by Noah Harris
Johnny winced. “I was trying to think of a way to tell you.”
Kell laughed, rubbing his pregnant stomach. “You don’t have to. Trust me, I hate the idea of being left up here like I’m useless, but the truth is, I am. The past two times I had to deal with the Vigil, I had to do a lot of running, and some fighting of my own. I can’t do that with this beach ball poking out from my gut.”
Johnny turned, laying his hands gently on Kell’s stomach. “You’re not useless.”
“Out in the world, trying to play negotiator with the Children and fight against the Vigil, I am. Even though I have my powers, I wouldn’t want to use them. I’ve done everything I can to make sure I don’t use my powers at all. The last thing I need is for them to slip the leash at a bad moment and wreck everything around me,” Kell said.
It was said matter of fact, but Johnny still felt a twinge of guilt. “I’m sorry Kell.”
Kell reached up to stroke Johnny’s cheek. “Don’t be, it’s how it has to be in order for this plan to work, I know that. I’m going to worry about you guys every second you’re gone, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stomp my feet and make you take me with you.”
“We should have given you more credit,” Johnny admitted.
Kell chuckled. “And you two have been sweating over how to tell me and when. Did you draw the short straw?”
Johnny shook his head, smiling. “We just thought it would be best if I was the one who told you is all.”
“Oh sure, you two can double team me and get me pregnant, but you can’t do the same to tell me you’re leaving,” Kell said with a grin.
Johnny snorted. “Yes, but the first is far more fun than the second.”
Ash appeared in the doorway, peering across the clearing until he spotted Kell and Johnny. There was a moment of hesitation before the man raised his arm in friendly greeting. Without missing a beat, Kell waved back happily. Johnny could see Ash’s gaze search their faces as they approached, curious about what had been talked about.
“Come on, I’m sure he wants to know if he’s going to get an earful or not, we better not keep him waiting,” Kell said as he began marching toward the cottage.
Johnny followed after Kell, winking at Ash as they approached. The tension in Ash’s shoulders eased at the gesture, stooping over to kiss Kell on the cheek as he passed. Kell beamed up at him, laying a hand on his upper arm. After a pause, Kell pulled his hand back and punched Ash on the shoulder.
“Chicken,” Kell told him as he strolled passed Ash and into the house.
Ash rubbed the spot where Kell had punched him, looking mystified as he glanced at Johnny. “I guess it went well?”
“He already guessed what we were planning, so he was the one who brought it up. I think he knew the whole time and was just letting us squirm,” Johnny told him.
Ash squinted back toward the house. “I swear I don’t remember him being this evil.”
“I haven’t told him we’re leaving tomorrow though. Figured we could wait until he got some food in his stomach,” Johnny admitted.
“Good idea, but you’re the one cooking,” Ash grumbled as he stepped into the house.
Johnny began to laugh, following Ash into the comforting shadows of the cottage.
Dawn came too quickly for Johnny’s taste. In truth, he’d barely slept. He spent the night alternating between worrying what would happen to Kell while they were away and attempting to create a plan for the days ahead. There was only so much he could plot out, but his mind refused to accept that simple truth and settle down. The only real peace he had during the restless night was to curl himself against Kell, holding him and Ash both as he worked to get some sleep.
Kell was quiet after they awoke, but his touches were no less tender, and his gaze no less warm. Humming to himself, he set to work preparing them breakfast, silently bullying Johnny out of the kitchen so he could get on with it. Thinking his mate wanted to have bit of time to prepare mentally for the oncoming goodbyes, Johnny left him to cook.
Ash looked up as he entered the bedroom. “Not cooking?”
Johnny shrugged. “Kell apparently wants to do the cooking, and I’m not going to argue with him.”
“Has he said anything?” Ash asked as he peered down at the duffel bags thrown on the end of the bed.
Johnny glanced back to the kitchen. “I think he’s trying to think of what he wants to say.”
“I fell asleep thinking about what I’d say to him when we left,” Ash admitted.
