Oz sighed in irritation. "I'm not proposing we rearrange our lives around one. The only thing they have to do is exist." He thought he'd been clear enough by mentioning his siblings before he brought it up; he thought she would have known him well enough by now to know that he didn't actually want to be involved in the act of parenting. He could possibly conceive of some distant future where he interacted with a teenage child or a young adult, provided some words that could vaguely be construed as mentorship, but he certainly had no interest at all in spending time with a baby. But no one would really expect him to; even at the best of times fathers were only as involved as they chose to be, and Oz had a wealth of very good excuses to be busy, given that he was running the country. Thomasina would have more expectation, and fewer excuses — but she had hardly let expectations stand in her way in the past.

"Exist and be born with male genitalia," he clarified. "My only concern is succession. Someone will inherit the Dempsey estate after me."

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