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“You are,” Jesse said, simply.
A calloused finger traced the skin around my eyes until I opened them.
Roark stared back from inches away, worry lines spreading across his raw expression. "You really are, love."
A sharp twinge pinched my chest and stuttered my breath. “And you are mine.”
If the roles were reversed, I couldn’t fathom letting one of them die to save the faceless humans of future generations. The integrity and goodness in the men I loved was certain. I couldn’t say the same about the men this cruel world would breed going forward.
No one said a word as Jesse rehashed the validity of the prediction and the looming what-ifs he and I had already discussed.
When he finished, the silence dragged out for an eternity. It was more uncomfortable than I’d imagined it would be. Neither Roark nor Michio commented on Jesse’s conviction about the child being his. And they didn’t ask for my thoughts on the vision, which hovered somewhere between horror, confusion, and overwhelming indecision. In turn, I didn’t prod them to voice theirs. I wanted each of them to come to terms with this on his own.
Eventually, Roark broke the silence. “Not that it matters, seeing how I’ve only been sexually ravaged once in me life.” He slid me a smirk that quickly flattened into a sober line. “I’m infertile.”
“What? How?” I studied his pensive eyes and followed his gaze across the moat.
Michio stood tall and foreboding, like the rock structure behind him. “When he was imprisoned on Malta, I ran some tests on his sperm.”
My breath left me. “What the flipping fuck?”
“With my permission.” Roark squeezed my hip. “The good doctor made some valid points about ye being the only surviving woman amid the dwindling human race.” He shrugged. “So I splooged in a cup and let him poke around me clackers.”
“His sperm ducts are damaged,” Michio said. “Whether it’s genetic or a problem during development, his tubes cannot transport sperm.”
Was the flutter in my chest from relief? Or apprehension? Roark never expressed desire for kids, so this was an advantage for him, really. He could have me without worrying I’d get pregnant and die. That was, if he gave up the whole celibacy thing.
I shared a look with Jesse and knew he was thinking the same thing.
Michio shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at the murky water between us. “I don’t have the proper equipment to validate if my fertility has changed after the bite, but Tallis and Georges were able to find a home sperm test.”
The pharmacies might’ve been picked over, but it made sense that fertility products were left behind. But where was he going with this?
He looked up and met my eyes. “I used it on myself the last night we were in the mountains.”
“Why? Until now, you didn't know about the prediction. Yet you checked this a week ago?”
“I’m going through so many changes, I had to know.” He looked away, scanning the field at my back, then returned to me. “I had to know if I could still father a child.”
His guarded tone produced a cold sweat on my spine. He did this test after our argument about children.
I wasn’t sure what to make of that. “And?”
“My sperm count is zero.” His voice dropped, low and pained. “An apparent effect of the bite.”
My heart constricted. Knowing how badly he wanted a child, a heavy pang swelled inside me, made worse by the physical distance between us. I ached to wrap my arms around him. “I’m so sorry.”
His chin dipped. “The home test is ninety-five percent accurate, but sperm count is only one factor in a man's fertility. I need to run more tests.”
“Fertile or not,” Jesse said, switching the gun to his other hand without lowering it, “you are not fucking her.”
Michio’s head snapped up, and two white points glimmered menacingly between his lips. “That’s Evie’s decision, not yours.”
“Some massive set of teeth ye got there.” Roark rolled back a shoulder, casual as can be, but I didn’t miss the tightening of his fingers as he dangled the sword. “Ye could eat a face through a fecking letterbox.”
“I would never harm her.” Michio remained as still as a statue.
My lungs burned as I breathed in the stifling atmosphere, the air thickening with the gravity of Roark’s and Michio’s infertility. It meant Jesse didn’t necessarily have supernatural baby-making genes. No, the startling revelation was, of my three guardians, he was the only one who could impregnate me. Just as Annie prophesied.
A pregnancy I wouldn’t survive. We were all thinking it, and the moat dividing our group grew tenuous. I knew, could feel it brewing deep in my core, that Michio was a desperate breath away from jumping the water to get to me. Then what? I wasn’t sure.
He stared at me for a long moment, long enough to signal a tinge of fear to my brain. Run.
