Steal the Night (Thieves #5)(107)

Lee turned from his place at the window. Night had fallen and he was watching the half moon. I wondered if he was thinking about roaming. I knew it was always there in the back of his head to wander. How hard was it for my wolf to stay with me?

“When can I kill him?” Lee asked abruptly.

I’d filled Lee and Neil in the minute we were left alone. I’m not good at keeping things to myself. Lee had thought eviscerating the wizard was one of my more brilliant ideas and wanted to follow through at the earliest convenient time.

“When the time is right, Lee. We have to be patient and we have to be careful.” I walked over to where he stood and Neil joined me. I kept my voice low. I didn’t think Daniel would be listening in, but you never could tell.

“I don’t like patience,” the wolf admitted.

Neil crossed his arms. “We have to take a page out of the boys’ playbook. They do a damn fine job of keeping things from our side of the family. They do it to protect us and stuff, I get that. We’re assassinating Daniel’s mentor for the same reason. If you think about it, Z, it really is an act of love.”

“Not for me,” Lee shot back. “It’s an act of violence, and I’m looking forward to it. I hated that f*cker from the first moment I saw him.”

I decided not to point out that was kind of Lee’s reaction to ninety-nine percent of the people he met. He couldn’t help it. It was his nature. “We have to be very quiet about it. Danny is already under his spell or whatever you would call it. I don’t want to put Dev in the middle of this so we’ll leave him out. We can’t mention it to Zack. As much as I trust Zack, he’ll tell Danny. The only person we can trust with this is Bris.”

Neil frowned.

“What?” I sighed because I knew that look. It was the one he got when I had a stupid idea and he didn’t know quite how to tell me I was an idiot. It was a look he only got when the situation was serious because otherwise he had no trouble telling me how dumb I was.

“Zoey, you’re walking a fine line here,” Neil said. “You have to be careful with Bris. I know he looks like Dev, but he isn’t Dev. He’s a whole other person…deity thing and working with him behind Danny and Dev’s back…”

“You don’t have any problem with my working with you and Lee,” I replied.

“We don’t sleep with you, honey,” Neil pointed out. “Think about it. Girl screws fertility god, all the while plotting the death of her husband’s close advisor. It all sounds very noir. Those never end well, Z.”

“I’m not cheating,” I said firmly.

“As I said, fine line,” Neil allowed. “If Myrddin has his way, you’ll be having Bris’s kids behind Dev’s back…front…oh, I don’t know. It’s all very confusing.”

“I won’t be doing that at all,” I threw back at Neil. If Daniel could run around telling people we’d just met then I could certainly tell the two people closest to me. “I’ll be having Dev’s baby.”

“I’m sure one day…” Neil’s voice tapered off. His eyes went wide. “Did you let Dev touch your bits without a glove?”

I couldn’t help but smile, remembering just how good that had felt. “Yes, we did. We decided that we’d waited long enough so we’re trying.”

Lee put a hand on my shoulder. “Darlin’, you don’t try having a baby with a fertility god. You let him do his thing and then you’re pregnant. If Dev did the deed then we have to consider you pregnant, Zoey.”

“Lee, we just tried this afternoon. We don’t know anything yet. His swimmers are probably still floating around in there looking for an egg to attack.” Unless Myrddin was right and conception backed by fertility magic occurred faster than a normal pregnancy. My last pregnancy had symptoms very quickly. Before I even had a chance to pee on a stick, Daniel’s body was taking over because I was so tired.

“No,” Neil said, shaking his head. “He’s got Olympic gold medalist sperm, Zoey. They’re fast and they’re damn accurate, and if they can’t find an egg they’ll just walk up to your ovaries and coax a few out. How many times have you had sex with Dev without a condom before?”

“Once.” And I’d gotten pregnant. Of course it had been the night of Dev’s ascension and there had been powerful magic involved. It was entirely possible that without such crazy fertility magic that it could take longer. Maybe.

“Case closed, so I’m with Lee on this one,” Neil said, suddenly going into organization mode. “We’ll need to work with the Order and get you everything you need.”

I expected Neil would be planning a gorgeous maternity wardrobe and redoing the condo to allow for a tasteful nursery.

“We’ll need a Pilates instructor and a new chef because I don’t think Albert does healthy,” Neil said. “We need to fight Dev and Daniel on this. Trust me, they’ll be stuffing chocolates down your throat and giving you ice cream at two a.m. It’s my job to make sure you can get back into those size eight dresses. You’ll thank me in the end.”

I punched him soundly.

“All the more reason for me to kill the bastard now, Zoey.” Lee brought the conversation back around to his favorite subject. “If you let him, he’ll use your baby against you. I won’t let that happen.”