Free The Takeover by Teyla Branton Page A

roof.
    A world where I could give Ritter the baby he wanted without fear that the Emporium would try to take the child for their own purposes. Even with sperm manipulation and oral supplements, there was still a fifty percent chance that any child we had together would be mortal, but I was growing accustomed to the idea of having a child who might not Change. Maybe I could deal with it, when and if the time came. We’d have over thirty years of hope before we knew for sure, and maybe that would be enough. Every day mortals lived and died, reconciled to the short seventy or eighty years allotted them. Ava had adjusted to losing her children and had gone on to have hope in her posterity. Stella was taking that risk now.
    Ritter was ready to move forward. Maybe I was almost there.
    But first we had to deal with the Emporium, and especially this new threat.
    My older brother Chris was in the dining room when we entered, already at the counter where the cook was setting out the food buffet style. Chris’s hair, grown out to his collar, surprised me as it always did, even after several months. He’d worn it short before we’d joined the Renegades, before his wife, Lorrie, had been murdered by the Emporium.
    “I see you kids found more than just the dog,” Chris said, throwing a smile in my direction. It was good seeing him smile again. For a long time, I’d wondered if he would ever get over losing Lorrie.
    “We didn’t let Max go bug anyone,” Spencer said. “He just missed Erin.”
    Said dog was snuffling at my jeans, looking for nonexistent food. I sat on a chair at the long banquet table and scratched his neck. A small clump of hair came out, and I held it out to Spencer without comment. He was responsible for combing the dog, who shed like crazy in the spring.
    “Aren’t you going to eat?” Spencer asked me, shoving the knot of hair into his pocket and heading toward the food at the serving counter across the room. “And where is everyone anyway?”
    “Things are a little busy tonight, that’s all.” I didn’t answer his question about eating. He knew Unbounded didn’t need to eat, but he couldn’t imagine not wanting to. To be honest, the grilled pork chops inside the domed warmer smelled amazing, and they’d taste even better, but my stomach was tight with worry, so it was better not to bother. Instead, I upped my absorption of the molecules in the air, tasting a hint of pork on my tongue and reveling in the subsequent energy coming through my skin.
    Chris came to sit beside me as the children loaded their plates. He didn’t remind them to wash their hands like Lorrie would have. “So,” he said, sitting close to me. “What’s up?”
    “A senator and his family were murdered.”
    His fork sat by his plate, forgotten. “Stella told me about the Burklaps and the missing families. What else do you know? Is that why Ava called the meeting?”
    “We think the man behind the murders replaced Delia Vesey.”
    His jaw tightened. “Stella has to stay out of this. The baby—”
    “No one will risk Stella, so don’t worry about that.”
    The tightness eased. “Good. We can’t lose this baby.” Chris was the father of Stella’s lab-created child, but I knew their relationship had gone far beyond the lab. He was totally and completely in love with her, and despite Stella’s ongoing grief at losing her mortal husband, I suspected she was starting to feel the same for him.
    “Yeah . . . uh, about that. When are you going to tell the children? Stella’s already showing. Kathy will guess soon enough that she’s expecting, and then what? It’s getting harder to keep the secret from them. Every time I open my mouth, I’m afraid I’m going to blow it.”
    “I know. I just worry about how they’ll react.”
    “They love Stella.”
    “They miss their mom.” He ran a hand through his hair, the wrinkles around his eyes reminding me that he was mortal, and I would lose him before I physically aged