Johnny raised a brow. “And yet you managed to sleep.”
Ash grinned. “Military.”
Johnny rolled his eyes to conceal his envy. One of the many topics his mind had decided to obsess over in the middle of the night was about what he’d say when he finally struck out with Ash, leaving Kell behind. Everything he thought of sounded weak or forced when he analyzed it. He’d spent the better part of an hour, watching the moonlight move over the bed, trying to find the right words to tell Kell just how he’d feel, and make him believe they’d be alright.
“You tossed and turned, didn’t you?” Ash asked.
Johnny grunted. “The whole damn night.”
Ash smiled. “If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t sleep the whole night. I woke up an hour before you and Kell did and I was never able to fall back asleep. He slept pretty fitfully too.”
Johnny nodded, having been afraid to pry too close into Kell’s mind while he’d been asleep. Opening the door to Kell’s mind might have invited his own thoughts and memories to invade Kell’s dreams. The last thing he wanted was to risk having his worries and fears coloring Kell’s dreams. Worse yet, he didn’t want the glimpses into Ash’s vision to infiltrate Kell’s mind, the less Kell knew about that, the better.
“I can’t wait to come back and hear about the hell Kell gave the other Wards while we were away,” Ash continued.
Johnny laughed. “I can only imagine. He’ll be well behaved at first I’m sure, but then he’ll start asking a bunch of questions, start worrying over the littlest thing. And God save them if they try to keep him under lock and key.”
“Oh, I hope he doesn’t start wandering off on them,” Ash said, suddenly worried.
“I think he’ll understand that he shouldn’t stray too far. He knows what the stakes are, and he’s not going to do anything to risk the twins,” Johnny said.
Ash grunted, turning his attention back to the bag. “So the biggest problem we have right now, is that we don’t have much in the way of supplies.”
“Maya assured us we can take whatever we might need for the journey from here, there’s plenty around here to keep Kell, her, and the visiting Wards fed and cared for,” Johnny told him.
“Well, that takes care of that. I don’t know about you, but I’d like other supplies. We have no weapons,” Ash said.
Johnny grinned. “Don’t you worry about that, if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s get my hands on suppliers. If we get far enough away from the mountain, I can make some calls and get us kitted out.”
If there was one advantage to having lived a life which rode the gray line of morality, and usually just outside the law, it was that Johnny knew how to get his hands on things. If they needed weapons, all he needed was to contact the right people. If they needed information that didn’t come from a Coven or Pack source, he could do that as well. He’d spent so much of the past half a dozen years relying on himself and the resources he had gradually accrued and had never capitalized on. Patiently, he’d built up a quiet network of informants and suppliers, feeling it was better to have them and not use them, then to need them and be without.
Johnny smiled. “Black market dealings it is.”
Kell cleared his throat from the doorway behind them. “When you two are finished talking shop, breakfast is ready.”
The meal turned out to be a simple affair, though Kell had pulled out their small supply of bacon for the occasion. Living on a mountain, while isolated and relatively safe, d
id have its disadvantages. Namely, that despite the bountiful hunting, and wild fruits and vegetables, there were just some things they’d learned to live without or had only sparingly. Bacon was one of those things, and Johnny smiled when he saw Ash’s gaze latch onto the plate, his nostrils flaring as he took a deep breath.
“Going all out huh?” Johnny asked.
“It’s bacon, not a five-star meal,” Kell said.
Ash hummed happily as he sat himself at the table. “You say that like this isn’t a treat for us. When was the last time we had bacon?”
“When we found out I was having twins,” Kell said with a small smile.
That had been a far happier occasion, and the memory made Johnny smile. Kell had left with Maya, a worried frown stitched into his brow. They’d been on the mountain for a few months at that point, and Kell was still a little nervous about going to visit a werewolf healer he’d never met. Upon returning, he’d been all smiles, and Johnny remembered hearing his laughter through the trees before he’d even seen him. The news he’d brought had come as a surprise, and the three of them had celebrated late into the night.
