by Apollo Surge
"It's still early," Jacob said, checking his watch. "Should we move to the next phase?"
"I've got everything set up already," Serena confirmed. "The hardest part was just getting someone to trade with me at work so I'd have the night off."
"Then let's do this," Sawyer said, popping the antacid. "Then I'm going to eat a gallon of ice cream and sleep for a week."
They found Alicia in her office.
"What do you mean it's been taken care of?" she said into the phone. "By who? When?"
Serena took the phone out of her hand and hung up.
"Serena!" Alicia said, shocked. "I was trying to-"
"You heard the man," Serena replied calmly. "It's taken care of. Everything is taken care of. So get up, it's date night."
"Serena, I can't, I need to-"
Serena snapped her fingers.
"Jacob, do your thing," she declared.
"Sorry about this," Jacob said with an apologetic smile as he stepped around the desk and lifted Alicia bodily out of her office chair. She shrieked and he switched his bridal carry to a fireman's carry when her squirming threatened to make him drop her.
"What the hell are you doing?" Alicia demanded.
"Helping you," Sawyer said from the door. "Whether you like it or not."
"I got us tickets to the drive-in," Serena told her baffled girlfriend as Jacob carried her down the hall. "Don't worry about changing, you look amazing."
"I'm in my pajama pants!"
"Like I said. Amazing. We're just going to be sitting in the car anyway."
Sawyer trailed behind them as they made their way out to the front of the house, where Mateo was waiting with his beloved mustang convertible, freshly washed and waxed, the back seat piled with fluffy throws and soft pillows. Mateo opened the passenger side door with a playful little bow as they approached. Jacob dumped Alicia into the seat and Mateo handed Alicia the keys and a bouquet.
"The picnic basket and the blanket are in the trunk," he informed her. "I made the spread myself."
"He watched and snuck tastes while I made it," Jacob corrected.
"I helped!" Mateo said, offended. "I bought the champagne anyway."
"Guys," Alicia said loudly from the car seat. "I don't know what this is, but I can't do this right now. I have paperwork that I need to get to courthouse by four, I have a call scheduled with the lawyer, I need to update the budget and do the laundry and inventory the pantry-"
Serena knelt in front of Alicia and handed her bouquet, an arrangement of classic roses and lavender spikes. Alicia blinked at it, falling silent.
"The permits have been dealt with," Serena said calmly. "I cancelled your call with the lawyer. Mateo is dealing with the laundry from now on. Jacob is handling the kitchen. And the budget can wait, because Sawyer just made us an obscene amount of money in a way that's probably going to be making me slightly uneasy for the rest of my life."
Alicia frowned at that and started to say something. Serena held up a hand to stop her.
"Which is something I would honestly really love to talk with you about," she continued. "Cause, damn. But not until we are away from this house and curled up in front of an old movie drinking champagne. All right?"
Alicia looked back toward the house for a moment, biting her lip. Then she looked down at Serena. Sawyer saw the moment she gave up.
"All right," she agreed. Serena grinned.
As soon as they were gone, Sawyer, Jacob and Mateo got to work. They'd already hashed out thorough plans for the new organization system and better division of labor. Jacob was, somehow unsurprisingly, a wizard with a color coded binder. Thanks to him, they'd planned out everything from bathroom cleaning rotations to more efficient food storage. With the work split up, they were all done in time for dinner. What had seemed so overwhelming had become so suddenly manageable that Sawyer was, frankly, embarrassed by how long it had taken them to get their shit together. It remained to be seen, however, whether Alicia would accept their changes, or undo everything as soon as she returned.
***
She spent the evening at Serena's, at Serena's insistence, and didn't return home until a little after noon the next day. Sawyer was in the office when she came in. She froze in the door, staring. Sawyer had cleaned up and organized her desk area. The tidal wave of papers and take out containers which had once covered the room had receded. It looked, once again, like the craft room it had been before.
"Jacob helped me organize all your stuff," Sawyer explained. "It's all labeled, but if you can't find anything one of us can probably tell you where to look. Jacob was super meticulous."
