Episode 247: Not Enough Babies (Niels)

He went swimming after his death.

No one else was there, so he pulled all the heat from the water until it was frigid and then forced himself to swim. He needed to get out of here, go be with Talise and their babies. Be functional.

He was probably days away from becoming king, and here he was freaking out in a pool so fucking cold that his balls wanted to drop off just to get away from the water.

Panicking.

He’d been dead. He’d seen his dad and been a complete asshole to him and he had a twin he’d been an even bigger asshole to and now they were going to come back and see that he wasn’t like that.
And his mom wasn’t just dead, she was missing dead. Something was really fucking wrong.

And he was panicking in a pool.

He submerged his face.

In ten seconds, he was going to get out and be calm. He was going to go check on Talise and then see if Meldrick needed him for anything and then, if he was really good, he could come back here and remind his balls how fucking alive they were by freezing them off again.

Ten.

He should’ve made it three seconds, or one second.

Nine.

This water was bullshit.

He climbed out. He could’ve used water magic to dry his body, but honestly there was comfort in using a towel, especially one with a skull and flames shooting out of the eye sockets.

He slung it over his shoulder and used water magic to dry himself anyway, while he walked barefoot through the garden and climbed the stairs up to Talise on the second floor.

Her room smelled so good when he got there – enchiladas. He could smell the sauce and cheese.

Talise sat upright, her back against a poofy purple pillow. “Hi. I have enchiladas and stuff.”

That was a fuckton of food: Enchiladas, brownies, cookies, pre-rolled crepes, tortilla chips and salsa, a veggie platter…

“Did someone else die?” he asked, wary. He went to the foot of her bed and sat so that her feet draped across his lap.

“Someone is being born,” she said. “Someones.”

Yeah, they’d already done that part. He looked over at the machines, where both babies were apparently asleep. He didn’t like that. Ella and Jax had been exhausting newborns and he refused to believe his kids would be any less exhausting. If anything they’d probably be worse.

He forced himself to be calm. Zero knew his shit, and these were Dragon babies. They would be fine.

“That part already happened,” Niels teased her. He started massaging her right calf, because his body would be frustrated by how much sitting she was doing so he figured hers was too.

“So you know that attack tomorrow?” she asked, like it wasn’t the center of everyone’s attention. “Well. Corban and Spence told me about it. Oh, and Corban quit.”

He what?

“So who’s guarding you?”

“Ach. And Spence.”

“Why did Corban quit?”

She grinned. “Because Konrad demoted him to in charge of the whole military.”

Fuck Konrad. Would it have killed him to wait a couple of days?

“Speaking of Konrad…maybe tomorrow my kids with him will exist.” Talise looked up at him through her long eyelashes, her lower lip pinned between her teeth.

“What?” Niels laughed.

“Well.” She folded her hands across her lap. “So the attack. Is about creating babies. Me babies. With men I may have, in some other universe or in this one, been with. Four-year-old heirs.”

“Have you…been…with Konrad?” He had to ask, even though…

“Ew! No. He’s like my dad almost.”

He wagged his eyebrows as her. “Somewhere, he isn’t.”

She laughed. “Ewww, Niels! I don’t want to think about his…stuff.”

Point taken. He leaned toward her and kissed her – first her forehead and then her lips. “Are you okay?”

Obviously not. She was probably panicking like he just had in the pool, and he was such an asshole that he’d been down there and not up here where she needed him to be.

She didn’t seem to mind. She kissed him back. She tasted like blueberry crepe sauce, and for some reason that made him want enchiladas.

“Yeah,” she said after the kiss. “Great. So. You have heirs out there, and they’re coming here. Which is why I needed to speak to you.” She smiled at him, her lips stretched thin. “Niels, I’m magicspecting? Four-year-old yous.”

She was weirdly calmer about this than she was about the pregnancy. He traced the edge of her hairline with his finger. “How many? Boys, or boys with small penises?”

She laughed at least as hard as he’d hoped she would. “Um.” She laughed again. “Probably at least two.” She crossed her eyes like she was in a trance. “The future is unclear. Ask again later.”

He laughed, and melted it into a kiss that merged them for a moment, lost in each other. “I love you,” he breathed. “Whatever else we get, whoever else we get, we’ll be okay. Just extra fun, and no sleep.”

“I have a list of all the rejected husbands, if you’re curious who you won out against.” She picked at fuzz on her blanket, all her anxiety obvious in that one act.

“Yeah?” he teased. “I’m dying to know.”

Who were the future coparents? He could guess a couple of likelies, especially Rhyss and Spence, but the way she talked about it made it sound like there were a lot more than just those two.

“So, Spence,” she confirmed. “We knew about him. And Rhyss. We knew about him. And Dacey…which we knew was out there in the realm of possibilities.” She paused and looked at a little list she had tucked away at her lap. Her hand shook as she read. “A guy named Liam. I haven’t met him, but he just moved here. And,” she looked at the list again. “Nell.”

That was an enormous list of people Talise would have to coparent with. Every sub-family would have its own dynamic, its own little headache of mess for her to navigate.

He was going to make damned sure she never felt alone.

“I’m trying to figure out how Nell made that list,” Niels admitted.

She laughed again. Good. He hoped he was helping her, as much as he could.

“Me too,” she agreed.

He hugged her, so when he laughed at that it shook her along with him, comforting camaraderie or some bullshit.

She was going to panic. Not now, but he probably wouldn’t get much warning, and it was going to be bad.

He kissed her. “What I want to know is how we hooked up in the other reality.”

“Well,” she invented. “Imagine if Spence never asked me to help him not be gay. And so I never went and found Rhyss. But I did go to plays, because I love plays.”

That made a lot of sense, actually. There were probably hardly any realities where he and Talise weren’t an item, because they belonged together.

“Yeah, but I bet it was really romantic and hot and way less lame than okay, how do you want to do this.”

She laughed and then her face lit up with a coy smile. A hopeful smile. “You know, I’m a widow, not your wife…”

Ahh. He’d better not fuck this one up. He wanted it to be perfect.

“Guess I need a new wife,” he teased.

“Maybe you could be really romantic and hot and way less lame with her.”

“I’d have to find her first. Maybe one of my fangirls…”

She got up and walked over to where the babies lay in their incubators, still incubating, still asleep. “I know of this one,” she whispered. “She’s really into you, but she has a ton of kids. I think she sleeps around a lot. Maybe not wife material.”

Hang on…

He drew her closer to him, spun her until her body collided gently with his. “Is that how you see yourself?”

“No, but it’s how everyone else is going to.”

He scowled. “It isn’t. Not people who know you. We should spin it differently somehow.”

“Yeah,” she said, morose. “Maybe we can say Maelchor gave them to me.”

“He so did,” Niels insisted. “It’s really a blessing. We need fertility and you’re fucking badass at it.”

She hugged him, tight. Like so many hugs before, it was easy for him to lose track of the world and his own worries.

“You’re amazing, Niels. Really amazing. I know this list is…suck.”

He wasn’t the one with a line of women he couldn’t imagine himself ever touching.

He reached for her hand, so they could face this together. Always together.

He needed to remember that and find a way to tell her about his twin. After the attack, maybe, except she didn’t keep stuff from him. After he got Viggo and Cille, then.

If he had the guts to actually bring it up.

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