Zelda leaned further into Alfred, as if she could play things right and just be absorbed entirely into him. She wrinkled her nose and pulled away at his last statement. "Seven?" she asked, eyes wide — her husband was probably joking, but what if he wasn't?

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Alfred looked sheepish. "We never picked a number," he pointed out, though he had deduced from her tone that it was somewhere south of seven. "Not that there's a rush," he added. "I'm happy with the one."

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Zelda, relieved, settled back against him. "He's so young," she said, "We'll figure everything else out later." But she would be damned if she would have seven children — especially given how overwhelmed she was already, because she could not protect Orion all the time, and because some days she was not even convinced the baby liked her.

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"Later," Alfred agreed. She was right — Orion was still so young that sometimes Alfred had trouble conceptualizing that he was a real human person and not just a strange pet they'd adopted. "We've got all the time in the world."

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