You’re still not getting laid… for a very long time. Understand me?”

Jess smiled up at her mate as she lay with her daughter in her arms. He sat next to them, his arm around Jess’ shoulders and the other around the baby swaddled carefully against her chest. He was as close to them as it was possible to get without actually being in the bed.

He grinned. “An hour ago, it was ever again. Now it’s just a very long time. I think, my beautiful little mate, I’ll wait to see what you say tomorrow before commenting.”

“Asshole healer,” she muttered, but she couldn’t help the small smile as she looked down at her daughter.

“Hello sweetpea,” she whispered, stroking the delicate little cheek with a reverent finger. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

As though she knew she was being spoken to, the baby opened her eyes and Jess gasped. Laarn’s green eyes looked right back at her, filled with knowledge and wisdom.

“She has an old soul,” Laarn murmured, seeing what Jess was seeing as the baby blinked at them both. “And she will be very powerful, beautiful like her mother.”

“She has my hair,” Jess gasped in delight, stroking the fine down on the top of the baby’s head. “The Kallson hair. It’s a curse.”

“A curse?” Laarn frowned, looking down at her and then at the baby. “It looks normal to me. How can hair be a curse?”

She chuckled. “You wait until she can’t do a thing with her hair. It’s a woman thing.”

“She had wild, beautiful hair in my vision. Like yours but… bigger?”

“Yeah, that’s the Kallson hair all right. She’s gonna hate me.”

Jess watched as their daughter’s eyes drifted closed. She kept jerking them open as though she didn’t want to stop looking at her parents. The fascination was mutual. Jess didn’t think she’d ever need to sleep again, not if she could peer at the vision of perfection in her arms.

“Did she tell you her name at all?” she asked, fascinated by the connection between Laarn and their daughter. Though Jess carried her under her heart, Laarn had connected with her in a way Jess never could. “When you spoke to her… before.”

She didn’t need to say anything else. Their baby had reached out to Laarn when Jess was dying, a deep abdominal wound putting both her life and the baby’s life in danger.

Laarn shook his head. “It was just a glimpse of the future. Of the woman she will become. We didn’t really chat.”

“Daaynalina,” A voice announced from the doorway. They both looked up to find the emperor filling the frame. “As the first princess of the blood born for a generation, she should of course be named after me.”

“Absolutely not,” Laarn and Jess said in unison. Then they had the unique experience of seeing the Latharian emperor, possibly the most powerful and dangerous man in the entire universe, speechless. His mouth opened and closed, but no sound emerged from his lips. Itaal found somewhere else to be. Fast.

“No?” Daaynal blinked. “Now that’s a word people don’t say to me often.”

“Better get used to it,” Laarn advised, his voice firm. “Because there is no way I’m calling my daughter Daaynalina. It’s a draanthic mouthful. And not a true female name at all.”

“Miisan,” Jess said quietly. At the sound of the name, that of Laarn’s mother and Daaynal’s twin, the baby opened her eyes and made a pleased gurgling.

“Miisan... “ Laarn and Daaynal’s whispers echoed each other. Then the emperor bowed, an odd expression on his face. If Jess were to guess, she’d say he was touched. “You do the royal house, and me, a great honor.”

“Thank you,” Laarn brushed a kiss against Jess’ temple. “I’d thought you would want to name her in the human tradition. I didn’t expect that you would pick a Latharian name.”

“Well.” She reached out to brush the delicate soft down on the top of the newly named baby’s head. “It seems humans are Lathar anyway, and its women are making this all possible. So how about Miisan Amanda K’Vass? To celebrate both cultures, and both our mothers…”

* * *

LAARN! She’s gone! The baby’s gone!”

His mate’s panicked cry brought Laarn out of sleep in an instant. He jerked upright on the cot set up next to her bed in the healer’s hall. In an instant he was on his feet and by her side. Sure enough, the cot they’d put their daughter down in after her feeding a few hours ago was empty.

