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Ra’as
Ra’as headed upstairs when his conversation with Faline was finished.
She had encouraged him to plan a quick trip to the leader’s temporary headquarters with her tomorrow, so that he could present the idea of natural screening.
Ra’as agreed it was a good plan, and he had a plan of his own that he hoped to put into play while they were there.
He smiled to himself with satisfaction.
He and Faline had celebrated with a drink, so it was a bit past the children’s usual bedtime, but he assumed they would be up. It was the weekend, and Emilia undoubtedly indulged them.
Sun gods, I just want to indulge her…
All day long he’d been thinking about last night, fantasizing about what tonight would bring, if Emilia wasn’t crushed with regret over what they had already done.
Coming home with the kids to find her eager to spend time with them had been such a relief. He’d been looking forward to tonight since the moment he’d held her in his arms and swung her around to celebrate her wonderful idea.
He reached the second floor and headed to the kids’ wing. Both their doors were open, but their beds were empty.
That was strange.
He frowned and checked the playroom. It was empty as well.
He knew they weren’t downstairs. He had reprogrammed the lighting and locked up before heading up.
The only places left to look were his own room and Emilia’s. Once in a while, Mimi slipped into his bed when she had a nightmare. Maybe they were both in his bed for some reason?
But he checked and his room was empty, too.
Heart pounding, he jogged up the stairs to the third floor. Surely there would be no reason for the kids to be up here unless something was wrong.
He started thinking about Dyrk’s face after he chastised him for speaking so rudely to Faline, and wondered if the boy was still feeling angry. It hadn’t been his goal to upset him, but children had to learn manners. Emilia had seemed unhappy about it, though.
Her door was partly open, light flickering from within danced on the floor of the hall outside.
He pushed the door open further and sighed with relief.
The kids were fast asleep, Dyrk tucked into Emilia’s right side and Mimi into her left.
Emilia herself was sleeping too, with a disc on her lap, which was projecting an old Hearth Day holo-gram movie. That was the flickering light he had seen from the hall.
He pictured her inviting them up here to lick their wounds after leaving the dinner table unhappily. It was charming to think that she had decided to cheer them up with this old movie, one of his favorites.
And Dyrk hadn’t snuggled up to him like that in years.
The three of them looked so content and peaceful. All his worries melted away as he watched them sleep. And a truly wild thought occurred to him.
This could be my family.
The idea was ludicrous, but he couldn’t seem to shake it. The little Terran girl looked so at home between his two Kotenka children. For all her vulnerability, she made them feel safe and cared for.
His heart throbbed painfully in his chest, and he turned away, cursing himself for his stupid thoughts.
That young woman had dreams of her own. She wouldn’t want to be chained to an instant family.
And he was Ra’as Drayven, not some nincompoop in the dailies who fell in love with his nanny and lost his mind while everyone laughed at him behind his back.
He closed the door behind him without looking back inside, but the image of the three of them was seared in his mind.
Back downstairs, he hastily jotted down a message for her and put it on the refrigerator like he had that morning.
He hated to ask her to work on a weekend without confirming first, but he had to leave practically in the middle of the night to catch the ship with Faline.
And after all, maybe it was best to get some space before he did something he regretted, like confessing his feelings.
