"You can bring a friend to hold your hand, if you want, but since we may have to do a pelvic exam, it should be a close friend."

Pelvic exam, shit. "At least one of them will be close enough to stay in the room. The rest can wait outside."

"The rest?" He made it a question.

"At least one boyfriend, maybe more, and bodyguards."

"Bodyguards? Are you in danger?"

"Almost always, but this isn't. . . it's not like bad guys trying to hurt me, or anything. Let's just say that I think this will be a pretty stressful visit for me, and for the foreseeable future I shouldn't be going anywhere stressful without muscle."

"Is that supposed to be a riddle?" he asked.

"Not on purpose," I said.

"You're usually pretty straightforward, Anita."

"Sorry, but this isn't something I can really explain on the phone."

"Okay, does it affect your health, and this situation?"

I thought about it, then said, "Maybe, yes. I guess it does." I realized if I shapeshifted for real that I'd lose the baby, and this entire medical emergency would be over before we'd even decided what to do about it. But I just couldn't think of a quick way to explain what had been happening to me. "Can I bring the extra people?"

"Iflsayno?"

"Then we have a problem."

"How many extra?"

"Hopefully no more than four." I did quick math in my head. Two bodyguards, and at least one of each beast I held inside me. "Five."

"Five," he said.

"At least two of them will be boyfriends."

"Potential fathers?"

"Yeah."

"If they're not disruptive, then I guess so."

"If anybody gets disruptive, it's gonna be me," I said, and I hung up on him. It was rude, but my nerves just couldn't take any more talk about it. I was scared, so scared that my skin felt cold with it. Cold? I touched my forehead and tried to decide if I really was cold. If I was, then I was endangering Damian, my poor vampire servant, who was the first of my metaphysical men I started draining energy from, if I went too long between feedings. Was I draining him to death, so he'd never wake from his coffin? I'd tamed the ardeur so that it wasn't as demanding; I could push it off for a few hours,