Chapter Thirty-Seven
Seraphina
Starlight – Muse
Trey walks back toward me from where he and Chace had stepped aside, his expression composed in that careful, controlled way I’ve come to recognize, as though everything volatile has already been locked down behind something colder and far more deliberate.
The sunlight catches along the sharp line of his jaw, but it does nothing to soften what I see there, and I feel it immediately, a shift in the air that settles low in my chest before a single word is spoken.
He is angry… it makes my hands fidget, my fingers worrying at myself.
Logan is still talking beside me, while Mac leans back in her chair with that easy warmth that always steadies the space around her, and Sam watches everything in quiet, grounded silence, his attention sharper than the rest. None of them miss the change in Trey.
Whenever Trey is quiet, it spells problems.
Trey’s gaze finds mine instantly, and everything else fades behind it.
My fingers tighten unconsciously around the ultrasound photos still in my hand as he closes the distance between us, and the warmth that had settled around me only moments ago begins to fracture at the edges.
He doesn’t speak to the others.
He simply reaches for me.
His hand slides into mine, firm and strong, his thumb pressing lightly against my knuckles as though he’s anchoring me before I even realize I’m drifting, and the contact sends a quiet, steady pulse through my system that almost disguises the tension building beneath it.
“I need to speak with you,” he says quietly, his voice low enough that it belongs only to me.
Sam shifts slightly in his seat, his gaze flicking between us, understanding passing through his expression without question, while Logan’s mouth opens like he’s about to say something before he seems to think better of it, and Mac exhales slowly, something heavier settling into her posture.
No one stops us.
They are too in tune.
Trey doesn’t give me time to ask anything.
He just leads me away.
Past the pool.
Past the warmth of the sun and the illusion of normalcy that had wrapped around us so briefly.
Past the voices that had waited for us to depart before they discussed what Trey and Chace had been talking about in private.
The further we move, the quieter everything becomes, until the outside world dulls into something distant and unimportant, and all I’m left with is the steady pressure of his hand in mine and the growing weight in my chest that I can’t quite name yet but already understand enough to fear.
By the time we step inside and the door closes behind us, the noise has faded completely, replaced by a silence that feels too heavy for the space it fills.
It is just us now, and whatever truth he is carrying in here with him.
Soft light filters through the partially drawn curtains, casting everything in muted gold, and the bed remains slightly unmade from this morning, the sheets still bearing the quiet imprint of a life that, until recently, felt contained within these walls.
This room has always been our refuge.
I sense the shift in him before he speaks, in the way his hand lingers at my waist after releasing mine, in the controlled rise and fall of his chest, in the quiet precision of his movements as he turns to face me fully.
“Trey…” I begin softly, my voice already threaded with something uncertain.
Say something…
He’s watching me, a fake smile that doesn’t quite touch his eyes.
What does this mean? What is he going to say? My stomach starts to feel queasy. The long fingers of dread start to dig and claw through me, phantom fingers pressing into muscles, scratching bone.
“I need you to see something,” he says, his tone gentle but unyielding, as though he has already decided that whatever this is, we are facing it together whether I am ready or not.
Do I want to know? Can I bear more bad news?
The knot of worry is fraying my mind.
My stomach tightens immediately, a sharp pull of instinct that warns me before my mind can catch up.
He pauses briefly, measuring the space between us, the moment itself, before continuing.
Stop dragging this out, please… I feel my composure already shaken. The anticipation is torturous.
“It’s going to be hard…but we need to know if it’s real.”
The word real lands wrong inside me, like something fragile cracking before I can even understand what it is.
He crosses to the dresser and picks up his iPad, returning to me with a steadiness that feels practiced, like he has already walked himself through this moment and come out the other side of it.
When he places it in my hands, our fingers brush, but my heart doesn’t flutter as it is too lost in what’s to come.
“What is it?” I ask quietly.
His jaw shifts slightly, tension tightening along the line of it.
“I’m sorry, baby, I think it makes more sense if you just watch.”
I swallow, my throat suddenly dry, and lower my gaze to the screen as I press play.
I hear his voice before the image fully settles, and my breath catches halfway in my chest as recognition slams into me before I can prepare for it.
The screen sharpens into focus, revealing white robes, calm expression, and that same quiet authority.
My lungs forget how to work.
“…The Lord speaks of family…”
“…For what God has joined, let no man put asunder…”
“…The lost lamb will always be called home…”
Another twisted sermon? His words as hollow as his faith.
My fingers tighten around the edges of the iPad as he continues, his voice grating. I find my worry shifting to anger. Anger at this forsaken soul spitting bile.
“Today… I welcome two new members into our family.”
Why should I care about this?
A woman steps forward, dressed in white, her posture still, her head slightly bowed.
She looks utterly broken, defeated, head held low.
Who is she? Gideon turns, pushing the hair back from her face. She winces, and her features become clearer. I feel like I am falling. It isn’t just recognition.
It is something more instinctive.
