As he walked through the penthouse hallway, his thoughts lingered briefly on Maya, still resting in their bedroom after their extended ti together. A small smile played across his lips. Ti manipulation certainly had its advantages.
He ruled her.
Wait—that wasn't right.
Parker paused mid-stride, shaking his head to clear the dissonant thought. The ti distortion must have affected his perception more than he'd realized.
He entered the living room where the others were gathered. Nyxavere and Seraphina, his daughters, occupied opposite ends of the sofa—Nyxavare reading intently while Seraphina scrolled through her phone. Atalanta lounged in an armchair by the window, seemingly lost in thought.
Bella supervised the final breakfast preparations with her usual precision, directing staff with subtle gestures.
He squared his shoulders and continued forward, the very air rippling slightly with each step. The Ravencroft penthouse—and indeed all of New York—trembled subtly in his wake, reality itself acknowledging his passage.
Ere, ever vigilant, lifted her head as Parker entered. Her dark eyes t his, communicating silent awareness of everything happening within and beyond the penthouse walls.
"Morning," Parker greeted them, his voice carrying natural authority without effort. "I see breakfast is ready."
*
The breakfast table buzzed with energy that had nothing to do with Parker's cosmic abilities. Maya kept catching his eye across the table, subtle smiles passing between them that carried the weight of last night's revelations.
Seventeen years of waiting had finally ended, and neither could quite hide the afterglow.
Bella, however, seed determined to insert herself into every mont.
She hovered near Parker's elbow, refilling his coffee before he could even reach for the carafe, sliding extra pastries onto his plate with murmured insistences that he "needed to keep his strength up."
Her fingers lingered on his shoulder when she passed, each touch lasting just a beat too long to be casual.
"Jesus, Bella, he's not gonna starve to death in the next five minutes," Maya finally said, her tone light but with an edge that could cut glass. "Maybe let man breathe?"
Bella's smile remained perfectly fixed. "Just ensuring the Prince is properly attended to. It's my duty, after all."
Parker tried—and failed—for the third ti to establish so personal space. "Bella, I appreciate the attention, but seriously, I'm good."
"Of course you are," Bella agreed, promptly ignoring him by adjusting his napkin.
Parker shot a bewildered look at Maya, who rely raised an eyebrow as if to say, "Welco to my world."
He turned his attention to Nyxavere, expecting his usually territorial daughter to be shooting daggers with her eyes. Instead, she was casually buttering toast, seemingly unbothered by Bella's one-woman Parker fan club routine.
What the actual hell? Nyxavere normally went nuclear if anyone so much as stood too close to him. The girl once "accidentally" annihilated an entire realm when a princess had complinted Parker's eyes. Yet here was Bella practically sitting in his lap, and Nyx was... smiling?
Sothing was definitely up.
"Ti to hit the road," Parker announced abruptly, standing so quickly that Bella nearly toppled over.
The transition from breakfast to limo involved the usual chaos of a family that was both extraordinarily powerful and embarrassingly normal.
Atalanta couldn't find her tablet. Seraphina was complaining about the sunlight with the dramatic flair only a teenage vampire could muster. Ere kept disappearing into shadow patches and reappearing in unexpected places, nearly giving a bellhop a heart attack.
By the ti they all piled into the stretch limo, Parker felt like he needed another seventeen years of solitude just to recover from breakfast.
"Scoot over, squirt," he told Seraphina, helping her into the middle seat and pulling a sleek black thermos from his jacket. "Figure you're probably starving by now."
Seraphina's eyes lit up, going slightly crimson around the edges. "Oh thank God, I'm literally dying. Being all polite while everyone eats pancakes was torture."
She grabbed the thermos with both hands, unscrewing the cap to reveal the rich, dark liquid inside. Most parents worried about their kids getting enough vegetables; Parker worried about his daughter getting enough hemoglobin.
"It's fresh," he assured her. "Made it myself this morning."
That wasn't a figure of speech. Since his transformation, Parker's cosmically enhanced body—what the ancient texts might call his Astral Corpus Infinitum—produced blood at a rate that defied dical science. A few pints drawn daily didn't even make him lightheaded, his divine tabolism replacing it almost instantly.
For Seraphina, newly turned Draven and struggling with her Draven vampiric abilities and ever spilling powers, it was the perfect solution—high-octane supernatural blood without the moral quandaries of traditional feeding.
"You're the best dad ever," Seraphina declared, latching onto his arm while sipping from the thermos. "Like, no cap, absolute GOAT."
"Pretty sure that's the first ti an existence entity has been called 'no cap,'" Parker replied dryly, though he couldn't help smiling.
Before he could get too comfortable, Nyxavere slid into the seat on his other side, imdiately claiming his free arm and leaning against his shoulder with practiced ease.
"Family selfie ti!" she announced, pulling out her phone and positioning it at the optimal angle. "Smile, Daddy!"
Parker blinked at the sudden phone in his face. When had his forrly brooding, world-domination-plotting daughter beco a social dia fiend? The cosmic rebirth had changed them all, he supposed.
"You're posting this?" he asked as she snapped several photos in rapid succession.
"Duh. My TikTok is blowing up. 'Life With My Godlike Dad' is totally my aesthetic now." Nyxavere was already tapping away, adding filters and text. "There! 'My lovely Father!' with the heart-eyes emoji. Perfect."
Parker peered at her screen. "Wait, you have two million followers? Since when?"
"Since I posted that video of you accidentally making the Empire State Building float for three seconds to avoid manuevering." She shrugged. "People thought it was amazing CGI."
Parker groaned. "Great. My cosmic fix-ups are entertainnt now."
"Hey, at least I'm not posting thirst traps like Bella's Instagram."
From across the limo, Bella's head snapped up. "My account is a sophisticated exploration of fashion and culture!"
"Your account is thirty percent cleavage and seventy percent 'accidentally' getting Parker in the background looking hot," Maya corrected with a snort.
Parker nearly choked. "I'm sorry, what?"
"Oh yeah," Seraphina chid in, licking a drop of blood from the corner of her mouth. "Aunt Bella's whole feed is basically 'Oops, didn't see you there, Parker, while I was posing directly in front of you wearing almost nothing.' It's mad cringe, daddy."
Bella's normally perfect composure cracked slightly. "That is a gross mischaracterization of my content!"
"Girl, your last post was literally you in a bikini with Parker reaching for a napkin behind you, captioned 'Breakfast essentials.' The man was just trying to clean his lips!"
As the bickering escalated, Parker closed his eyes and leaned his head back. On either side, his daughters remained firmly attached to his arms—Seraphina happily drinking his cosmic blood while Nyxavere docunted everything for her millions of followers.
Sowhere in the mix, Ere had materialized at his feet, her shadow-form sprawling protectively across his shoes.
Parker couldn't rember the last ti he'd even looked at his own social dia accounts.
He'd set them up on a whim weeks ago—back when he was just a normal guy with abnormal problems—but he'd never found the ti or inclination to use them. Now, apparently, his entire family was internet famous while he remained blissfully offline.
"Just so we're clear," he announced to the limo at large, "if anyone posts anything about last night jet, I will literally fold the universe in half."
Maya caught his eye from across the seat and winked. "Don't worry. So things are still sacred."
As the limo pulled away from the curb, headed to whatever chaos awaited them downtown, Parker found himself sandwiched between his daughters, watching his extended family bicker and bond, and realized that for all his cosmic power, this—this wonderfully ssy, chaotic, clingy family—might be the greatest miracle of all.
Even if Bella was still being weird as fuck about it.
Away, the Street Rat was ruling the streets!
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