Jess turned fear-filled eyes on him, clutching at his arm with panic. “They’ve got her, the purists! Somehow they’ve gotten into the palace again.”

“Ssshhh, shh. They can’t have,” he reassured her, dropping a kiss against her forehead even as he disengaged himself from her clutches. Fear lanced through him, making his heart race and turning his blood to ice.

The purists were a plague. Lathar who believed that to crossbreed, even to save their race, was a sin against the obscure goddess they served. One the rest of the Lathar had left firmly in the past. They’d almost managed to kill Jess before, so the thought that they might have Miisan… so tiny and defenseless… nearly stopped him in his tracks with panic.

“I’ll find her. Stay here,” he promised, grabbing his weapons belt from the hook by the door as he strode from the room.

“Healers!” he bellowed as he went, not caring that he would wake recovering warriors. If they had a purist attack on their hands, those warriors would want to be awake to defend themselves. If a purist attack kidnapped his daughter, he wanted them awake to hunt the draanth down. And not just the patients. He wanted every warrior on their feet and armed. Ready to fight to protect—

He blinked as Itaal appeared in the doorway of one of the rooms, his finger against his lips as he pointed down the hall. Frowning, he followed the corridor Itaal pointed to. It was one of the outer pathways, with high stone arches that looked out over the city and onto the mountains beyond.

They looked unprotected, but the occasional shimmer confirmed that the energy barriers were active. Should they fail, heavy shutters of Terralon steel would drop into place and secure the palace. It would take orbital weapons powerful enough to destroy the planet to get through them, and even then, the shutters would probably still be there, floating in the debris unharmed.

“And down there is where my sister, your grandma, and I used to play. Can you see? Just there by the Herris trees. In a few months, you’ll be running around down there as well.”

Laarn followed the deep voice, his anxiety beginning to reduce as he spotted a tall, familiar figure at the end of the pathway. Daaynal stood by the stone wall, fully armed, with the tiny form of Laarn’s baby daughter held tenderly in his arms. For a split second, Laarn got a glimpse of the emperor’s face completely unguarded. Saw the delight and fascination with his grand-niece as he cradled her head and cooed back when she gurgled at him.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

The fact that Daaynal could order his, or any warrior in the empire’s, execution on a whim didn’t even occur to Laarn as he strode forward, the righteous fury of a father fueling his movements as he stormed toward his uncle.

Daaynal blinked as he turned around, surprise evident on his face. “I was showing the new princess the palace.”

“You can’t just take her like that! Jess is beside herself with panic.” Laarn’s heartrate began to return to normal as he swept an assessing glance over his daughter. A lock of Daaynal’s black hair was wrapped around her fist, her fingers opening and closing as though investigating the strands’ texture. Abruptly, she yanked on the lock, making Daaynal turn. The look she gave him was far more advanced than it should have been for an infant mere hours old.

“Hmmm, yes. She said you’d both be worried,” Daaynal nodded, giving a sheepish little smile. “But she was crying and I didn’t want to wake either of you. So, I told her she’d be perfectly safe with me and her mother would understand.”

This time it was Laarn’s turn to blink. “You can converse with her?”

The emperor inclined his head. “Of course. There are some benefits to the K’Saan bloodline. Although, as the last of my line, I never expected to feel the touch of another’s mind against mine ever again. Miisan here is a double blessing in that regard.”

His uncle was lonely. The realization stunned Laarn, and the rest of his anger leached away. How could he be angry now? Daaynal had held the throne far longer than any emperor before him, surviving goddess alone knew how many assassination attempts and coups. And through the years, he’d never managed to beget an heir, even though Laarn knew he’d tried. And… when it came down to it… with a history like that, the baby princess couldn’t be in safer hands.

He offered a small smile. “Just tell us next time, okay?”

* * *

She’s happily asleep.”