A pull I don’t have a name for.
My throat tightens as I lean closer to the screen, drawn in despite myself, fragments of something distant flickering at the edges of my awareness.
I gasp as flickers of long-dead memories rush in.
They come in pieces, blurred and faded.
Then, just as quickly, the memories shift again inside my mind, replaced by something harsher.
Smoke.
The sharp, choking scent of it fills my lungs as though I am there again, watching flames curl through photographs, my father’s hands feeding them into the fire one by one, erasing everything that came before him with a methodical, deliberate cruelty that I had been too young to fully understand at the time.
My past.
My identity.
Her. I swallow hard, my gaze locked to the screen.
Before I can process it further, a girl steps forward.
Everything inside me fractures.
She looks like me in a way that goes beyond resemblance, beyond similarity, beyond coincidence, as though I am staring at a version of myself reflected back through time.
The same eyes.
The same hair.
The same lines of a face that feels both mine and not mine at all.
It is disorienting in a way that makes the room tilt slightly around me, my hand lifting instinctively toward the screen as if I might somehow bridge the distance between us.I try to process Gideon’s words.
Fear for my own situation has evaporated like water boiling in a pan.
“She-she looks just like me.”
My thoughts spiral ahead, racing through possibilities I don’t want to consider but can’t stop.
My mother. A sister. Now in enemy hands. How long has Gideon had them? How old is the video? I can no longer hide. I can’t. They need me. I have a sister. How did he know? How did her find them? It couldn’t have been when he had me, he would have said, he is too proud a man to keep this secret… No.
This is deliberate.
Calculated.
He is using this as leverage to draw me out.
Guilt surges through me so quickly it makes my stomach turn.
“I can’t…” My voice shakes despite my effort to steady it. “I can’t let him hurt them. I won’t…”
The image of them standing there, still and controlled, burns into my mind.
“This is my fault…” I say. Trey shakes his head hard.
They are going to be remade into something that belongs to him.
Because of me.
“I can’t let them suffer for me,” I whisper, the words cracking under the weight of it.
I don’t realize I’m shaking until Trey’s hands are on me, pulling me firmly against him, his body solid and unyielding.
“Don’t say silly shit, Dove, this isn’t your fault. It’s choices that cockroach made,,” he murmurs against my hair, his voice steady in a way that forces me to latch onto it.
I cling to him because I need something real to hold onto, something that doesn’t shift under the weight of everything else.
“Chace has…” He sighs, searching for the words. “Chace has a plan.”
“If you’re going, then I’m coming with you,” I say, with more steel in my voice than I thought possible.
But then his grip tightens slightly—not enough to hurt, just enough to make something else clear.
“No. This is too dangerous. You can’t be there. I won’t let you, baby. I’m sorry.”
He kisses my head. I want to pull back. It’s the first time I’ve felt real anger toward him, and I don’t like it.
“Trey…”
“Sera. It’s not just you we have to protect now, is it?”
“That’s not fair.” My hand instinctively goes to my stomach, his words stealing my fire.
“I’m not going to be fair. Not about this. If I thought I could bring you and keep you safe…” He shakes his head. “No. Not even then.”
I find myself disappointed, momentarily knocked off balance.
I pull back just enough to look up at him.
“What about you?” I ask quietly. The understanding of what he is already preparing himself to do.
His hand lifts to my face, his touch gentle as he cups my cheek before leaning in to kiss me, as though he is trying to give me something steady to hold onto before everything shifts again.
I feel it in the way his hand lowers, in the way his shoulders square, in the way his gaze darkens into something colder and far more dangerous than anything that came before it.
“I have to reach out and apologize to my dad…”
“What? Jonathon, why?” He shrugs.
“Chace’s orders.”
“I—I don’t get it…” I say, my heart tearing.
“My dad can get us in unseen…it’s going to be messy…
” I know Trey’s opinion of his father—the hatred that runs so deep from everything he’s said and explained.
But my time Johnathon…he was stern, quiet, controlled.
I could see parts of him in Trey, though I don’t think I’d ever tell him that.
Then I wonder…Does Trey act so animated because he wants to be seen as anything but his father?
“Okay…” I say with a heavy sigh. “But please. Come back safe. I can’t lose you again, Trey. I won’t.”
“Lose me? Nope. Sorry, beautiful, you’re stuck with me…
” he says, then his expression sharpens.
“But first…first I’m going to show Giddy-up-on-this-dick what happens when you fuck with my family.
” His gaze holds mine without wavering, unwavering in a way that makes it clear this decision has already been made.
“For you,” he says quietly, before his hand shifts, resting gently over my stomach.
“For us. For our baby.” My vision blurs as a tear slips free, tracing a warm path down my cheek before I can stop it, and even as he reaches up to wipe it away with a tenderness that feels almost at odds with everything else in this moment, I understand something with a clarity that settles deep in my bones.
Loving him means knowing that when he walks into that war, there is a chance he won’t come back from it.