Page 128 of Falling in Love with A Tiny Bat

Rolling onto my side, I peer across the miles between us, at the faint shape of her. I trace it with my eyes. I imagine pulling her into my arms, letting our legs tangle while I sample the salt on her skin and decide whether or not I can add it to my list of safe foods.

The images alone are intoxicating, and I spend an incalculable amount of time drowning in them.

Since I’ve been lying awake, I hear Ash’s whimper before it’s fully realized, so I rise and sweep him from his fresh dirt pile before he has a chance to disturb Zahra.

“There, there… Daddy’s here,” I murmur. “What seems to be the problem, munchkin?” For some inexplicable reason, he is experiencing pain. Given my comfy bunny onesie, my hands are still bare when I cup his little cheek.

His flesh burns my fingers.

Dread swallows my heart.

Ash’s weak whimpering doesn’t settle as he angles his body toward me, pleading for help. Shallow breaths move through him while his skin blazes, and I identify that something is definitely wrong.

Softly, I swear.

Chapter 33

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Numbers 32:23…

Like a foreboding sentry, Pollux looms above Ash’s crib while I battle the turmoil rioting in my chest.

He’s sick.

He’s sick.

Alexios woke up around three and learned my baby had afever, so he took my little boy downstairs and stayed up with him the rest of the night.

The tiny bat bunny mandid not think to wake me.

Working through my emotions for thestupidtiny bat bunny man, praying for good news from Castor about Dani,andmy baby being sick is a bit much to manage all at once, don’t you think, Sir? Look at me, I’m no longer a fully-fledged being. I am merely a ball of tightly-wound nerves.

It’s been thirty minutes since I stumbled, yawning, down the stairs and found Alexios barely conscious in the living room. He looked at me, bleary, and murmured, “Ash is sick. His fever hasn’t broken all night. I think we should call Pollux. Talk me out of it.”

I, obviously, did not.

I lost all my good emotional-suppression and yelled at him, panicked, talking myself in circles over how he couldn’t be bothered towake mewhenmy babyis so sick he thinks we shouldblow our cover to Pollux.

Needless to say, Alexios and I are fighting right now.

He’s just a little too sleep-deprived to realize.

Instead of diagnosing my little boy and telling me everything is going to be okay, Pollux turns his glare on Alexios and grumbles, “How?”

Eyes barely cracked, Alexios mumbles, “As if I’d tell you.”

“Have you apologized to Pila?”

Alexios frees a distant, hollow laugh.

Pollux releases a dark, disapproving sound.

“Pollux.” I grip Ash’s crib and look up into the towering, large man’s ink-painted eyes as they fix on me. “Chastise us later.”

Letting his tightly-wound shoulders droop, Pollux leans into Ash’s crib and scoops my weak baby into his arms. He takes him to the window, stands in the sunlight, and begins a grueling inspection that perhaps lasts a glorious three minutes.

At the end of it, the man says, “Yeah, he’s sick.”

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