"It's still sad," she says, hugging him some more.

"Yeah." He hugs her back. "...If you want to keep it, if it's even there and this isn't just a stray craving for French toast and me being paranoid, then the standard procedure is C-section three weeks along."

"That's fast," she comments. "And I don't know what I think yet."

"They're very fast," agrees Nathan. "If you don't do a C-section they chew their way out at about one month."

"That sounds messy."

"Yes. Also, fatal in all known cases."

"We can do it the other way, then," she shrugs. "I wouldn't want you to worry."

"So you do want it," he says.

"Still not sure yet. But if I keep the kid, yeah, we can take 'em out early."

"Okay."

"Weren't you craving French toast," Nathan says weakly, but he hugs her.

She waves a hand. "I unhungried myself," she says. "I want to be hugging you more than I want to be eating."

"I love you, honey," she murmurs into his shoulder.

"I love you, babe."

Snuggggggggle.

"Sure, okay," she says, snuggling him some more. "And let's go back to bed and cuddle there."

He picks her up and carries her to bed for further snuggling. "Well, you met the princess, you saw Henry. Half-vampires wind up with very rigid sleep schedules. Usually they crash sometime in the evening, but some of them are nocturnal or sleep mornings or something instead. They grow fast. About ten times as fast as a human till they're six months old and look five, and then it slows down till they stop growing when they're seven and look somewhere between eighteen and twenty. They don't age after that."

"Huh," she says. "I wonder what's up with the sleep thing."

Nathan shrugs. "Vampires have no choice but to not-sleep all the time, humans have no choice but to do some sleeping but can do it whenever, that's how those traits happen to combine. Half-vamps are about halfway between humans and vampires in most ways, including speed and strength. They can drink blood or eat food, either one, they mostly like blood or the synthetics of it better though. They don't get sick. They heal about like vampires do, but they're more - biological, with heartbeats and needing to breathe and everything."

"What do you think about kids?" she wonders. "I mean, do you wanna have one? Do you wanna have one right now?"

"I have honestly never thought about it before. It was only a few decades back that I knew half-vampires were possible, and when I met you I ruled it out, and when you changed yourself I - didn't think."