Page 20 of Vibing Unity

“I wouldn’t want to. They want to gift food and drink for all the bottomless pits for our wedding. That’s a very generous and amazing gift.” I snorted. “I don’t think they realize just how many Faerie Guardians there are or how much they fucking eat.”

Hudson frowned. “How many are there?”

“Over a million,” Neldor and I said at the same time.

Everyone couldn’t hide their shock, but Darby snapped out of it first. “Tams, that’s like half the amount of the US military and—you don’t have over three hundred million fairies, right?”

Neldor and I shared a look, but I responded. “We don’t give out the number, and we don’t have an accurate number after so many died in the last war.Butour military isn’t just our military.”

“It’s your police, secret service, FBI, and everything else,” Lucca muttered, bobbing his head. “That makes way more sense.”

“And we do have a lot of citizens,” Neldor muttered before taking a sip of his drink. “We’re a whole world. You shouldn’t think of us in terms of one country.”

I shot him a nasty look… Which alerted the others to something big.

“Baby doll, Julian is already a citizen of Faerie and the others are your mates.”

“Yes, but even I agree with this rule, Nel. They’re still dragon, shifter, and…” I glanced at Darby, nodding when he snorted. He’d never been vampire first.

“You guys don’t seriously have over the US in population, right?” Lucca checked. “That would be more than all of the supes around the world, right?” He looked at Hudson. “I mean, right?”

“Maybe not around the world but definitely more than any one species or even all shifters combined,” Hudson muttered. “And that would worry a lot of people. Even if it wasn’t logical.”

Meaning we wouldn’t need even a fraction of that amount to handle all the supes of the world if we needed to.

Or the humans.

“I fucking feel safer,” Julian chuckled, Darby toasting with his glass to agree.

I was glad but confused.

“They’re raised to be afraid of humans ever finding out and the threat they could be against them,” Neldor explained. “Dragons and shifters are different. Dragons are protected by our magic on their mountains that humans can’t really just get up around or near. And shifters can hide among animals. They’re taught other supes are the biggest threat. We’re included in that.”

“If you have hundreds of millions of fairies, I never have to worry about crazed humans chasing after me with stakes again,” Darby said with a dark chuckle. “Fuck, I was terrified of that as a kid. My da used to tell stories like it had happened to him, butthen I learned he was fucking with me, but… We’re taught we could get everyone killed.”

I met his gaze. “Don’t ever have that nightmare again, my mate. I swear to you it won’t ever happen. Now that my people are up to speed—it won’t happen.”

He frowned but then he threw back his head and laughed.

“I’m lost again,” Lucca admitted.

“Tamsin is paranoid and distrusting,” Neldor drawled. “She’s got dirt and the secrets of every leadership you know. Do you really think she stopped atsupes?”

“There are a lot of countries with nuclear weapons that aren’t supposed to have them,” I purred as I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m only paranoid if I’m wrong and I wasn’t. I was off byone, and I bet we’ll still find another one hiding at least one bomb for me to win that bet exactly.”

“Okay you get even more passes anytime you’re upset, my sweet mate,” Julian whispered. “You have so much more on your shoulders than even we fucking know, and we pay attention. Holy shit. Now you’re taking on the job of the UN? Yeah, all the passes.”

I snickered. “I used all of them during my new period womb alignment thing. Even I’m still annoyed how big of a pain I was.”

“I thought you were cute,” Lucca said with a shrug. “I like belly rubs too.”

I splashed him but smiled which had obviously been his goal.

But we still had to deal with the problem. I called Sasha to thank her and told her that we would accept the gift, but we would help or the gift could bankrupt their family. She seemed affronted because it was going to be all of the royal families, but when I asked her how many Guardians she thought we had, she was off by more than half a million.

She accepted my offer.

Gladly.

---