by Kristie Cook
“What?” I asked to break the silence.
“They gave you six months altogether,” Charlotte said when Mom didn’t answer. “So, you have two more months.”
“Two months for what?” My eyes bounced between her and Mom, waiting for their answer.
“To become pregnant with a daughter or the council will take it into their own hands,” Mom said darkly. “They’ll split you and Tristan up.”
The air whooshed out of my lungs, and tears sprang to my eyes. Tristan took my hand, and I held onto his tightly as if they were already trying to pry us apart.
“Two months?” I finally whispered. “But . . . but that’s not enough time.”
“I agree, honey, but something—or someone—has them agitated.”
“The traitor,” I said.
“Probably. But they blame it on the Daemoni attacks . . . and other things. They say there’s too much at stake to risk any delays. You conceived Dorian right away, so they think if this is possible between you and Tristan, it’ll happen quickly.”
“And if it’s not possible? Then what?” My tone held an edge as the anger boiled near the surface.
“They want to try Owen.”
“What?” I flew to my feet and paced the room. “That’s ludicrous! What am I—a horse or a dog or something? How does a different stud change anything? I’m the one who’s gone through the Ang’dora. I’m the one who wouldn’t be able to conceive.”
“We can’t be certain about that,” Mom said. “I conceived after the Ang’dora.”
“Okay, then, why don’t you and Owen try? That makes more sense than me and Owen!” I laughed hysterically, throwing my hands in the air. “Or, better yet, how about you and Tristan? That makes all the sense in the world, according to their thinking. Let’s split up the supposed heavenly match, and everyone can fuck each other until we have another daughter!”
Mom pursed her lips, obviously biting back a reprimand. I thought I heard Tristan and Char chuckle quietly, but I wasn’t sure. My head throbbed too loudly with anger.
“This is insane, Mom. We’re supposed to serve God and the Angels, but adultery is acceptable, as long as there’s another daughter? Does that really make sense to you? Does that end really justify the means?”
“Some people would say yes,” Mom said. “In fact, a lot of people would.”
“I would,” Tristan said quietly.
I spun on him. “Seriously?”
He took my hands in his and kissed the knuckles on each one. “Lexi, the future of a whole society relies on your daughter. Every possibility needs to be tried until one is successful . . . or until the Amadis die with you. But when the Amadis die, the Daemoni win. And humanity loses.”
I stared into his beautiful but dark eyes, tears again filling my own. Put that way, we had no choice. I fell back into my chair and doubled over my knees. “So we have two months or they’ll break us up? We’re finally together again, and they’ll cut us in two, just like that?”
Tristan stroked my hair as I cried. How could I lose him again?
“That’s not all,” Charlotte said. She paused with hesitation, then blurted it out. “If the most extreme faction succeeds, you won’t even get two months. They want Tristan removed from the Amadis completely and immediately. They’ve decided he’s the traitor and needs to be eliminated.”
Chapter 16
The tears cut off instantly. Remnants of Psycho Alexis, whom I hadn’t felt since before Tristan returned months ago, emerged. The anger didn’t bubble under the surface now. The entire volcano exploded. I stood and electricity charged through my veins and crackled around me. I almost expected lightning to shoot out of my eyes as I glared at Mom and Charlotte.
My words came out slow and deliberate. “If they dare, they lose all chances of another daughter. If he goes, I go.”
“Alexis.” Mom reached out for me. Electricity charged between us, and she flinched.
I stormed out the back door and ran down the empty beach, covering more ground than humanly possible. Tristan grabbed my shoulder from behind and spun me around, ignoring the electricity zapping between us. I fell into his arms.
“They can’t separate us, Tristan. They just can’t!”
He held me tightly and pressed his cheek against the top of my head, but he didn’t reply.
“We’re supposed to be made for each other. They said it themselves. They wanted us together. Why are they doing this?”
“Not everyone believed it then,” he said quietly. “Fewer may believe it now, especially after what the Daemoni did to me . . . after what happened in the Keys. Maybe they’re right.”