He and Ash ate well, but Kell only picked at his food. The meal overall was quiet, the mood somber. The bacon didn’t survive, with most of it having gone onto Ash’s plate. Even Kell managed to eat his portion, but left most of his eggs and the bread sitting on the plate by the time they were done.
“Kell,” Johnny said softly.
Kell looked up, eyes wide. “Yes?”
Johnny smiled. “Talk to us. You’ve been quiet all morning.”
“I’m just thinking a lot I guess,” Kell said.
“You know you don’t have to keep anything from us. We know you’re not happy about being left behind,” Ash said gently.
Kell shook his head. “It’s not that, I mean, I’m not happy but I’m not going to mope about it. I was actually thinking, the next time you guys are here to eat a meal with me, the boys are going to be here.”
Johnny winced, seeing the same pained expression mirrored on Ash’s face. It was one of the few unspoken facts that he and Ash hadn’t acknowledged aloud. They were leaving just as Kell neared his birthing time, and it was very likely they’d miss it.
“I’m sorry Kell,” Ash murmured.
Kell smiled. “Don’t be, I know this needs to happen, and it wasn’t a sad thought. I was just remembering growing up, in different foster homes. There were all sorts of ways people had dinner, and it was always different house to house. Some foster homes were just catch the meal when you can or dig leftovers out of the fridge. One of them refused to let us eat on anything but TV trays. But the ones I liked the best were like this, with everyone sitting together at the table.”
“Like a family,” Ash said.
Kell nodded. “And we’re going to be a family when you two come back. Our children are going to know what it’s like to be surrounded by the people who love them, and who want to spend time with them. We’ll have meals like this, sitting around the table and talking.”
“Wouldn’t that be a change of pace? Most of my meals growing up were spent in silence. We sat down, said our prayers and then ate,” Ash said.
“Sounds exciting,” Kell laughed.
Ash rolled his eyes. “Sometimes the prayers took forever, and the food would end up cold by the time we got to it. It was only bad when the prayers started focusing on ‘saving’ me. That was about the time when I wanted out. I was never more thankful to see someone of the faith than I was when Minister Stone took me away from that life.”
Kell nodded. “I had someone like that, a father of the Catholic church near my house. Father Deacon, he was a wonderful man who helped me get through a lot. Me and Carson both actually. I didn’t see him again after I moved away, but I never forgot how kind he was to me, and how attentive, even though I wasn’t a churchgoer.”
Johnny watched Kell as he spoke, noticing only the barest flash of pain at mentioning Carson. It was a relief to know Kell wasn’t too haunted by his decision to kill Carson, even if it did still hurt. He knew how hard it had to be, losing one of the few pillars in his life to such an ugly betrayal.
Kell looked at him. “What about you?”
Johnny blinked. “Me?”
“Yeah, did you have family meals?”
Johnny spotted Ash’s cautious but curious glance thrown his way. Despite having shared a lot with Ash and Kell about his past, he’d never spoken of his childhood. Even as boys, Johnny had vowed to throw the life he had before to the back of his mind, and let it rot there.
Johnny cleared his throat. “No, there were no family meals.”
“Catch it when you can?” Kell asked with a grin.
Johnny focused his attention on his empty plate. “Something like that.”
“He’s not very big on talking about his time before the Coven,” Ash told Kell softly.
“Oh, I just thought…it never came up,” Kell said, sounding guilty.
Johnny sighed, looking up. “Don’t be sorry. The truth is, my mother left my father and I when I was young, too young to remember. Can’t say I blame her for leaving my father, he was a terrible man, and even worse when he was drunk, which was often. I was lucky to have any food in the house, as he preferred to spend his earnings on even more alcohol, or trips to the pub.”
Kell’s eyes widened. “He…starved you?”
“I don’t think it was intentional, he simply didn’t care what happened to me. He never wanted me, which he made sure to tell me at least once a day,” Johnny said.