Looking like a bit of a zombie, Alicia stumbled over to her desk. Sawyer slid her one of Jacob's laminated, color blocked schedules.
"This is how we're going to be splitting up the work from now on," Sawyer explained. "We've got some of the crocodilians helping out too, and a couple of the deer. There's actually not much to do when it's spread out over so many people. Me and Jacob and Mateo are handling most of the management and organizational stuff, of course. Elliot too, when he stops being a dumbass."
"And what am I doing?" Alicia asked, looking at him strangely.
"For today, nothing," Sawyer said, shrugging. "It's your day off. We've all got one scheduled, see there in blue? But in general you're the best with numbers, so you're going to be primarily responsible for the budgeting and accounting. And that's it. Period. You're not even on the bathroom cleaning roster. Managing the finances for a place like this is enough. We've got a weekly family meeting there to keep everyone up to speed. The other shifter leaders will probably sit in."
Alicia stared at the schedule, looking strangely small and out of place. He'd been expecting her to throw a fit, or at least resist, but she just seemed lost, unsure what to do without a stream of constant busywork to lose herself in. Serena must have given her a hell of a talking to.
"For today," Sawyer said, more quietly. "Maybe you could spend some time with your brother?"
Paul knocked gently on the door frame to announce his presence. Alicia looked up at him, and Sawyer saw her breath hitch. Unsure whether he should linger as she started to cry, Sawyer retreated, passing Paul, who came to stand near Alicia, placid face touched by uncertainty, until she threw her arms around him. Paul, slowly, stiffly, put his arms around her as well, and Sawyer ducked out, leaving them alone.
He didn't see them for most of the day, until he was heading back past the barn that evening and heard Paul's voice.
"I felt guilty. I couldn't mourn them. I couldn't even cry. Losing Penny was too big. It crowded out everything else. I thought you would be able to tell, and you'd hate me for it."
"I could never hate you. I wasn't mourning them either. I couldn't even process it— I didn't want to! I didn't want to make it real. I was trying so hard to stay busy so I wouldn't think about it."
Sawyer looked up to where he could just see the shadow of the two sitting on the barn roof, gilt by the light of the heavy moon.
"I felt like I lost you when I lost them," Alicia said. "Like my whole family was gone. You were always missing, and even when I could find you, looking at you and remembering them just hurt."
"I think you did lose me," Paul replied. "I think I lost myself. I didn't know who I was without Penny. I didn't feel like a whole person. Just this… void where a person used to be, and this grief, like a monster in the dark, getting bigger and angrier all the time. It wanted me to scream and cry and throw things and fix it all somehow. But all I could do was sit here. I couldn't even make myself feel."
"Is that when the Moon found you?"
"She healed me. Or almost, anyway. Like… replacing the missing parts of something broken with something new. She poured Herself into the empty place where Penny used to be. She's always there now."
"Isn't that terrifying? To have something like Her inside you?"
"Nothing's worse than being alone."
"And then She showed you the other future? The
one where it never happened?"
"It was an apology."
"For letting it happen?"
"For not being able to bring them back."
"...Do you think She'd be able to do that for me?" Alicia asked, her voice breaking.
"Maybe," Paul said, sounding uncertain. "But are you sure that's what you need? It's easy to get lost dreaming that way, the way Dad got lost."
"Dad didn't get lost. He made a choice. He left."
"It's hard not to choose the dream, when real life is so painful. I was so caught up in living in a future that doesn't exist that I wasn't here for you when you needed me. I left you alone."
"I left you alone too. Maybe you would have found your way back faster if I'd been there for you. Maybe Dad would have-"
"No, you're right. Dad chose. It wasn't our fault. It's... hard to balance. Knowing what he did was wrong, understanding why he did it. Being angry and still missing him."
"It's impossible. I keep thinking he'll walk through the door again, and I'll get to finally tell him- I don't know. None of it feels real. If I could just... See them again, say goodbye, maybe I would be able to finally believe it happened. I won't get lost."