I jerked back. “What are you saying? You don’t think we belong together?”
My heart hammered in my chest, filling the silence when he didn’t answer. Finally, he pulled me back against him. “What I think is irrelevant. I love you, and that’s what matters.”
I leaned my head against his chest. “I knew some of them wanted this, but I didn’t seriously think it would happen. I didn’t think Rina would let it.”
“Lexi, this isn’t about what Rina or you or I want. We have an obligation to the Amadis as a whole. An obligation to all of mankind. Without the Amadis, humanity ends.”
“But not in the next two months. Not in the next two or twenty years. They still have Rina, then Mom, and then me. Lots of time.” I inhaled deeply, the air rattling in my heaving chest, and exhaled slowly, calming myself. “Why are they being so demanding? How can they put a deadline on something that might be impossible? How can they destroy us for it?”
“Lexi, do you love me? Truly love me?” A ridiculous question, but his voice sounded as though he really needed to hear my answer. As if he weren’t sure.
I looked up at him. “Of course.”
He blew out a breath, and I couldn’t understand why he’d been holding it. “Then they won’t destroy us, my love. If we have to leave them for a while until time can prove my loyalty, then that’s what we’ll do.”
“And if Mom is right . . . if this girl . . . this daughter doesn’t exist, and I don’t get pregnant in two months?” I couldn’t say the rest . . . what they expected. So I whispered, “Owen?”
Tristan chuckled, though the sound was void of any joy. “In vitro fertilization, remember?”
Right. That had been my own idea in the past. The reminder calmed me further.
“You’d be okay with raising someone else’s kid?”
“I’d prefer to be the father of your daughter—” He inhaled a deep breath and let it out. When he finished, his voice came out very quietly. “—but we do what we have to.”
I pressed my forehead against his chest, twisting the hem of his shirt around my fingers.
“But if that doesn’t work? What if they make us . . .?” The thought of being with Owen was nauseating. Not only because he was like a brother, but because he wasn’t Tristan.
He lifted my chin with one hand and looked deeply into my eyes, penetrating my heart. “I pray it’ll never come to that, and I’ll do everything in my power to prevent it, but if it does . . . well, the pain would be worse than anything I’ve suffered in my entire long life. It would break my heart. But I would still love you, ma lykita. Nothing can change that.”
My chest squeezed, and my heart swelled at the same time, feeling both the pain and love he expressed. I threw my arms around his neck and pulled myself up against him. “I love you, my sweet Tristan. Always.”
He leaned his forehead against mine. “And I love you.”
“Some anniversary, huh?”
“At least we’re together.”
“Forever?”
“If it’s up to me, yes.”
I sighed. Unfortunately, not everything was up to us, but I would take what I could get. He kissed me, then took my hand as we walked slowly back to the house. It was farther than I thought—I’d run half a mile in the twenty seconds before he’d stopped me.
We entered the house through
the rear door right as Owen walked through the front door.
“That was a mistake,” Owen said darkly. “We have a problem.”
Mom and Charlotte appeared in the hallway, halfway between Owen and us.
“Where’s Dorian?” I asked.
“Come outside and see for yourself. See what he did in front of everyone. Thank God there weren’t any Normans around.”
We all followed him out the front door and down the steps. When we reached the ground, Owen turned and looked up. I followed his gaze, and my heart jumped in my chest. Dorian stood on the edge of the second-floor roof.
“Dorian! What are you doing?” I yelled.
“Watch, Mom. I can fly. Like Ironman!”
“No, you can’t!” The scream tore through my throat as he launched himself off the roof before any of us could flash up there to get him.
Like any other young boy disillusioned by superheroes, his body plummeted toward the ground, my stomach plunging with him. Tristan reached out for him, but when he was just out of reach, Dorian suddenly swooped upward and hovered over the roof for several seconds before slowly descending and landing next to me on his feet, exactly as he’d done on Amadis Island. By that point, we all stood there, staring at him with our mouths open.
