. She’d made a lot of friends here, from gruff Mirren to feisty little Robin. If she didn’t stay, she’d never know what happened with Cage’s arm or the prosthetics Will was trying to develop for his own damaged leg. She’d miss Glory’s plans to open a restaurant and Krys’s plans to reopen the clinic and find a human doctor to work daytime hours. She’d miss Mirren turning his training center into the thing it had been built for.

She’d miss seeing people she cared about truly happy for the first time, living the way they had envisioned Penton from the beginning.

She wanted Lydia to know them too, and she and Nik would explain vampires to their daughter when they needed to. Until then, she’d compartmentalize.

A silence had fallen over the room and Shay felt the weight of three pairs of glowing eyes boring into her—gold, silvery brown, and icy blue. They couldn’t all be hungry, so she must be stressing them out while waiting for an answer.

Nik took her hand. “What do you say?”

Shay had never felt more certain. “I say yes.”