Jess smiled as her mate walked through the arch that separated the nursery area from their sleeping chambers. After many hours and more checkups than she wanted to think about, she and Miisan were released from the Healer’s Hall. She was sure Itaal and the other healers would have done anything to keep the baby there, for observation “just in case,” but a glare from Laarn put paid to that. It was hard for a doctor to argue, though, when the Latharian equivalent of the Surgeon General was the one signing them out.

She wasn’t sure it was all about the tests, though. All afternoon, warriors found reasons to be in her room. The excuses ranged from checking errant readings on the diagnostic equipment to ensuring the ventilation systems were working correctly. One warrior, complete with toolbelt, even arrived expressing concern that the lighting system was in the wrong spectrum for infant eyes.

If she’d been on her own, she might have been worried. Even though she’d successfully thwarted a purist attack by herself, that had been with the element of surprise and by being… well, human. They were still rare enough in the empire that most Lathar had absolutely no idea how they’d react and what they’d do next. She simply used that to her advantage. But one on one, even the least-trained Lathar warrior could easily beat her.

She wasn’t on her own, though. Not only had Laarn been with her most of the time, but many of his clan found reasons to drop in. She hadn’t realized quite how scary the K’Vass could be until now.

But they didn’t need to be. Every warrior entering the room gravitated to the crib. It was kind of sweet to see such big, hard men reduced to complete softies, admiring courtiers as her baby daughter held court. And hold court she did, giggling and cooing at the men bent over the crib like they were her own personal entertainment.

One thing was for sure, Miisan would have no shortage of “uncles” prepared to lay down their lives for her.

“I’m not surprised. She’s had a full day,” Jess replied sleepily, watching Laarn cross the room. He was dressed for bed in loose silken pants that rode low on his hips. She appreciated the view, even if she couldn’t do anything about it at the moment. Latharian medicine was amazing, but even it couldn’t heal the female body and mind from childbirth within hours. Both Itaal and Laarn had told her she needed to take it easy for the next couple of days. But when her husband looked like that…

The bed dipped as he climbed in next to her, and an instant later she was wrapped in his strong embrace.

“She’s not the only one who’s been busy today,” he murmured, his lips against her hair. “You were so brave, my love. I had no idea that human women suffered so much during labor.”

A smile curved her lips as all the old jokes about a woman in labor could almost imagine what a man felt like when he had the flu hovered in the back of her mind. But Laarn actually felt what it was like to be in labor. Possibly the first man ever to do so.

“It’s the circle of life,” she said softly. “Did you know that on Earth, like way back in history… the only Spartan women who got gravestones were the ones who died in childbirth? And the only men who got them died in battle? They equated labor with combat.”

“Obviously an enlightened people.”

He rumbled deep in his chest as she stroked her fingertips over the scars on his chest. Once they’d horrified her. The thought of the pain he’d gone through to get them seemed barbaric. Now, though, she just saw them as a part of him. A part of the man she loved more than life itself. The alien warrior she’d fallen for who’d given her a perfect little daughter.

Reaching up, she brushed her lips against his. The brush turned into a long, sweet kiss.

“What was that for?” he asked, a smile on his lips when he lifted his head.

“Nothing. Just because.” She shook her head, knowing she should really get some sleep but unable to. She was still wired from the events of the day and she was more than comfortable leaning against Laarn’s broad chest.

“We did it. She’s finally here. We’re parents.” She twisted to peer up at him. “In case you missed it, Mr. Kallson, I love you.”

“Oh… it’s Mr. Kallson now, is it?” He chuckled, bending his head to rub his nose against hers. “What happened to my lord?”

“Pfft. That’s only for when I want something. And there’s no reason why you can’t have a human name as well as a Latharian one, is there?”

“None whatsoever. But none of them matter.” He gathered her up closer, his touch gentle as he cradled her. He moved her hand to place it over his heart. He smiled as he placed his own hand over hers, trapping it under his larger palm.

“Because the only names or titles I care about are Jessica’s mate and Miisan’s father. And I will love you both until my heart beats its last in this mortal realm.”