Excerpt from Book #19
It’d been just over two months since I'd pushed three divine babies out of my body while our bedroom wall was blown to smithereens by an ancient witch with serious boundary issues.
It seemed like so much longer since Thalia sacrificed herself to save me and my babies.
And subsequently, every supernatural being Lyra had imprisoned and tortured.
I hoped that psychotic bitch was suffering.
My father-in-law, Hades, had dragged her to the special corner of the Underworld he had reserved for people who threatened his grandbabies.
You'd think three months would be enough time to feel normal again. You'd be wrong. Not with three magical babies waking me up every couple of hours.
I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, trying to convince myself that the dark circles under my eyes made me look mysterious instead of like an extra from a zombie movie.
The reflection staring back at me was a far cry from the woman who'd confidently faced down gods and monsters just a few months ago.
That woman had slept more than two consecutive hours and hadn't needed industrial-strength concealer to look human.
"You can do this," I muttered to my reflection as I attempted to tame my hair into something resembling respectability.
"It's just the farmer's market. How dangerous can a bunch of organic vegetables and artisanal goat cheese, be?
" I regretted the question immediately. The universe had a nasty habit of treating questions like that as challenges.
Nina's voice drifted up from downstairs. "Mom! The babies are staging a revolt down here. And Melaina just turned her bottle into a tiny volcano again!" She was bright and chipper in that uniquely teenage way that suggested she was absolutely not dealing with her siblings’ chaos.
I groaned, giving up on my hair. It had officially entered the 'disaster zone' category anyway.
Trudging downstairs, I prepared myself for a mess.
Three months of supernatural baby-wrangling had taught me that no parenting manual covered what to do when your offspring came with. .. unique complications.
Melaina's temperature control issues were directly linked to her mood swings.
Happy baby? Perfectly warmed bottle. Cranky baby?
Scalding breast milk and a very real risk of burns for anyone brave enough to help with feeding time.
Thaniel had somehow managed to short-circuit two baby monitors, my laptop, and half of the sockets in the house.
The electrician kept muttering about incompetent repairmen.
Thankfully, he blamed it on the guys who had fixed the side of my house.
And Nyssa? Her shadows would play with you when she got excited.
They would reach toward anything that caught her attention.
Aidon had installed a large mailbox for packages at the end of the drive to keep her from playing a game with delivery drivers.
The living room had been transformed into what Aidon diplomatically called a nursery command center. Three cribs arranged in a triangle dominated the left side of the room. They were enchanted gifts from Hades and Persephone. They had saved our sanity and possibly our lives.
Melaina's crib gleamed with inlaid obsidian runes that absorbed and channeled her heat surges.
The mattress was woven from phoenix down that actually grew more comfortable the hotter it got.
After she'd turned her first three sets of sheets into charcoal, Persephone had taken pity on us and crafted something that could handle our little pyromaniac.
Thaniel's sleeping area hummed with a barely audible energy.
The frame was carved from a single piece of petrified lightning-struck oak and wrapped with copper inlays.
It grounded his electrical tantrums before they could fry every electronic device in a three-block radius.
Hades had been particularly smug about that one.
Nyssa's crib was draped with silk that shimmered between light and dark.
The fabric was enchanted to contain her shadow-tendrils while still letting them play.
The mobile above her head was crafted from captured starlight—literally—and kept her entertained while preventing her power from reaching toward unsuspecting visitors.
Without these supernatural safety measures, we'd probably be living in a fireproof bunker with no electricity and blackout curtains. As it was, we only looked mildly unhinged instead of completely certifiable. And that didn’t cover how hard it was to parent a newborn after forty.
Nina was kneeling beside Melaina's crib, carefully testing the temperature of a bottle against her wrist. "I swear she did it on purpose," my daughter said, shooting our littlest furnace an exasperated look. "She was looking right at me when the formula started bubbling."
"She's not even three months old," I pointed out, though privately I wasn't entirely convinced Melaina hadn't done exactly that.