“Yeah, I can,” he said with an I-just-showed-you tone.
Part of me wanted to scream at him to never do that again, and another part wanted to pull him into my arms, relieved he was safe. But the biggest part of me fought to simply stay upright because the weight of what this meant was enough to crush an elephant.
“Well . . . bloody hell,” Mom said, and we all turned our heads, mouths still gaping, to stare at her. Mom never cussed. She looked around at us and quickly dismissed it, taking on her normal tone of control. “Get him inside. Now.”
Tristan scooped Dorian into one arm, and we all rushed inside.
“Did I do something bad?” Dorian asked, looking up at us as he sat on the couch, all five of us adults standing in front of him, again staring at him as if he were from another planet.
“He did that on Captiva?” Mom asked, her voice tight.
“Yeah, right in the middle of town,” Owen said. “Blossom saw. And a couple others, I think.”
I closed my eyes, squeezing them tight to hold the tears back. So not good. Shit, shit, SHIT.
“What’s the matter, Mom?” Dorian asked, but I couldn’t answer, knowing my voice would break.
“Dorian, didn’t we tell you not to do any tricks in front of other people?” Tristan asked.
“I didn’t mean to. The balloon the scary white lady gave to me flew away, and I was trying to catch it.”
Dorian didn’t frighten easily, which meant he’d sensed the white lady as more than a mere Norman. I peeked into his mind to see the vampire who gave him the balloon. I didn’t recognize her, which gave me a slice of relief. For a moment, I was afraid it was Julia or Vanessa.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Dorian said, his voice tiny.
I finally opened my eyes and pulled him into my arms. Don’t cry. Be strong for him. Sobs stuck in my throat, choking me and making my chest heave. I fell to the floor with him locked in my arms, silently rocking him. All I could think was, They’re going to take him . . . take him away.
People saw. The Daemoni would find out, and they’d come looking for him. One more reason the Daemoni would come to the quiet colony. One more reason for everyone to think us a danger. Because I certainly wasn’t going to simply hand him over, even if doing so meant protecting everyone else. Maybe it was selfish and un-matriarch-like, but he was my son. My baby.
After a few minutes, Mom reached for Dorian, and I panicked.
“No,” I screamed. “You can’t take him!”
Sasha was suddenly at our side, twice as big as normal, a growl in her throat. Tristan knelt beside us, and I felt him tugging in my mind.
“Lexi, they’re not taking him away. You’re scaring him.”
I looked down at Dorian. He trembled in my arms as he looked up at me with wide, haunted eyes. I relaxed my fierce hold, and Mom took him. Tristan picked me up and half-carried me to our room. He sat on our bed with me in his lap, and the tears finally fell.
“I can’t take anymore,” I said after several minutes. “You two are my life, and everyone wants to take you both away. And this whole daughter thing . . . all this pressure. I feel like I’m losing it again.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” he murmured. “I’m here, Lexi. It’s a lot to deal with, but I’m here for you.”
I inhaled a jagged breath and nodded. His being here meant a lot. Everything, actually. Which was why I couldn’t lose him again.
I eventually calmed down, and Mom must have heard because she popped her head in our doorway to tell us she, Charlotte, and Owen were going to Captiva to do some damage control. Dorian came in as she finished, and she slipped away. He climbed onto our bed and into my lap, and wrapped his arms around my neck.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” he said. “I’ll never do that again.”
I wanted to tell him very bad men would take him away otherwise, but such a threat wasn’t enough to scare Dorian. So I simply said, “No, you probably shouldn’t.”
“Are you okay?” he asked quietly. “Because I don’t want you to be sad again. I don’t want you to be like when Dad was gone.”
More tears slid down my cheeks as I kissed the top of his head. “Don’t worry. You and Dad are right here, so I’m happy. I’m just having a bad day.”
He nodded. “Okay. I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too, little man, very, very much.”
“I’ll never leave you. Me and my wife and our kids will live with you, okay?”
“I would love that,” I said with complete sincerity. If only it were possible.
