Steal the Night (Thieves #5)(21)

“Dad, I need to tell you that I had a miscarriage while I was in Faery,” I said calmly. It hadn’t really been a true miscarriage. It had been a spell that caused me to lose my baby.

My father went pale, his eyes widening. “You were pregnant? You didn’t tell me you were pregnant?”

“I didn’t know until we were already there,” I explained quickly. “It was over before we came home.”

His voice was barely above a whisper as he absorbed that news. “I hadn’t…when Danny turned I gave up on the thought of having grandkids. I didn’t realize you were planning on having a family like that, Zoey.”

I blushed because I was thinking of the night we conceived our son. “It wasn’t planned. It happened on the night Dev and I got married.”

My father was very firm in his opinions about that. “Those were pagan rites, girl. They won’t be recognized on this plane.”

“You recognize my marriage to Danny.” My wedding to Daniel had been even less recognizable as a wedding than the rites Dev and I had performed. At least the bride’s permission was needed in the pagan rites. The vampires did not require my opinion.

“I do,” he said. “But you ain’t getting pregnant by Daniel. You start bringing kids in and you need to protect them. Are you planning on moving to Faery with the prince?”

Well, that answered one question I had about why my dad didn’t like Dev. If my father had been sitting around wondering when the man was going to pack me up and cart me off to another plane, it explained a lot.

“We’re not going anywhere. This is our home, Dad.” I reached across the desk and covered his hand with mine. “You have to understand. Dev has nothing to go back to. The Seelie nobles refuse to recognize him because he isn’t a full Fae. We made the deal with the Unseelie because they wanted a high priest and Dev’s fertility powers are useful to them.”

“His fertility powers were useful to you, too,” he said with a small smile. “So you and Dev want to have babies, then?”

“No,” I corrected him because he needed to understand. “Dev, Daniel, and I want to have babies. I know you don’t approve of our relationship, but we’re happy together. Maybe it isn’t normal, but nothing about us is normal. We love each other. We’re committed to each other. We’re going to have a family together and I want you there, Dad. You’re the only grandparent our kids are going to have. Danny doesn’t have parents left, Mom couldn’t care less, and Miria won’t be around.”

A long smile crossed my dad’s face. “That’s a whole new generation’ll be needing to learn a profession, the way I see it.”

I didn’t point out that with Dev’s money, our kids wouldn’t have to work a day if they didn’t want to or that Dev would probably be teaching them how to run his businesses. The truth was Dev would find it amusing that his kids could crack a safe, and Daniel would be teaching them any number of criminal talents. If my dad wanted to pass on his knowledge to his grandbabies, I wouldn’t object. He’d been my teacher and a damn good one.

My hand was suddenly caught between both of his as he got deadly serious. “You’re my girl. Those boys can do whatever you let them, but you’ll always be my girl. Don’t shut me out. I want to know what’s going on and I want to help.”

I had to smile. “You were the one who told me never to mix business and family.”

He brought my hand to his chest and placed it over his heart. I could see he was very emotional. “You never learned that, girl. It’s the one lesson I taught you that I’m glad didn’t stick. And this ain’t business. This is war. I want to know everything.”

I nodded and sat back. This time when I talked to my father, I told him everything from the very beginning.





Dad’s eyes were curious as we walked down the stairs a half an hour later. “So that slip of a girl sitting on my couch really knew King Arthur?”

“Yup,” I said. “More importantly, she knew Merlin, who can help Daniel with his little heart problem.”

Letting out a deep breath, my father regarded me seriously. “Don’t think that wizard is someone to be taken lightly. There’s a reason he was called Merlin Satanspawn. He was part demon and that might have been the better part of him. You be careful around him.”

There was a brief knock on the door and when it opened, Dev walked in. He was dressed in an immaculate suit and tie. His green eyes lost their light when he saw me with my dad. His mouth turned down and he strode to the stairs, his stance much more arrogant than before. He was ready for a fight.

“Hello, Harry,” he said evenly, but there was an undercurrent to his words. He was waiting for the rejection he always got from my dad. “I just finished a meeting and I came to pick up my wife.”

“Wife” was said with a nice bit of challenge.

My father shook his head as he stared at Dev. “She ain’t your wife. Not by the laws of this plane, and if you’re going to knock my girl up, one of you better be marrying her legally. As Danny’s death certificate is on file, I’m thinking it’s gotta be you, Dev.”

The arrogance was gone in an instant, replaced with a look of shock. “You want me to marry Zoey in the human fashion?”