“Oh, the babies have been playing hard. They must be nearby,” he said, shaking his head at the room’s destruction. A look of what might have been awe flashed across his features.

There came a tiny noise from one corner, just the slightest sound of bare skin brushing carpet. The man with the purple eyes didn’t really need to hear it to know something was occupying space in that part of the room—something unseen. His exceptional hearing had been tracking two fast little heartbeats since he had entered the room. One in the corner where the whisper of friction had come from and the other bird-fast flutter from directly over his head, up high near the ceiling. He had carefully avoided looking up, but now, at the sound, he did turn his head to take in the corner. There was nothing visible except a large stuffed toy gorilla whose stomach looked like it had been caved in. In fact, the ape’s tummy was pressed inward in almost the exact shape of a tiny human rump.

“You can’t fool me. Gorillas don’t have butt-shaped bellies,” he said with a sly grin. A slight feather of air brushed his forehead and he looked up, muscled arms snapping out to catch the tiny body that plummeted at him from three feet above.

“Got you, Cora. Now it’s time for food!” he said, fingers finding enough tickle spots to make the small girl child giggle.

“No!” another voice said from the corner and suddenly a small boy was there, sitting on the gorilla’s stomach, face frowning in worry and anger. “Cora no food.”

“No Wulf, Cora is not food,” the man both agreed and corrected. “But it is time for dinner.”

Outside the playroom’s floor-to-ceiling windows, the sky was growing lighter as dawn approached.

The little boy still frowned, but his father, holding Cora in one hand, leaped lightly over a mound of toy rubble to land next to the boy. He scooped him up with his free hand, tossing him a foot into the air before catching him smoothly with just the single hand.

The toddler laughed and his sister immediately spoke up. “Me too!”

“As you command, Princess Cora,” her father said, throwing her almost to the nine-foot-high ceiling. Her male twin demanded another toss and so Chris Gordon, God’s warrior on Earth, began to systematically juggle his young children like living bowling pins.

The door behind him opened and a black-haired, blue-eyed beauty poked her head in.

“We’ve got a call from Nika up north. And stop calling her princess. Bad enough so many of the Coven does it, not you too.”

“Hey Nika, what’s the word?” Chris asked the empty air, smirking at his wife’s comment.

“You’re not going to stamp out that prince and princess stuff, Tanya. Especially with Arkady leading the mob.”