Swaddle him and leave him, and when you return here I shall draw you forth unto me.' Whereupon you shall die as I so will it, the Omega finished to himself. 'Leave him at the gathering place I forbade you to sack. The Omega forced himself to give the infant over to his Fore-lesser. His son had to know where they lived so he could go and slaughter them. His son had to know their language and their culture and their ways. He really did not want to let the baby go, but to have this work, his son had to live with the enemy, be raised as one among them. But he could bring a part of himself forward from the genetic pool. He might not have been able to bring a whole new race into being. The Omega had not been granted the act of creation as his sister had, but reproduction had not been denied him. This young in his arms was a miracle, a living, breathing loop-hole. The Omega didn't want to let him go, suddenly. He smelled sweet, but not because he was a lesser. The infant looked up at him, budding mouth working. Up until this moment, the plan had been executed flaw-lessly, starting with the abduction of the female vampire the Omega had inseminated and ending here with this new arrival in the world. His son would do battle in a new way and kill off that race of savages before the Destroyer chipped away at the Omega's being until there was nothing left.

His son was supposed to be a defensive reaction to the the Destroyer Prophecy, a calculated response in the war against the vampires, a strategy to ensure the Omega survived. 'How odd.' 'What?' It was hard to put into words what he was feeling. 'What do you want me to do with her body?' The Omega watched as his son reached out and grabbed hold of his thumb. Killing the mother after she had served him so well seemed ungracious. It's one of their few virtues.' And in this case apropos. 'She didn't survive the birth.' 'Vampires rarely do. And he would have been correct, in a way. Funny, if you had asked the slayer what year he thought it was, he would have said 1983. 'Is the mother dead?' he asked as his Fore-lesser came down the stairs. And yet in this moment, he was transformed. If time had been fixed, he would not be holding his newborn son in his arms. Which was something for which the Omega was grateful. Up until the very second of the present, it was malleable, not fixed.

TIME WAS NOT, in fact, a draining loss into the infinite.

Twenty-five years, three months, four days, eleven hours, eight minutes, and thirty-four seconds ago.

Lover enshrined