"Hey Hamish, I don't think they've seen your new family photos yet." Randal pointed out a group of newcomers to the pub.

"I wasn't really intending to let everyone know we are having the baby just yet. Vera is still trying to figure out how to bring this up to the council."

Gabrielle walked into the pub then walked up behind Hamish and put her hands on her hips. "Alright, what's this about you all got pictures of my niece?"

Randal intersected, "You know i'm a medical student and even I can't make heads or tails of it. Good luck figuring it out."

Haminsh opened his wallet up pulling out the set of three small pictures laying them back down on the table so Gabrielle could see them. She put a hand over her heart and did the typical 'awww' sound. "She's so cute." She narrowed her eyes at the pictures. "Is that like her hand?"

Hamish looked the photo over, "No actually that's not the baby at all. That's Duke Jr."

"Dude, we agreed, the kid is called Fluffy until further notice."

"Excuse you but you are not calling my niece Fluffy. How humiliating."

Hamish shook his head, was everyone fighting over what they were calling HIS child? "First off you keep assuming we are having a girl. We have no idea what we are having, second off we are not calling the baby Fluffy."

"Hamish, come on it's the newest member of the knights. What else are you going to call that thing? Tundra would agree to calling the new pup Fluffy, it's a good knight name."

Hamish shook his head no, "Actually Tundra hates it as much as I do, besides we don't even know if that is how it works. We have no way of knowing if the baby is a…" He looked around a moment. "We don't know if it's a kitten either. Listen there are a lot of unknowns right now and you guys don't need to bring it up to her because she really doesn't need the stress right now. In fact with that said you guys please try to make everything go very smooth at the temple for right now. No being a defiant or disobedient and if you need something come to me first."

"Yeah, we get it, don't upset your wife."

Hamish shook his head no, "She's not my...just please Randal don't be a jerk. Listen I really need to get back to the temple. Alejandro has been all over Vera for weeks and without her powers and now this whole pregnancy thing she's just not in the mood to handle him. I just hope they find out who killed Kepler soon so he can go away already."

Randal shifted in his seat a little. "Oh man, Kepler is dead?" He tried to sound surprised. Well this sucked, about that not stressing out or upsetting Vera. Was he allowed to take a rain check on that?

Vera sat behind her desk shifting around uncomfortably as she picked up her glass and took a sip. Setting it down she slammed her hands down on the top of her desk and stood up unbuttoning her blazer before taking it off and throwing it down with a groan. "Here's to the fallen glory days of having time to myself and fitting into expensive clothes." Vera picked up her ginger ale again and slammed the rest of it down. Flicking her wrist she watched the doors open up as Hamish walked towards them pausing again and sounding a bit concerned.

"Vera? Did you just…" He pointed at the doors and walked into the reliquary. "How did you know I was coming?"

"I didn't." Vera responded. Actually come to think about it she sort of had known he was coming. Weird, she couldn't hear him on the other side, the doors were too thick and yet once he'd gotten too close Vera just knew he was there. Hamish went to close the doors only to have Vera beat him to it again with another wave of her wrist.

"Okay, that's not normal. How did you get your powers back?" Was there something she wasn't telling him?

"I don't have my powers back Hamish." She paused wondering if she should tell him. He might actually get upset if she did so maybe it was best to keep quiet on the subject for now. Vera walked over to him running her finger over the top of her desk and looking up at him with a mischievous little glint in her eyes. She hoped it would at least make him drop the subject as she grabbed his arm and kissed him on the neck but Hamish wasn't about to just let it slide. Grabbing her arms he held her back at a distance.

"Vera, what exactly did you do?"

She turned around walking back to her desk and taking a seat again, folding her hands and setting them on the desk before correcting some papers and licking her teeth. "Well, I may or may not have found a loophole around using magic while Ms. Drake still has mine trapped." She motioned around with her hand. "Wherever they are."

"And what is this loophole?" Hamish was afraid he wouldn't like the answer and he was probably right.

Vera rocked side to side in her chair grabbing a pen off her desk and fidgeting with it. "Well, I found this book." She started with. "The idea was given to me when the um…" Vera cleared her throat not really knowing how to put it because she didn't want to frighten Hamish. "When the baby closed the doors in the vault."

Hamish narrowed his eyes. "Babies can't use magic, you need training to do that."

"And you would be right, babies can't use magic Hamish." She spun back to face him using her pen to point down. "Except for this one did. Do you know what we actually know about you knights having children? Next to nothing because Salvador was the only known offspring of a knight and she's dead now. Not to forget to mention she also had Alpha's pelt so anything that might have been unique to a hybrid was likely erased once the hide bonded with her. There are literally no records, not even one. Nobody knows if the magic that makes the hides what they are and what causes you to physically alter has any bearing on being genetically passed down or magically in this case. However seeing as this baby can and has I figured it was safest to do what was necessary to guarantee Jr here doesn't decide to go slamming doors and disrupting rituals. After all I'm to assume there's something knight-like about them in the end."

First off, she should have told him about the whole incident revolving around their unborn child being able to use magic. How he wasn't even certain, there had to be an explanation for it but as Vera had said the only person with those answers was dead. "So, what did you do exactly?"

"I bound the baby's magic to me."

"Vera you what?" He ran a hand through his hair

"Well, technically I had an acolyte do it but don't worry. I didn't tell them what the incantation was for and also you are welcome. Now our fetus isn't equipped with a loaded gun." It was also a mild benefit that she got to use their magic for the time being.

"You took our babies powers?"

"Technically Hamish I'm borrowing them." She had to correct him because the way he made it sound made her out to sort of be the bad guy in this situation. The way Vera saw it was she was protecting them both.

"Technically Vera is that even safe?" He sounded worried and put his hand over her belly. Sometimes it felt like he was the protective parent and she just sort of felt like nothing could or would go wrong. Maybe she didn't even care.

"So long as we are both occupying the same space at any given moment there can't be any harm to it. The problem arises when you start separating the two people. This gives us plenty of time to get my powers back and maybe finding out how to take this kid down a notch or two before they end up messing something up." Vera looked at Hamish seeing concern on his face, she knew why, she hadn't been that welcoming to the idea of being a mother again. At the end of the day it was a dangerous slope to go down as Grand Magus. Sure it was one thing for the Grand Magus to have kids but it was another to have them with a werewolf who was the orders enemy just last year. "Hamish, come on do you honestly think I'd do something that I thought would even remotely harm them?"

"I just, I worry about both of you. I also worry that sometimes you can be a bit too ambitious and the fact that you are willing to use our own child to use magic again frightens me just a little. You have to admit it's not really what normal parents would do."

"We are hardly normal parents Hamish, you are a werewolf and I'm the Grand Magus. I'd consider it a good thing if we even get through this first trimester without one or all of us being executed by the Gnostic council."

"Vera." Hamish scolded her.

"I'm just being honest."

"Yes well be honest quietly, you know your kid can hear you right?"

Vera rolled her eyes at him for that statement. Honestly? "Hamish, do you have somewhere you need to be?" She waved her hand and opened the doors again behind him. A large part of him wanted to tell her to stop that because it made him nervous but you really couldn't change Vera's mind on most things.

"I'm just saying Vera." She waved him away, god she loved him but he could get so annoying. "Be careful."

"I always am." It was the acolyte's that he needed to be concerned with. They were the ones often prone to dying after all.