Chapter 12 With the Monster
Koa
Lucian’s face betrayed nothing as he stood in the bedroom doorway, a book tucked under his arm, but his eyes went straight to Seri, and something in them softened. Just a fraction.
He’d answered Cas’ call on the first ring, agreed to come before we’d even finished telling him why, and had flown here in his private helicopter, landing on the western lawn and racing up to the manor with only an oversized umbrella to shield him from the sun.
He hadn’t even brought along any of his royal security detail.
Not that he needed guards, royal or otherwise. Son of a bitch wasn’t known as The Reaper for no reason.
It was late afternoon, and we needed to get going to reach the camp before nightfall.
Our nephilim friend, Kerry Harker, had already texted that he and his team were enroute and all systems were go, and yet I struggled to leave our vulnerable beloved with the monster who’d made us into monsters, too.
“I won’t leave her side,” he vowed. “When she wakes, she should see someone she knows.”
“She doesn’t know the real you,” Zane bit out. “She just wants a replacement papa so bad, she’s willing to take you.”
Lucian’s gaze flicked to him, but he didn’t bristle.
“She knows me as well as she needs to.” He paused, his voice dropping an octave. “She reminds me of someone.”
Cas turned into a statue. Zane crossed his arms. Me? I felt like someone had cracked me open and poured vinegar inside.
“I am happy to be here anytime you need me,” he added, even more surprisingly.
“You weren’t there the first time we did,” I said, the words just slipping out.
Lucian’s eyes met mine, still calm, still unreadable. He didn’t need to ask what I meant. He knew. He knew what galled me more than anything, more than the brutal training, more than the attempts to pit me against my brothers, more than the broken bones.
“Mahina asked me not to be. She said she didn’t want me to remember her dead.” He spoke quietly, like it cost him something. “I honored her wishes.”
No excuses. No embellishments. Just that.
And Dark take me, I believed him.
“Casimir, I’m sure you’ve surmised by now that your mother was a brief affair. Reginleif, true to her Valkyrie nature, admires males with strength and power, and I allowed myself to be,” Lucian paused, then went with, “collected for a few days. Maternal instincts, however, were never in her DNA.”
Cas nodded, none of us surprised by that, and Lucian’s silver eyes flicked to Zane.
“I know Doria maintains contact with you, infrequent as it may be, so you might be aware of more details. She sought a temporary partner for the same reasons I did. When you were born, she was not stable enough to keep you.”
“Stable my ass,” Zane retorted. “She told me the second she saw my little fang buds, she knew I was more vamp than swan and had no idea what I might need.”
“It’s true our kind is not common in her world.
” Lucian raised his chin, his eyes narrowing.
“You cannot imagine how it feels to lose your beloved. Where I drowned my grief in blood and women, Doria tried to burn it out of herself. In any way she could. Picture yourself a year ago, only without your brothers. What would you have done with a newborn?”
A year ago? Before Seri? And take me and Cas out of the equation? Shit. He would have shoved the kid at the first nanny he could find. Left it wrapped in newspaper at a fire station. Hell, traded it for a handful of tracer rounds and a bottle of Goblin Moonshine.
Or worse, tried to play dad with his head full of glass shards and bad wiring.
Fuck Lucian. My jaw locked so tight, I felt my molars crack. Fuck him for twisting it like that.
Bastard knew exactly which scars to pick at. Knew Zane would see himself in his twisted reflection, two predators debating whether to eat the cub or raise it. Difference was, Lucian hadn’t had us, and Zane did.
My brothers and I might be broken things just trying not to slice everyone we loved, but one thing was for damn sure: We never let each other forget which side of the blade mattered.
And now there was Seri, stitching our broken parts together with her quiet “we’re not monsters” mantra…
I looked to the bed, watched her breathe, let it settle me.
“Point taken,” Zane said after a moment, knuckles popping as he flexed his hands. “Still doesn’t make you father of the fucking year.”
“I made many miscalculations.” Lucian inclined his head, that infuriating regal nod that was supposed to be an apology.
“Were any of them due to the fact that we’re mortal?
” Cas asked in a cold voice. “Unlike Seb who, unless he gets himself killed, will be with you through eternity, neither Zane nor I inherited immortality from our mothers. When you realized that, did you decide we were too transient, too temporary, to be anything more in your life?”
