by L.H. Cosway
“Finn, I—”
“It’s okay. I see how you look at them. You’ve missed them like crazy. I can understand that you’ll want to stay here. If I could have gotten my mother and sister back, I’d want to spend every second I had with them, too.”
“Finn, just stop. Yes, I’ll be living with my parents, but that doesn’t mean you’re losing me. God, I mean, after all we’ve been through, after all we’ve spoken about, how could you think that? I’ve seen our future, and in that future, we’re together.”
I shrugged and tightened my jaw. I’d never been good with emotional crap.
She pulled my face to hers so that her mouth was above my ear when she whispered, “I’ve fallen in love with you. I want to be with you for the rest of my life, you silly man.”
Something caught in my throat, causing me to swallow hard. “What?”
“I said, I love you,” she answered, eyes looking back and forth between mine with uncertainty as though waiting for something. Then, like a sledgehammer, it hit me.
She was waiting for me to say it back.
It took me a couple of seconds to find my voice. “Shit, isn’t it obvious that I love you, too? I can hardly keep my eyes off you when you walk into a room.”
She giggled and rested her head in the crook of my neck. “Well, that wasn’t the most romantic way for you to declare your love for me, Finn, but at least you said it. I was beginning to think it was all one-sided.”
I cupped her cheek in my hand, pulling her mouth to mine and kissing her long and deep. A warm, foreign sensation spread through my chest. I’d been on my own for so long that I forgot how it felt to have someone. To belong to them unequivocally.
We were interrupted by the sound of her mother stepping into the room and clearing her throat. Beena’s eyes danced as she took in the two of us together, and I was relieved that she approved of my relationship with her daughter. Now I only had her father to contend with.
Beena set the cups and teapot down on the coffee table that had managed to survive getting damaged when the house was trashed. Tom returned, shoving his mobile phone into his pocket and rubbing at the stress lines on his forehead.
“Well, that’s all taken care of. They’re sending someone out to inspect the damage tomorrow.”
“That’s good, love,” Beena said, pouring the tea.
Tom’s eyes narrowed when he noticed Alora sitting on my lap. Embarrassed, she quickly scooted off and sat on the other side of the sofa. I wanted to smile, but I held it in. We made polite chit chat for a couple of minutes, and I almost spilled my tea everywhere when Beena let out a loud gasp. Turning my head, I found that Alora was having another vision, her body going into convulsions.
I pulled her into my arms and waited for the shakes to ride out.
“It frightens me every time this happens to her,” Beena said with an anxious expression. Tom rubbed his wife’s shoulders to calm her down.
“You don’t get visions like Alora does?” I asked Beena a couple of minutes into the episode. Alora’s convulsions were still going strong.
She shook her head. “No. I’m an empath. I read people’s emotions.”
“Oh.”
“I can see the depth of your affection for her. I’m glad she’s found someone that feels the way you do about her.”
Just before I got the chance to ask what she saw in Alora’s feelings for me, the woman in my arms stopped shaking and blinked open her eyes.
“Hey, Goldy,” I said softly. “You okay?”
She nodded and sat up, asking her mother for a glass of water. I rubbed her back and whispered soothing reassurances in her ear.
“I think we need to go and see Tegan,” she told me after she downed the water her mother got for her.
I furrowed my brow. “Why?”
“Because I saw something about her baby.”
Tegan
“What do you think?” I asked Rita as we both sat in the back of Ethan’s new car. We were parked on the road outside her house. Construction had just been started to repair the damage done by the fire all those weeks ago.
“Well, it’ll certainly beat living in that RV. I might be a small woman, but even I need my space.”
“The house should be as good as new within a couple of months,” Ethan said from the front.
“Oh, before I forget, I want you to look at these spell ingredients,” I said, pulling out the list Emilia gave me before she died. “Emilia said that if I take this every morning and night my baby will survive the birth. Was she telling the truth?”
Rita took the list from me and looked it over. “Hmm, there’s nothing suspicious looking on here. It should be alright for you to take it.”
I sighed in relief. “That’s good news.”
“It looks like your dear bunică did one kind thing for you before she died,” Ethan said.
A tiny trickle of grief settled in my belly. Now that she was gone, I regretted some of the things I said to her when she was alive. I knew she was hardly going to be getting any Grandmother of the Year awards, but maybe I could have tried harder to have a friendship with her.
“Yeah, I guess she did,” I finally replied.
We spent another few minutes watching the builders work on Rita’s house before my stomach started to rumble. Ethan chuckled affectionately. “Sounds like somebody’s hungry.”
“I’m starving,” I admitted. “And do you know what I’d love right now?”
“Tell me, and your wish is my command.”
“The biggest, greasiest, unhealthiest cheeseburger we can find,” I said.
“Oh, I could definitely go for a burger, too,” Rita agreed.
“So, it’s settled then,” Ethan said before he started the engine and pulled away from the side of the road.
***
I broke my personal record when I managed to stuff my face with three huge burgers. Rita and Ethan watched me eat in amazement. The funny thing about being pregnant with a dhampir baby was that you could eat and eat and you hardly ever felt full. The energy was burned up too quickly.