"If you do, I'll help you find your back. We won't be alone again."
"Right."
"... do you remember that summer that we rented the beach house?"
"I think so? God, that was so many years ago."
"Do you remember when we snuck out during the night, and ran down the beach as wolves until someone called animal control?"
"Yeah! Henry could only have been, what, six? I was laughing at him for falling asleep in the sand, but then I passed out right next to him. Did you and Penny drag us home?"
"No. We fell asleep too. Dad found us a little before dawn and brought everyone home. Mom was pissed."
Alicia laughed, bright and surprising.
"In one of the futures she showed me," Paul continued, a quiet ache in his voice. "Years and years from now, we go back to that place. You and me and Henry. And Penny. And we run down the beach under the stars again. When we get tired, we wade out into the water, where it's cool and calm enough to float together, and we talk for hours…"
"I don't think I could go back there," Alicia said quietly, after a moment. "Not now."
The quiet lingered for a long moment, the Moon floating in her ocean of stars above them, looking down.
"But maybe someday," Alicia said. "That sounds like the kind of future I'd like to try and make real."
Sawyer realized he'd been eavesdropping for too long. But he thought maybe, at last, the two of them were going to be all right.
That just left Elliot, who was a much harder problem to solve...
Chapter Sixteen
The travel trailers arrived with the last week of May. Sawyer had been lucky with the seller and landed a significant discount. It drained the money he'd earned almost completely, but he managed to afford four. They lined them up by the side of the house, next to the cottages and the old doublewide, along with the RV and the two small trailers the crocodilians had brought. There was a flurry of activity as everyone moved out of the tents and figured out their new locations. The crocodilians mostly took the travel trailers, with Cuvier and Gustav sharing the old doublewide. One of the cottages went to Casey and Liam, who were using it primarily as a school house and daycare for the children. The cat shifters squeezed into the second cottage.
Meanwhile, work was also wrapping up on the barn, plans for which had undergone some last minute changes when they realized it didn't need to fit so many people. What were initially going to be pretty utilitarian bunks had turned into several small but comfortable rooms around a large central living area. Daphne and the deer shifters, who preferred not to be split up, claimed it gratefully, leaving two rooms for the near-fae, whose company they seemed to tolerate better than anyone else.
With things settling down just a little, Sawyer found the time to slip away. He shed his clothes in the sheltered clearing that had been the deer shifter's camp, pausing when he saw his own stomach. Anyone who looked would have been able to guess by now. He was five months along by now, and swiftly reaching the limits of what he could hide under loose clothing. It was still too early in the year for the oversized sweaters and layers that might have obscured it. Elliot only hadn't noticed because he hadn't shared Sawyer's bed since he'd given up being Alpha. Sawyer had been trying to give the other man space and not take it personally. But it was starting to feel like he'd abandoned the relationship along with leadership.
Sawyer shook his head, not wanting to think about it. He shifted, sliding easily into his wolf shape. These days, it felt more comfortable and familiar than his real body. The changes his wolf was going through with the pregnancy were far less extreme.
He stuck his nose through the loop of a bag in which he'd packed mead and lemon cookies along with his clothing. Settling it between his shoulders he set off up the mountain, losing himself in the first green glory of summer's richness and the steady, comforting pace of his unwearying paws on the earth.
When he felt he was high enough up the mountain he stopped and sat down, scenting the wind for a particular smell of wet stone and moss.
"Jagger," he thought. "Are you there?"
"Aye, always," Jagger replied instantly, and Sawyer saw him, lying on top of a nearby boulder, coming into focus as he moved like some kind of magic eye puzzle. "Took you long enough."
"You're immortal," Sawyer pointed out, shrugging out of the bag and pawing it open. "What do you care about a month? Besides, this was seriously the earliest I could get away. I'm sure you've noticed the craziness going on down there."
"I've been keeping an eye on it," the mountain spirit said with a shrug. "Much as I can with all those wards. Those are spitefully insulting, you know. The other Wild Fae are in a right tizzy about it. Those that are left anyway."
