Quickening, Volume 1 by Amy Lane

Author:Amy Lane [Lane, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gay, bisexual, LGBT, elf, fae, Vampire, witch, wizard, shapeshifter, werewolf, pregnancy, family life, menage, royalty, Little Goddess, trio, threesome, poly, polyamorous, m/m/f, paranormal, fantasy, urban fantasy, pansexual, new adult, gay marriage, gay fiction, LGBTQ
ISBN: 978-1-63533-439-5
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2017-05-02T04:00:00+00:00

RENNY TURNED cat in her clothes, her tail poking through the leg of her shorts. I’d been anticipating her wanting to talk or something—she’d been trying to draw me into one of those “So how does it feel?” conversations reminiscent of high school students talking about their first sex for weeks.

But not this time.

This time she just leaned against me in cat form and licked my ear. I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and pushed my nose against her whiskers.

“It’s scary,” I whispered under Brack and Nicky’s continuing discussion about going to the authorities because my teacher hated women. “I know I should be excited about babies, but I can’t even think about people in there. I just know my body keeps betraying me whenever I need it, and I worked this whole time to be a good leader, and now my job seems to be to just… gestate. Nobody warns you about that, you know?”

She kept licking my ear, and I scratched her behind her ears. As the SUV rumbled over the great double bridge that spanned the canyon, she became a girl again. I kept my arms around her, and she laid her head on my shoulder.

“Now you did,” she said softly. “Warn me. Now I know. Thanks.”

I laughed a little, my breath fuzzing her ponytail. “I am woefully underprepared for motherhood.” Sometimes you have to state the obvious.

“You have Grace,” she said, not moving. “Bracken’s mom. When you get closer, you’ll start seeing the babies and not the pain.”

I swallowed, and the past summer came back to slam me one more time. “You do remember what happened to the last kid in my care, don’t you?”

It hadn’t been Gretchen’s fault. She’d been assaulted by a vampire pedophile. Horrible, horrible things happened to children who became vampires—and the choice for what to do with them was equally horrible. Keep them in captivity, feral, eating their own regenerating flesh in madness, or kill them cleanly and without pain.

Simple—unless you knew the child, had combed her hair and reminded her constantly about what it meant to be human. Green and I had been lucky. We’d taken her from Grace’s arms, sat with her, and watched the sunrise.

Phillip had bonded himself to her, imposed his will on her to keep her from going feral. We’d had hope, a scant hope, that we could still save her. And then we’d seen her future.

I felt a punch of self-loathing. Phillip needed me. The vampires all needed me—I was bound to them by the mark Adrian had left on my soul as he died—and I was not just unavailable, I couldn’t even keep vampire’s hours anymore.

“Stop thinking,” Renny whispered, turning to kiss my cheek. I half expected her to lick my ear, girl form or not. “You protected us, and we’re your children too. If you do half as good with the people in your tummy, you’ll be fine.”

“I’ve got no image of them,” I told her with a sigh. “All I can hold on to is my next iced coffee.

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