We arrived back at the house just after lunchtime and found Alora and Finn waiting for us in the living room. Everybody moved out of Ethan’s yesterday and went back to their own homes now that the danger was gone, so I wasn’t sure what they were doing here.
“Alora had a vision about you,” Finn said as I took a seat. Ethan perched himself on the armrest beside me, rubbing soothing circles into my back.
I looked at Alora expectantly, and she began to speak. “It wasn’t actually about her, Finn,” she corrected him before focusing on me. “It was about your baby.”
Instinctively, my hand went to my stomach, where a round bump had started to grow.
“Remember when I said I saw you in the future with a little blonde girl who would one day rule Tribane?”
“Yes,” I replied, my heartbeat speeding up.
“Well, it was your daughter. She’s the one from my vision. I was right when I felt like she hadn’t been born yet.”
My eyes flicked to Ethan’s and then back to Alora. “So, you saw me with her, does that mean we’re both going to survive?”
“If my vision was correct, yes.”
“What do you mean ‘if’?” Ethan questioned.
She coughed to clear her throat. “Sometimes I see things in the form of warnings. So, if a certain sequence of events comes to pass that’s what will happen. I had a vision a couple of days ago where Theodore released his chaos on the city and the humans died as he’d planned. But in reality, Roman intervened and that didn’t happen. In your case, I’m guessing that if the both of you survive, your baby will become a ruler one day. If you don’t, then something else will happen instead.”
“But it’s highly likely your vision is correct, right?”
“Yes. My visions have come to pass as I see them more often than not,” she said reassuringly.
Somehow though, I wasn’t as reassured as I wanted to be. Ever
since I found out I was pregnant, there’d been a sense of dread at the back of my mind, a feeling that this was the beginning of the end for me.
But maybe that was just me, always looking for the negative as opposed to the positive.
“You’re tired,” Ethan said, cutting through my morbid thoughts. “Let me bring you upstairs for a nap.”
I nodded and let him lead me from the room after I thanked Alora for being truthful with me on what she saw. I wanted to be realistic about this. I didn’t want anybody giving me false hope.
When we reached our room, Ethan pulled back the sheets, ordering me to strip off.
“I thought I was taking a nap,” I replied flirtatiously.
He smirked. “That was the plan, but if you have something else in mind, I’m all for it.”
All of a sudden, I had just the remedy to take my mind off my troubles. I pulled my T-shirt over my head, but what I intended to look suave and sexy just ended up being awkward, since I was wearing a splint on my broken finger. Ethan had a human doctor come to the house and fix it up for me, seeing as how I was cut in a few places and he couldn’t trust a vampire not to get all lusty at the scent of my blood.
Deep chuckling rumbled out of Ethan’s chest, and I scowled at him when I finally got my top off. His chuckling ceased when he got a load of my lacey bra, which quickly became my lack of a bra when I reached around with my good hand and unclipped it.
Less than a second later, his face was in my breasts, nuzzling tenderly. He scooped me off my feet and laid me carefully on the bed. Before he would have thrown me down roughly, but not now. Now he handled me as gently as he would a snowflake he didn’t want to crumble.
When we finally got all our clothes off and he sank himself into me deep, I threw my head back and closed my eyes. His lips traced a path along my neck, sending tingles shooting down my spine.
“I love you, Ethan,” I whispered almost incoherently.
His hips move in and out, his body like a solid work of art.
“I love you, too, lumina mea,” he answered fiercely, cradling my face in his hands, his eyes tracing my every feature as he made love to me tender and slow.
20.
Tegan
I woke up hours later in Ethan’s arms, his fingers running affectionately through strands of my hair.
“When you’re up to it, could you tell Rita I want to talk to her privately in my study?” Ethan asked, sensing I was awake.
“Sure. What’s it about?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“Cryptic much?”
He only smiled in answer, knowing I hated being left in the dark about things. I stretched my body out and rose from the bed, rummaging for some clothes from the wardrobe and throwing them on haphazardly. I found Rita in the living room, flicking through the stations on Ethan’s flatscreen television.
“His lordship would like a private word with you in his study,” I told her, leaning against the doorframe.
Her eyes widened as she clicked a button on the remote and the screen went blank. “Oh, yeah? Do you know why?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. He’s being all Johnny Tight Lips about it,” I replied sulkily.
Rita laughed and stood up. “Well, I’d better go and see what it is then. Promise to tell you all the deets when we’re done.” She winked and disappeared from the room. And I mean she actually disappeared. Show-off.
That was definitely going to take some getting used to.
In the kitchen, I find a box of Turkish Delight, the fancy kind that was dusted in powdered sugar. I sat up on the countertop and popped one into my mouth. The house felt way too empty now that everyone but Rebecca had gone. Ethan grudgingly accepted that Delilah would live in the old house across the street from Finn’s place, and I was glad for her because I knew she’d been dying to have some independence.
Ethan also released Marcel from the basement, but only to exile him from the city. He told him that if he ever stepped foot in Tribane again, he’d be killed on the spot. Marcel just seemed grateful to be let out of the basement, agreeing that he would be gone before the day was through. Ethan told him he had three hours. Marcel didn’t argue.