"The Court Fae are still causing problems?" Sawyer assumed, guilt curling in his stomach.
"Worse than ever," Jagger confirmed. "The ones that haven't been snapped up have gone on the run. It's just me and the leshy and a few other guardian types still about what are bound to the land. We can't run, but we aren't easy to snare either. Still, it'll happen eventually. The Court is relentless. It's just a matter of time. I'll be damned if they take me alive though. I'll be holding this mountain till my last breath."
"Can't you work together?" Sawyer asked. "Watch each other's backs?"
Jagger shook his head dismissively.
"It's not in our nature, pup. A wolf might as well ask a hawk why it doesn't hunt in a pack. They are not the same kind of creature."
"But you're not an animal," Sawyer argued. "You can go against your nature. You can change it."
Jagger eyed Sawyer, long and slow enough that Sawyer began to feel stupid without even knowing why.
"If you really believe that," Jagger finally said, "then you understand even less of the Fae than I thought."
Sawyer, uncomfortable, looked away, warring with his desire to keep fighting, to find some way to protect Jagger and the other wild fae on the mountain. Even the leshy, great lumbering moss-shaggy monster that it was, deserved to live here as it always had, guarding the forests that it had defended for hundreds of years. The thought of Jagger just accepting the end made Sawyer feel so strangely helpless and desperate that he wanted to charge across the mountain, jaws wide, and tear every Court fae he encountered into shreds. But that was impossible. He might as well try to sink his teeth into a hurricane. The Court was a force of nature, literally, which he could do nothing to stop. Which made this all the more frustrating.
Jagger hopped down from the boulder to collect the mead and the plastic container of cookies, climbing awkwardly back onto his seat while clutching both. He pulled the wax seal and cork off the bottle with one stab of his claw and took a long, thirsty swig, sighing in appreciation as he finished.
"Is there anything I can do?" Sawyer asked, still ho
peful, as the mountain spirit dug into the lemon cookies.
"Bring me a dozen of these every day and I'll die happy," Jagger replied, laughing. "Haven't tasted anything this good since they closed up the garden. These were made by the tall dark one, yeah? Is he a seventh son by any chance?"
"Youngest of three, I think."
"And questing to boot. That dour mutt has a destiny, I'd bet my left stone on it. You can taste it in the cakes. You should send him up here some time. I could throw some riddles at him, maybe snatch a little of whatever enchantment makes him so damned clever with a baked good."
Sawyer couldn't really frown in wolf shape, but he did his best approximation. Jagger rolled his eyes, putting the cookies aside.
"There's always something to be done," Jagger said. "But sometimes it's better to just let it be. Let it be, pup."
Sawyer had a feeling he knew what the spirit was getting at.
"Is it the—"
"Don't!" Jagger said swiftly. "Don't mention it, or I'll have no choice but to try and get it from you. Idiot dog! Get it through your head what I am, will you?"
Sawyer, surprised by the outburst, jumped back, his ears flat on his head. Jagger settled back onto his rock, glowering, and ate another cookie. Sawyer didn't think he completely understood. Jagger already knew about the baby. They both knew its potential power would be great. Great enough for Jagger to defend the mountain from the Court? Was that what he meant? That if Sawyer suggested it, he'd have no choice but to do whatever he had to in order to protect the mountain? But then why wouldn't he want Sawyer to say it? He'd been trying to get the baby since the beginning. Or he'd claimed he was anyway. Sawyer supposed he hadn't really been trying that hard. Especially not compared to the Summer Fae's efforts to trick him. Had Jagger just been looking out for him all this time? The thought caused a tangle of warmth and sadness in Sawyer's heart. Was this the spirit's nature too, he wondered?
The cookie mellowed Jagger's temper, and after a moment he huffed and his scowl smoothed.
"If you really want to help," he said. "See to your domovoi and the other domestic spirits. It's hard for their kind to find safe homes to serve these days, and they've been sheltered by the magic of this territory for a long time. They can't run for the wards you've placed, and would be snapped up quickly if they did. Give them a little tending and protection, for my sake."
