Chapter 14 Put Down Roots
Seri
My husbands filed into the living room like they were marching to a mission briefing, only instead of weapons, Koa carried his laptop.
My stomach knotted, an old habit from when serious conversations usually ended with me learning another piece of my life was about to be stripped away.
When Koa settled beside me on the couch, his eyes held only gentle warmth, and the knot loosened just enough for me to breathe again.
These weren’t the same kind of serious talks. They never would be with my boys.
“Scoot over, tiny witch.” Zane nudged my shoulder and claimed the space on my other side, his lanky frame sprawling across more couch than should be physically possible for one person.
Casimir stood at the edge of the coffee table, arms crossed, looking like he was trying to decide whether to perch on the armchair or remain standing. Brumous made the decision for him, trotting over to the armchair and hopping up, turning three circles before settling with a contented sigh.
“Really?” Casimir lifted his eyebrows at the wolf pup.
Brumous just yawned, showing his teeth.
With a sigh of defeat that sounded suspiciously like fondness, Casimir dropped into the small remaining portion of the couch near Koa’s end.
“Get on with it, Ko,” he muttered.
Koa balanced the laptop on his thighs and clicked through a series of folders.
“I’ve been meaning to show you these for a while,” he said, his voice a low, quiet rumble that always made my heart flutter. “Just never seemed like the right time.”
The screen flickered, and an image appeared, a beautiful young woman with warm brown skin and deep brown eyes.
She also had Koa’s smile lines, the ones that appeared like half-moons beneath his eyes when he fought a laugh.
The baby in her arms had the same golden skin, a tuft of black hair, and enormous dark eyes.
“Is that…” The question caught in my throat.
“My mom.” Koa’s finger hovered over the screen like he wanted to touch her face. “Her name was Mahina Akana.”
“She raised all of us.” Casimir leaned forward to see the screen better. “From when we were infants.”
“So she was your mom, too?”
“In all the ways that count, yeah.” Zane stretched an arm across the back of the couch behind me. “Vampire Dad might’ve provided the genetic material, but Mahina was the one who actually parented us.”
Koa clicked to the next photo, Mahina sitting cross-legged on a plush carpet with three babies laid out in front of her.
“This was taken about a month after I was born. Cas was almost three months old, and Zane was about seven weeks.”
“She looks so young.”
“Twenty-one. She met Lucian while he was in Hawaii on business for the previous king.”
“Vampire business,” Zane added helpfully.
“Something with volcano spirits.” Koa shrugged. “Anyway, Lucian and Mom had a fling. She knew he wouldn’t stay, but she fell for him, anyway.”
“She had terrible taste in men,” Casimir sighed.
“She found out she was pregnant with me after he left,” Koa went on. “She didn’t tell him. She was going to raise me on her own, but during her pregnancy, she was diagnosed with leukemia.”
“Oh, Koko.” My hand flew to my mouth.
“She refused treatment until after I was born.” His voice stayed steady, but held an undercurrent of pride and sorrow. “When she started treatments, she realized she needed help. Her family, they weren’t supportive of her.”
“They disowned her,” Casimir stated bluntly.
“So she used the last of her money to fly to New York and find Lucian,” Koa said. “She only asked for shelter for us. She didn’t expect anything else.”
“And he took her in?” My eyes widened. I was well aware that the Papa-in-Law I knew now was not the same man back then.
“He did, gladly. He was relieved,” Zane scoffed. “He had Cas and me already and no idea what to do with us. Like, literally no clue. We were just babies some women had dumped on him.”
“Mahina was a convenient solution,” Casimir added.
I understood what he meant. In his own cold way, Lucian had made a practical arrangement.
“She was so much more than that.” Koa’s voice was suddenly fierce as he clicked to another photo. Mahina in a sundress, kneeling in a garden, her face bright with laughter as three toddlers crowded around her. “She loved us. All of us.”
“Yeah, she didn’t care that Cas and I weren’t hers by blood,” Zane added. “Seb, too. She smothered him in mothering just like she did us.”
“Look at her windowsill there.” Casimir leaned forward, his finger pointing to a detail in the background of the photo. “See the flowers? Evening primrose. She always had them. Said they were like holding sunshine in your hand.”
My breath caught. Evening primrose. Koa’s mate scent.
“The Moon Goddess knew what she was doing,” I whispered, reaching for Koa’s hand as my eyes stung.
“When you first told us, my heart stopped.” His fingers intertwined with mine, squeezing gently.