The worst had been the thoughts he’d picked up from his father’s mind. At so young an age, Johnny had never questioned his ability to read people’s thoughts. The ability wasn’t quite as focused as it was in his adult years, but it was enough to know people’s intentions or opinions of him. His father’s thoughts had always been laced with hatred and spite, for himself, and for everyone else. There was always a deep residing resentment toward Johnny, but as a child, Johnny had never understood what he’d done wrong, only that he wasn’t wanted.
He could see the questions bubbling up in the minds of Ash and Kell, and was thankful they remained quiet. Johnny had spent the years after leaving home, trying to forget any of it had ever happened. It was better to start over again, vowing to never become what his father was, and move forward.
Johnny sighed. “In the end, I guess I couldn’t live with him anymore. I was too young to understand what running away would mean, until I did it.”
“Where did you go?” Kell asked.
Johnny gave him a wry smile. “The streets.”
“Jesus, you weren’t very old when you came to the Coven. What, nine?” Ash said in horrified wonder.
Johnny nodded. “Close to ten. I wasn’t on the streets for more than a couple of months before a member of the Coven found me. Turns out I’d been using my magic without knowing it, to pick pockets and steal food without getting noticed. The witch who found me recognized what I was doing and plucked me off the streets.”
Kell frowned. “I’m not complaining, but why send you to the States? They have plenty of Coven groups in the UK from what I was told.”
Johnny shook his head. “They did, and still do. I don’t know exactly why she did it. Right before she told me she was sending me to the US, she stopped talking for a long time. She just…stared at me. It felt like she was reading my thoughts, but there was something else too. It was like she was both seeing me and not seeing me. She snapped out of it and said I would be going far away from there, to be raised where I could learn to use my powers right, with others like me. I wasn’t going to argue with that, and well, you know the rest.”
Ash tilted his head. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
Johnny rubbed his forehead. “I just…it never seemed important.”
“Johnny, you lived with an abusive, alcoholic father who drove a nine year old out to live on the streets before he was rescued. I’d call that pretty important,” Kell said
gently.
Johnny sighed. “I just wanted to forget it. I wanted to move on to my new life, where I could forget where I came from. I didn’t want anyone to know what happened or why I was there instead of going to a Coven group in the UK.”
“God Johnny, that might have made people treat you better,” Ash said.
Johnny scoffed. “Would they? People are people Ash, and the Coven didn’t like me from the start.”
“A lot of people thought you’d been sent to the US because something had happened in the UK. It was only a rumor, but some people thought you’d accidentally killed your family,” Ash said.
Johnny snorted derisively. “Yeah, the adults were quieter about that rumor, but you know how kids are. I had more than one of the kids ask me if I’d done that. I told them no and never elaborated. At the time, it kind of made sense that no one liked me, my own father didn’t. So, I figured it was just how things went. Until you.”
Ash smiled, reaching across the table to take Johnny’s hand. “I knew there was something special about you from the moment I saw you. Everyone avoided you like you’d done something wrong, but you never bothered anyone. The first time I talked to you, I just knew you were going to be my best friend.”
Kell’s sorrowful expression broke into a warm smile. “I can understand that. This is the same man who helped some random scared stranger who nearly knocked him over in the street. I don’t care what anybody thought about you when you were younger, and your father was a total waste of space and humanity. They all missed out on one of the best men I’ve ever known.”
Johnny looked down at his lap, not even looking up when Kell, too, took hold of his other hand. The only people in Johnny’s life who knew the whole of his life story sat at the table with him. He’d always thought it was better to not focus too much on the past, keeping both himself and the people around him focused on the present and future. Yet it had been oddly liberating, telling them about the first years of his life, before he’d known he was anything but a scared and wounded human child.
He looked up, throat working as he squeezed their fingers. Looking back on his memories, he found that it didn’t matter where he’d come from, or what his family had been like. In the end, he had everything he’d ever wanted as a boy, including children on the way. He knew that all three of them would make sure their children had better lives than them and would never go without love and care.