I blinked. I’d never thought about that, most likely because I’d always been too aware of how human I was. I was glad neither of them were eternal, though, not only for my own selfish reason, but because they would have hated to watch me age and die while they stayed young forever.
“It crossed my mind,” Lucian confessed.
I blinked again. Today was apparently the day for confessions. Then he looked at me, a muscle in his jaw twitching, which was the equivalent of a wince for him, and I couldn’t have spoken to save my life.
“As for Mahina, she wasn’t a beloved, and we both knew that, but neither of us could keep our distance. I’d already planned a trip to Hawaii before she showed up on my doorstep with you.”
“Were you still intimate with her when we were little?” I finally asked the question that had plagued me for years.
“Yes. As I said, we couldn’t stay apart from each other.”
“Explains why you and Seb were at breakfast and dinner so often,” Zane snorted. “And how many times did you break her heart by bringing other women home?”
“You paraded your fuck buddies in front of her?” I seethed.
“No.” Lucian met Cas’ gaze, then Zane’s, then mine without flinching. “From the day I met Mahina until the moment I looked into Kaori’s eyes, there was no one else.”
Silence. None of us moved. None of us breathed.
“You never told us any of that,” Zane muttered after a moment.
“You were too young at first. Later, would you have listened?” Lucian raised one hand when Cas opened his mouth. “I know I made our relationship what it is, and I am sorry for it. Sorry than I have words for. Mahina would have been so ashamed of me. I am ashamed of myself.”
I should’ve said something cruel. I wanted to. But Seri let out a soft, shuddery breath in her sleep, and Lucian used our distraction to move further into the room. He dragged Cas’ reading chair to her bedside and sat down like he belonged there.
“Go. Finish what you need to so you can come back to her.”
Cas nudged my arm, the barest brush. Zane gave him a tight nod. We turned to go, but just before I closed the door behind us, I looked back.
Lucian sat in stillness, hands clasped, book tucked against his side, eyes on Seri. No crown. No guards. No politics. Just a man watching over a girl his sons loved.
I didn’t like him, and I couldn’t love him, but bleeding night I almost pitied him.
#
Lucian
I nearly had a seizure from the shock of Casimir’s call in the middle of the day, requesting I stay with Serafina again while they dealt with an emergency.
Whatever had happened, it left the dear girl Dark sick, and I leapt at the chance to not only aid her, but mend just a fraction of the rift with my sons.
I sat watching her for a long while, fingers twitching over the book’s spine. Not one of Casimir textbooks or Koa’s grimoires or Zane’s mangas or even Sebastian’s classics. No, this was mine. A children’s storybook with Mahina’s tiny drawings in the margins.
I hadn’t meant to bring it.
Or perhaps I had.
The day my workers had cleared out the boys’ storage unit, they’d found a box of Mahina’s things and brought to me rather than here to Evermere.
I hadn’t been able to open it at first, but when I did, this book was right on top.
I remembered it well. Countless evenings, I’d sat in Mahina’s living room, listening to her read it to the boys as she tucked them in.
Koa crying when the knight lost his horse.
Zane demanding a sword of his own. Casimir insisting the plot would have been better if the dragon lived.
Sebastian debating which had been kinder, the prince or the princess.
Serafina had never heard these stories, so I would read them to her now.
Opening the book, I blinked when something fell into my lap.
A simple plastic sleeve that held a piece of thick white paper.
Picking it up, I saw a wisp of dark brown hair tied with a slender blue thread.
Just below it on the paper, Mahina’s bonus boy was written in spidery lettering I’d recognize anywhere.
My vision misted.
She’d kept a lock of Sebastian’s hair.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. She’d taken my firstborn son into her heart and held him safe just as she did with my other boys.
Certain there was more, I flipped the bookmark over and found a thin plait of fine baby hair. One strand blond. One strand red. One strand black. At the top of the paper, she’d written, Mahina’s braid.
Time stuttered back a step, and I was suddenly in a warm kitchen.
Sebastian stirring batter in a bowl. Casimir adding chocolate chips.
Koa sneaking a cookie from the cooling rack.
Zane, attached to Mahina’s leg as always, talking a mile a minute.
And Mahina herself laughing, the scent of vanilla and evening primrose filling every cranny of the room…