“All of ours did,” Zane smirked. “Fang-rotted fate, always fucking around.”
“Mom smelled like vanilla, Seri,” Casimir added. “Most likely from all the cookies.”
“Is that where the obsession started?” I asked with a watery smile.
“Probably,” Koa said with a little smile. “She baked all the time. Said a house without cookies wasn’t a home. Also claimed it helped her ‘channel destructive energies.’ ”
“Yeah, ours,” Zane chuckled. “I tried to prank her once. Switched the sugar with salt.”
“You did not,” I gasped.
“I was four! It was hilarious to me. But she knew. She totally knew, and she let me think I’d pulled it off.”
“And then?” I prompted, sensing there was more to the story.
“And then she made the cookies with the salt, but a separate batch with sugar. Gave all the salty ones to me and the good ones to Cas and Ko.” He shook his head, admiration in his eyes. “Figured out what happened on the first bite, but I had to pretend they were fine, didn’t I?”
I laughed, picturing a little redheaded menace choking down salty cookies while trying to maintain his pride. The image was so clear, so warm, Mahina knowing exactly how to teach her mischievous son a lesson while letting him save face.
“She sounds incredible.”
“She was.” Koa’s eyes glossed over.
As he flipped through more photos, the love in every image was undeniable.
Mahina holding toddler Zane, kissing baby Koa’s forehead, braiding Casimir’s hair, which was long even then.
I watched the three of them grow through the pictures, but I also noticed how Mahina changed, too.
Her radiant smile remained, but her face grew thinner and her eyes tired, and a colorful scarf eventually replaced her thick black hair.
“The cancer came back when we were five,” Koa explained. “There was no beating it, despite Lucian paying for the best care.”
“Probably the only decent thing he ever did,” Zane muttered.
The next photo showed Mahina in a hospital bed, all three boys crowded onto it with her, a book open on her lap. Despite the medical equipment surrounding her, despite her evident fragility, she was reading to them, one arm curved protectively around Zane, who was tucked against her side.
“Did you understand what was happening?” I asked gently.
“Not really,” Zane admitted. “We knew she was sick. We knew she had to stay in the hospital. But we thought she’d come home eventually.”
“She didn’t,” Casimir stated in a cold voice, but I could hear the old pain underneath.
“Lucian offered to Turn her,” Koa confided. “She refused.”
“Principled to the end,” Casimir added, his jaw working.
A silence fell, and I counted seven of Koa’s breaths before daring to ask, “Did she suffer?”
Casimir opened his mouth, closed it. Zane plucked at a loose thread on the cushion.
“Yes.” Koa blinked a few times, then raised his chin. “We were six when she died. Sebastian came to her funeral. Lucian didn’t. That’s something I’ve never been able to forgive.”
The quiet that followed was heavy, laden with all the things they’d lost when Mahina had passed away. Not just their mother, but their childhood. I knew what came next. The training. The missions. Being molded into weapons instead of being raised as sons.
“After Mom was gone, we weren’t children anymore,” Casimir murmured. “We were assets.”
“But we had her for six years,” Koa said. “And she gave us something he could never take away.”
“What’s that, Koko?”
“ ‘Ohana. She taught us that family isn’t just blood. It’s the people who love you.”
“The people who choose to stay,” Zane added solemnly.
I looked at the three of them, so different in appearance and personality, yet bonded by a love that had seen them through the darkest times.
The vampire king might have given them dhampir abilities, but Mahina had given them something far more precious.
She’d given them hearts that could love fiercely, loyally, through any storm.
“Thank you,” I whispered, fighting back tears. “For sharing her with me.”
The last photo Koa showed was simpler than the rest. Just Mahina, sitting on a porch swing, looking out at a sunset. She seemed peaceful, content, despite everything. As if she could see something beautiful on the horizon that the camera couldn’t capture.
I thought of everything she’d given my husbands: The foundation of love that had allowed them to survive the harshness that followed her loss, the capacity to care, to protect, to put themselves between danger and those they loved.
And I was grateful, so grateful, that she had been there for them when they needed her most.
“ ‘Ohana,” I repeated.
“Family. Chosen, cherished, and unbreakable,” Koa agreed as he closed out of the slideshow.
They were so precious, the photos. Stolen glimpses of a time before I knew them, of the woman who had shaped their hearts long before I crashed into their lives. Without thinking, I laid my hand on Koa’s forearm as an idea took shape.
“We should make a scrapbook. Something physical you can hold. Something to honor her.”