“I know what you need,” Tristan said, gathering us in his arms and standing up. He placed us on our feet, then took our hands and led us to the kitchen.
He popped open the bottle of wine Charlotte brought, poured us each a glass (well, a glass of juice for Dorian), and turned on some music. Then he started pulling food out of the refrigerator: ingredients for fajitas. And he was right. Cooking dinner together was exactly what I needed and a perfect way to celebrate our anniversary. Our kitchen wasn’t fully stocked with all the gadgets and gizmos I couldn’t wait to buy one day, but we had the necessities—good knives, pans, and food. Listening to 30 Seconds to Mars, feeling the knife move under my hand, tasting the wine, smelling the onions and peppers, and joking around with my two guys felt incredibly and necessarily normal.
Mom, Owen, and Charlotte, along with Blossom, returned just as we started searing the meat. I hadn’t expected Blossom, but it turned out she was a bit of a hero. When she saw Dorian spring a little too high for what was normal, she threw a cloak over him, so no one else saw his little flight on Captiva. It wasn’t a strong cloak because she wasn’t supposed to use magic out in the open, so Owen, a more powerful mage than her, was still able to see through it. He had been too worried at the time to sense the magic. With Mom and Charlotte here, she had been scared to come tell us what she’d done, but they finally tracked her down, and she confessed. When they finished telling me the story, I threw my arms around Blossom with relief. Her actions today laid a huge stretch of foundation for my trust.
“If Blossom’s from Daytona, that coven is her home coven,” Tristan said that night as we lay in bed. “We should take her with us.”
“Tristan, I don’t think—”
“You trust her, right?”
Because the subject always caused problems and I didn’t want to deal with yet another one right now, I’d given up on pressuring him about the stone and divulged all I knew about Blossom. I told him I felt better about her, but I still didn’t trust her fully.
“And I really don’t want to bring her into the middle of all this. It’s too dangerous.”
“Unless you can get Sophia to take us to the coven and persuade them
to talk, Blossom’s our only hope. Owen can cloak the three of us, and Blossom can drive us without raising any suspicion. The Daemoni are looking for us, not her, and it wouldn’t be strange for her to be going home for the weekend.”
“Can’t we flash?”
“And if we run into trouble, they follow our trails. Do you want to deal with that again? Who knows when—or if—we’d be able to get home without leading them straight here. Besides, Blossom can get us in.”
I sighed. My arguments were useless. He’d already thought everything through and knew the best solution. “I just don’t like using her. It’s not right, and it’s not safe for her.”
“We’ll keep her safe.” He rolled onto his side to face me and pushed my hair away from my face. “How about we let her decide?”
Blossom’s decision came quickly and easily. She knew all about the trouble not only in the council, but throughout the Amadis. Like everywhere else, people in the colony were divided, which was why they hadn’t been so welcoming to us. She’d known about the traitor, but not, of course, about the girl or my telepathic powers, and her feelings reflected Owen’s—she found difficulty in believing any of it, but wanted to find the truth. She wanted to help solve the problem, and she came up with the idea to take us to her home coven before we even mentioned it, although it meant leaving immediately.
So the four of us piled into her car and took off, leaving Dorian with Mom and Char. Owen cloaked himself, Tristan, and me, which made Blossom look as though she talked to herself if any drivers looked over at her. She didn’t care. She talked non-stop for the five-hour drive, providing us details on the members of the Daytona coven, including her Aunt Sylvie, the leader. She hadn’t been home in over a year, because last time, her desire to help some so-called friends back-fired on them all, and the coven, especially Aunt Sylvie, still held it against her.
Once in Daytona, she parked on the side of a street in front of a large, brick home in an older, yet nicely manicured neighborhood. Planters with colorful flowers hung on the window sills, the lawn was beautifully landscaped, and the shady front porch invited you up for tea or lemonade on this hot summer’s evening. The house looked as though it belonged to an upper-middle-class family, not twelve witches that made up the coven. I only felt six mind signatures inside at the moment.