The triplets were far too aware for infants their age.
It was a side effect of their divine heritage.
It made every milestone both fascinating and terrifying.
"She doesn't have that kind of control yet. "
"Tell that to my phone," Nina replied, holding up the remains of her device.
The screen was cracked in a spider web pattern, and small scorch marks decorated the edges where Thaniel's electricity had found it.
"He killed it this morning when I was trying to take a picture of him smiling in his bouncy seat. "
I moved to Thaniel's crib, where my son was regarding his tiny hands.
He had the focused intensity of a scientist studying a particularly interesting specimen.
His electric blue eyes tracked the faint sparks dancing between his fingers.
When he saw me approaching, he made a cooing sound that sent a mild electrical current through the air. It made my hair stand on end.
"Good morning to you, too, Little Storm," I murmured, using the nickname Aidon had given him.
Reaching down, I stroked his downy black hair.
The contact sent a gentle tingle through my fingertips.
It was warm and oddly comforting. "Try not to electrocute Mommy before she's had her coffee, okay? We’re going on an outing today and I need all three of you to behave. "
Picking Thaniel up, I put him in the front seat of the double stroller. Nina finally set the bottle aside and picked Melaina up. While she secured our Little Spark in her stroller, I moved to Nyssa.
Nyssa was our quiet one. She lay in her crib, purple eyes sparkling with pure delight as they tracked every movement.
I swear she saw the entire world as one giant game put on for her entertainment.
Her shadows rippled and danced like eager puppies.
They reached toward her siblings with playful tendrils that wiggled and swayed.
Watching her was like witnessing joy in its purest form. She was all bright eyes and dancing shadows. It made my heart swell with the kind of love that left me breathless and grinning like an idiot.
"And how's our Little Shade this morning?" I asked, leaning over her crib. Nyssa's response was a gurgle as her shadows stretched toward me in greeting.
"They're all acting weird today," Nina observed as she buckled Melaina into the single crib.
"But they seem healthy and happy, so we'll roll with it," I replied, which was becoming my standard response.
The truth was, I had no idea what constituted normal development for divine hybrid babies.
The pediatrician we'd found—a lovely woman named Dr. Reeves who specialized in supernatural children—had assured me that everything was progressing well.
However, even she admitted the triplets were unique cases.
There wasn't exactly a comprehensive guidebook for raising the offspring of a Pleiades witch and a God of the Underworld.
"Speaking of rolling with it," Nina said, "are we still planning on the farmer's market adventure today? Because when I looked inside it, the diaper bag was packed with enough supplies to survive a week-long siege."
I glanced at the clock on the mantle, noting that it was already past ten.
The farmer's market would be hitting its stride, bustling with vendors and customers enjoying the crisp autumn morning.
It would be the perfect opportunity for a low-key outing with the babies.
It would be their first real venture into the mundane world beyond our magically fortified property.
"Absolutely," I said, injecting more confidence into my voice than I felt. "We need to get out of this house before I start talking to the walls. Besides, fresh air will be good for all of us."
What I didn't mention was the conversation I'd had with Clio the previous week about the importance of socializing the babies with normal human environments.
She had shared that supernatural children who were kept too isolated during their early development sometimes struggled to control their powers around non-magical people.
The last thing I wanted was for my kids to accidentally hurt someone or expose the magical world because they'd never learned to dial down their abilities in public.
Nina hefted the oversized diaper bag onto her shoulder with a theatrical groan. "This thing weighs more than a small car. Someone might have gone slightly overboard."
"It's just emergency supplies," I replied, mentally reviewing the contents.
Along with the standard baby necessities, the bag contained a sleek temperature regulator that Hades had crafted for Melaina's heat surges.
There were also a pair of copper-threaded mittens from Persephone to ground Thaniel's electrical outbursts.
Plus, a small obsidian pendant that would absorb Nyssa's shadow flares before they could escape.