Barista #2
“Good,” Lucy said, clapping his hands together.
“Now, go help your friends. Make another portal.” Layla paled, but he shooed her away.
“If you make a mistake again, we’ll be here to help.
You can do it. You’re the daughter of two ancient creatures and a very beautiful, strong-willed, pink-haired human. ”
Layla mumbled to herself as she left us.
Luca’s arms were still crossed over his chest. His expression darkened.
“What’s wrong, son?” Lucy asked directly.
“I . . . It’s nothing.”
“That is a lie,” I said. “We know you are lying. What’s going on?”
He threw up his hands, turning away from us. “I just . . . I keep having these dreams. Nightmares. I’m not sleeping. I haven’t been sleeping. I don’t know why they haunt me, but they won’t leave me, these creatures. These demons. Always demons. Faceless and nameless demons. I don’t know.”
Demons. All the alarm bells started going off in my mind, and I knew Lucy heard them too.
“I’m not like my sisters and brothers. I’m not like them. What’s wrong with me?”
Lucy winced. “Nothing is wrong.”
“No, there is something wrong. You know it.” Lucy and Luca were staring each other down now, and the energy in the room was shifting, the shadows responding.
But not to me.
Not to Lucy.
To our son.
“Just growing pains,” Lucy said lightly, and that set off even more alarm bells in my mind. “Go help your sister.”
“Okay, well, thanks for nothing then.” Luca shot each of us a dirty look then left.
Ugh, sometimes raising kids felt like getting stabbed repeatedly in the chest. I just wanted them to be safe and happy and to not attract the attention of our enemies.
The moment Luca was out of the small bathroom, I wrapped my fingers around Lucy’s horn and shoved him through a portal. We landed hard on the floor of the cooler in my cafe.
“What the fuck is going on?” I snarled at him.
Lucy relaxed under me. I felt his fingertips pressing into my hips. “We can’t hide them forever, you know.”
“Little devil. What was that? You know something.”
He swallowed hard, his eyes softening with pain. “They want him,” he whispered.
“Who?”
“The demons. Hell.”
I stared at him, my heart pounding in my chest. “What do you mean?”
“My love, it’s been years since the war, and years since I left Hell and started focusing on Trixie and you and our family. But Hell needs a king, otherwise things start to fall apart. It is a realm that needs order.”
“No,” I said, rolling onto the floor next to him. I stared up at the metal ceiling, our breaths puffing out in frosty clouds. “Lucy, no. Not him. Not our son.”
“It’s either him or me.”
My heart squeezed. “No,” I whispered. “It can be different. We don’t have to play by their rules. We’re powerful, Lucy.”
His hand slid into mine, and he didn’t argue. He didn’t need to.
“Layla is going to draw Him here.”
“No. Because I will guard her. We will protect her from Him.”
“And our other children? The ones who are too young to start showing signs of non-humanness? We already know our youngest is going to grow up to be something fierce.”
Tana was going to be an actual nightmare in just a few years. She was the only child who ever showed signs of being a monster before ten years of age. She had a shadow self that regularly caused trouble. That part of her was mischief embodied. I really didn’t know what to expect with her quite yet.
“Luca is like me,” he whispered.
“We should have Gabe talk with him.”
“Gabriel is different than Luca. Gabriel is not human. He is an angel, a fallen angel. He cannot help Luca with this.” Lucy blew out a slow breath.
“The darkness . . . the darkness I struggle with, he has. He will have other forms that start to show, B. And this darkness . . . Well, you’ve seen the destruction I've caused in the past and what it’s taken for me to become who I am.
And now, more than ever, we have to be good parents to him, because otherwise the darkness will consume him.
But I don’t know if I am the best for this.
I infuriate him half the time. He blames me. ”
“He blames me too,” I muttered.
“Well, yes. But you saw him just now.”
I had, and Lucy wasn’t wrong.
Together, we let out a long sigh.
I shook my head. “You know, of all the monsters I’ve known, of all the battles I’ve fought, of all the pain and suffering I’ve lived through, and all the heartbreak I’ve endured—none of it can touch how challenging it is to be a father.”
“Or how rewarding.”
Despite feeling like we’d just failed our children, I smiled. “Yes. This is true. I am very proud of them. Even when they hate us.”
He chuckled, and then sat up, his gaze locking with mine. “We need to tell our mate. Maybe she can help Luca.”
Lucy had a point. Trixie always somehow knew what everyone needed. “She will be displeased with us.”
“Without a doubt.”
“Last time we displeased her was bad.”
“It was.” He hummed. “At least you’re helping another creature find their mate.”
“Perhaps it’s the only thing I’m good at.”
Lucy arched a brow, his smile turning salacious. “Now, Daddy. Don’t be so humble.”
I glanced around the cooler, amused. It’d been a long time since I’d used this to fuck Lucy in, but . . .
“Would fucking me into the floor like a dirty slut make you feel any better?” he teased.
“No,” I said. But, I snapped my fingers, taking us straight to our bedroom. I had him under me in a blink. “But fucking you like a dirty slut through our mattress will.”