There was a knock at the front door, so I jumped down off the counter to answer it, glad for the distraction. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Ethan might be discussing with Rita. When I opened the door, I found all my friends camped out on the step waiting to be let in.
“Uh, what are you all doing here?” I asked, stepping aside so that they could get by me.
“Cristescu told us to come for a meeting. He said he has something important to discuss with us,” Finn explained.
“Well, well, well, isn’t this all very intriguing,” I replied, folding my arms across my chest. I noticed Alora standing next to Finn, his arm tight around her waist, and I gave her a warm smile. I sensed that whatever there was between those two, it was serious. Definitely not a casual fling.
The living room was a riot of curious chatter, and I went to grab some drinks for everyone while we waited. Lucas followed me to the kitchen to help.
“So,” I said, eyeing him shrewdly. “You and Amanda, huh?”
“Is that a statement or a question?” he asked, his lips curving in a smile.
“It’s a question and you know it.”
He sighed and shook his head. “Yes, Tegan. We are an item, but I’m taking it slow. I plan on making this work.”
I pointed an unopened beer bottle at him. “You’d better.”
His grin widened as I continued taking drinks out of the fridge. I grinned right back at him. I had no way of predicting whether he and my friend would live happily ever after, but at least I had the reassurance of knowing Amanda drank my potion, so if Lucas did end up biting her, he’d be in for a big surprise.
I patted him on the shoulder. “Come on, then. Help me bring these drinks inside.”
“Happy to oblige.”
About twenty minutes later, Ethan and Rita emerged from the study. Rita bounced on the balls of her feet like she couldn’t contain her excitement while Ethan was his usual, unreadable self. He stood by the fireplace, and Rita took the spot beside him.
“We have an announcement to make,” Ethan said. “I have come to realise that this city cannot go on any longer with a divided population. Having two opposing sides living in such close proximity to each other is a disaster just waiting to happen.”
“A ticking time bomb about to explode,” Rita elaborated. When she was met with silence, she added, “What? Is it too early for bomb jokes?”
“Hey, you killed Theodore for us. You can make all the inappropriate jokes you want,” Finn said with a soft chuckle.
“So,” Ethan continued, “I have come to the realisation that we need to be united, vampires, dhampirs, witches, warlocks, and all other supernatural species who dwell here. That is why I have sought out Rita. For now, I want to share my position as ruler with her. Over time, we will create a council with a representative from each supernatural grouping, with the aim of making decisions and living in harmony together.”
Oh. I stared at Ethan, open-mouthed, and to be honest, pleasantly surprised. I knew he was never a huge fan of ruling, but I didn’t expect him to want to divide the role like this. I never even considered the idea of combining forces, of creating a council. A sort of supernatural government, if you will, but it made perfect sense.
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Finn said enthusiastically.
“And me,” Lucas added, while everyone else made noises of approval.
“The city is in a state of disarray right now,” Ethan went on. “We need to rebuild, and once stability has been secured, we endeavour to create the council. Since vampires and the magical families have the largest numbers, we will start with a leader for each. Once we have brought about some semblance of unity, we can branch out to include the other minorities.”
“I don’t mean to throw a spanner in the works, but w
ill the magical families even want to follow Rita?” Alvie asked tentatively. “Not too long ago they all shunned her as a wannabe witch.”
“But that is not what she is,” Ethan countered. “She’s a Girard, and now that Marcel has been exiled, she’s one of the few remaining members of that bloodline. They know that she killed Theodore to restore peace, and they are also aware of the power she wields. They will have no choice but to accept her.”
“Well, if you ask me this is the best plan for everyone,” Delilah spoke up. “I don’t think it’s going to be easy trying to make the city whole, but I do think we have to try. Otherwise, there will be another war before the year is through.”
“Thank you, sister,” Ethan said before addressing all of us. “The new Tribane starts here in this room. We, as a group, represent the vast majority of supernatural species living in the city, so if we can agree to this plan then it is a good omen for what is to come.”
A very short silence elapsed before I stepped up and hugged Rita and then Ethan. “You have my vote.”
“And mine,” Alvie said.
“Mine, too,” Gabriel added.
Soon everybody was agreeing to Ethan’s plan and more drinks were brought out to celebrate. Obviously, I stuck to orange juice, but it filled me with a deep sense of joy to see everyone getting along. Whenever I used to think of this city, I saw it as place that would always be immersed in turmoil. But now I saw light at the end of the tunnel. I saw how this might work.
A band of worry that had been tight around my heart released and a feeling of hope replaced it.
Pulling myself from my thoughts, I left the room where my friends were celebrating to go and make an important phone call. I locked myself in Ethan’s study and took a seat at his desk. Earlier today, I looked up the phone number to the care facility where I suspected Rebecca’s mother was living. It was a group home for people with mental illness called Maplewood House.
The phone rang several times before a prim female voice answered, “Maplewood House?”
“Hi, um, I’m looking for a resident living with you there. A Felicity Pamphrock?”
There was a long silence before the woman replied, “She stopped going by Pamphrock many years ago.”
