Page 34 of Which Witch is Willing?
“You put me down this second, you skunk-licking snake turd! Just cause I agreed to birth some Universe balancing baby don’t mean you need to haul me around like a sack of taters.”
Truly, he hadn’t planned on princess-carrying her out to the garden. Chivalrous shit had always been Julian’s forte. But getting what he wanted? Definitely Nick’s wheelhouse. What he had wanted was to talk to Moira immediately and alone in the wake of her volunteering to play brood mare without so much as a discussion.
As usual, she had balked, refusing first a polite invitation then second, a not-so-polite suggestion to accompany him outside for a walk.
So he’d taken the walk for both of them.
One small problem solved, a sack-shrivelingly large one looming.
“I think you surrendered your right to make demands right about the time you obligated me to knock you up.” He lowered her to the ground feet first, stepping back to avoid the wild swinging of her fist. It gave him something to do, dodging a blow. All the better to ignore the odd tightening the phrase ‘knock you up’ had woken in his chest.
“I didn’t obligate you.” Moira folded her arms across her breasts—disappointingly depriving him of one of his chosen default focal points—as she cocked her hip and her head at an angle that usually meant trouble was coming and fast. “I obligated myself. You just assumed you’d be the one doin’ the knocking.”
Nick took a step backward, his mind infuriatingly empty of all but one soul-shredding thought: was it actually possible this woman was incapable of the honor he would be bestowing on her by even considering putting his baby in her belly?
Nick didn’t like to pace. Or he did, but not in front of people. It was a weakness. An outward physical display of the inner conflict and gave away too much. Just this moment, he couldn’t stop himself from storming the length of the earth witch’s devastated flower bed, his irritation growing with every step.
“Do you have any idea how many women have asked, no, begged me to father their children over the centuries?” he asked, pausing for dramatic effect.
“Not directly,” she said. “For some reason, I just didn’t figure there would be a big line of broads begging for your nut butter.”
She shrugged.
Fucking. Shrugged.
“These are women who changed the course of the world’s history, and out of any man on earth, they wanted to breed with me. Me.”
“On account of they were a bunch of pinchy-faced old harpies with leather twats?”
“Because they wanted their potential children to be born with even half of my intellect. My drive. My physical prowess. My—”
“Staggerin’ humility?” Gentlemanly lack of neck hair?
“Humility doesn’t build dynasties. Humility doesn’t start revolutions or unseat despots.”
“Well neither would our child if I had anything to say about it.”
Our child.
The words pierced him like the flaming arrow he’d once shot into Moira’s chest.
Fatherhood.
Family.
A legacy.
All his long years, this had been denied him. He, who had watched entire dynasties be born, rise, and return to the dust. He who had shaped not only nations, but entire civilizations. He, who had brought about entire legacies, had no legacy of his own.
No heir to carry on his name, as well as his genetic material.
He could see entire empires he had caused to be, but never a child with his own face.
If you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
Everyone thought Nietzche had said that, but it was really Nick.
Just one of the kings, conquerors and philosophers he had influenced over the years.
