Chapter 20 #3
Aidon's hand locked around my uninjured arm, and he yanked me away from the wall. He practically dragged me as he carried Nana and ran. Stella was way ahead of us. We burst through the exit just as the entire facility imploded behind us.
The ground beneath us shook violently, throwing us all forward. I hit the forest floor hard, tasting dirt and blood. Debris rained down around us. Chunks of concrete, twisted metal, and ash. There was so much ash, it looked like snow.
The swirling essences followed us out, floating overhead like protective spirits one last time before they began to rise. They drifted up toward the night sky until they disappeared among the stars.
The silence that followed was absolute. I lifted my head slowly, not quite believing we'd made it.
The pre-dawn sky was lightening to gray.
Where Taverner's underground facility had been, there was now just a massive crater.
Everything had collapsed in on itself, buried under tons of earth and rock.
Tarja's voice filled my mind, fierce with relief and love. "You did it. It's over."
"The babies?" I managed to ask, my voice coming out as a croak.
"They didn’t even know you were gone. They’re safe and sleeping. Not a single Thessmark came near the house."
Because they'd all been with Taverner. Her final gambit was to throw everything she had at us in one last desperate attempt to clear the path to my children. And she'd lost.
Jean-Marc's voice crackled through the earbud. "Emergency services are responding to reports of seismic activity. You need to leave before they arrive."
Right. Because explaining why we were at the site of a massive explosion at dawn would be.
.. complicated. We dragged ourselves to Stella's SUV, leaving bloody handprints on the doors as we climbed inside. None of us was in any shape to drive, but Aidon managed to get behind the wheel. He was the steadiest. He deftly maneuvered off the dirt road. His eyes kept turning back to me, where I sat in the backseat with Stella, who was staunching the blood from my shoulder. It wasn’t until we were safely away that it finally hit me.
It was over. Taverner was dead. Another Scythe was destroyed.
The Thessmark were gone. Hopefully, every last one of them had been turned to ash. Our children were safe.
The sun had fully risen by the time Aidon pulled into our driveway. The house looked exactly as we'd left it. The wards were glowing softly in the morning light. The yard was still showing scorch marks from the previous night's battle. But the house was standing. Whole and protected.
Mom and Nina met us at the door before we could even get out of the car. Mom's eyes were red from crying, but she was smiling as she helped Nana out of the passenger seat. Nina grabbed me, pulling me into a hug tight enough to make me wince.
"You're home," she whispered against my shoulder. "You're really home."
"We're really home," I confirmed, hugging her back despite the pain.
Clio came out next and began clucking her tongue.
Her warm hands landed on me before I could climb the stairs.
Selene and the coven witches were gathered in the living room, sprawled across couches and chairs in various states of exhaustion.
Lilith raised her coffee mug in salute. The other witches managed weak smiles.
They looked like they'd been through their own war.
"We all kept reinforcing the wards," Selene said. "All night. We didn't want to take a chance."
"Thank you," I told them all. "Thank you for protecting them."
"Always," Lilith replied simply.
The nursery was at the top of the stairs. Clio continued healing me as I took them one at a time. Each step sent fresh pain through my body, but I didn't care. My babies were up there, safe and whole and waiting.
"They're perfect," Aidon said as he entered behind us. "Completely unharmed."
I moved to Melaina's crib first, scooping up my little furnace. She stopped crying the instant she was in my arms, her tiny hand gripping my finger with surprising strength. I felt her warmth seeping into me. It drove away the cold that had settled into my bones during the fight.
Aidon lifted Thaniel from his crib. Sparks danced across our son's skin in greeting.
Aidon laughed and pressed kisses to his cheek.
Nina picked Nyssa up and handed her to me as I settled into the rocking chair with Melaina.
Nyssa's shadows wrapped around all three of us, connecting us in a way that made my throat tight.
These were my children. Mine and Aidon's. And nobody would ever touch them.
"It's over," I whispered to them, even though they couldn't understand. "You're safe. You're always going to be safe."
Tarja jumped onto the changing table, her green eyes bright despite the exhaustion I could feel through our bond. "Took you long enough."
"We got a little held up," I said out loud, making Nina smile.
Through our bond, I sent Tarja everything—my gratitude, my love, my absolute certainty that we couldn't have won without her tactical guidance.
That her ability to see the battlefield from another perspective had kept us alive.
She purred, the sound filling the nursery with warmth.
"I know. Now feed those babies before they start crying again. "
And just like that, we were back to normal.
Or as normal as life ever got for a Pleiades witch married to a Lord of the Underworld, raising three divine children in a house protected by shifters, witches, and a very opinionated familiar.
The supernatural world would process what had happened at Corvus.
Stella’s network would grow stronger. And eventually, someone would write the whole thing down for future generations.
But in this moment, in this room, with my family safe around me and my babies nursing peacefully?
None of that mattered. We'd won. And we were home.