Chapter 15 - Alex
“Do you want me, Harper?”
The question hung between us. There was no way I was letting her take my babies away from me. Not now. It hurt me to understand why she had packed a bag, but I wasn’t letting her get on a flight. Not now. Not ever. Not to escape me. I had never chosen to walk away from Harper. I had been forced to. Why wouldn’t she listen to my proper reasons?
I could already see that steel resolve in her eyes—the stubborn insistence of not answering anything that made her look weak for me. Weak and giving into her attraction. She wouldn’t acknowledge yet that she still wanted me.
I smirked, stepping closer. “We never used to fight,” I drawled. “It makes me think that it only heightens the passion, don’t you think?”
“We don’t have passion,” she snapped.
“Oh, really?” I countered, stepping towards her. I backed her against the wall, planting my hands on either side of her head, leaning in close. “You want to deny that we nearly kissed before?”
She snorted. “We did no such thing. It's all in your head, Alex.”
“Is that so?” I chuckled, leaning in ever closer. Her chest brushed mine, and her cheeks flushed.
Her hand flattened on my chest, pushing me back to no avail. Instead, I nudged her closer into the wall. My hands slid down the wall to grasp her hips. Still, she didn’t pull away or struggle against me.
“Isn’t it enough that I let you stay here? That you protected me?” she asked. There was a subtle tease in her voice, a quirk of a smile on her lips as she looked up at me. She knew very well the games I liked to play. It had been a long, long time. We played a game of cat-and-mouse chasing before getting together that summer. Of course, this time around, it wouldn’t be much different.
“Run, Harper,” I teased. “I’ll always chase you, if that’s what you want.”
At my words, her arousal spiked and flared, and I scented in, letting it rile me up as well. Her particular scent always drove me crazy: the perfume she wore, the shampoo she used, the natural fragrance of her skin. It all called to me, my own damn drug, and I craved my next hit of Harper.
“I never got over you,” I told her. “I thought I had. I spent endless nights in the desert trying to forget how my name sounded on your tongue, how your name was imprinted in my heart and mind.”
“Alex…” Her voice trailed off.
“Why won’t you let yourself want me, Harper?” I murmured. “Is it so bad to want me?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “I don’t trust you not to hurt me again.”
Her eyes gazed into mine. She licked her lips, all rosebud and pink, and I was a weak, weak man. I wanted her—craved her, needed her.
I was two seconds from slipping my fingers through hers and yanking her arms above her head, wanting to see her reaction to something she had once moaned for, but a sound outside caught my attention. Alert, thinking it was the demons coming back, I jerked my head to search for the source of the sound.
Harper slipped around me, rushing over to the stairs to put space between us. “It’s just the trees against my bedroom window,” she said. “Happens whenever it's windy. Goodnight , Alex. Enjoy the sofa.”
With that, she turned and walked upstairs.
I ached to follow.
Instead, I lay down on the sofa and waited for sleep to take me. When it didn’t, I was back up and moving. The ache in my side from the demon’s blade had faded, eased by whatever Greta had done to cleanse the dark magic. I wandered into what Harper and the children had called ‘the TV room,’ which consisted of a futon, a wide armchair for all three of them to cram into, and a cute child-themed TV. It was blocky and vintage, nothing fancy. I hadn’t noticed before, but there was a stuffed toy on the edge of the futon, a wolf plushie. I smile, picking it up. One of the ears was half chewed off.
Harper would have told them one day about me, even if I hadn’t shown up here. But if I hadn’t, could I count on the fact that they’d have known who their father was?
She hadn’t specified what her plans were regarding that, but… I wanted to stay. I wanted to prove myself to her. Yes, this was an unplanned development, but I would work my life around it.
I held the wolf toy in my hand and left the TV room. I headed upstairs, intending to ask Harper about the triplets finding out about their DNA properly. But their door was ajar, and I hesitated.
I peered in, wanting to check on my children. But to my surprise, the boy, Joseph, was sat up in his bed, watching the door.
“Hey, buddy,” I said, pushing the door open. He had his blankets clutched tightly to him. “Is everything okay? You want me to wake your mom?”
He glanced around before shaking his head. “No.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding. “Are you scared?”
After a second, he nodded, his lower lip trembling.
“You want to come sit with me and talk about it?”
With no hesitation, Joseph clambered out of bed, holding out his little arms. I scooped him up and took him downstairs. Together, we sat on the sofa. Joseph flopped down next to me, grabbing for the wolf toy.
“Is this yours?”
He nodded, clutching it to his chest. “The girls wanted a cat when Mommy bought them. I wanted the wolf. I liked it.”
“Yeah?” I smiled. “I liked them when I was a little boy too.”
“Really?”
I nodded. Before I could say anything else, I heard a small voice coming from the stairs. It was Marie, her hair in a tight braid. She rubbed her eyes, her whole face screwed up.
“I heard voices,” she mumbled sleepily. “Where’s Mommy?”
“Mommy’s asleep at the moment,” I told her. “You want to come join? We’re talking about wolves.”
Marie’s eyes lit up, those brown wolves inherited from me, that I had inherited from my own family going back generations. She rushed down the stairs. Of course, Hallie, the ‘leader,’ never failed to be left behind and hurried after her, too. Within moments, I had all three children huddled around me. Joseph still played with the toy wolf.
“I can’t sleep,” he confessed. “Are there still bad guys out there?”
When I was a kid, my mom had never lied to me in that childish way others provided their children. I never got the warning stories that weren’t true. Instead, I got the painfully honest stories. The bad guys are always out there, Alex. Never forget that .
She would tell me the truth and comfort me with her actions.
So I did that to my children.
“You know what? There is. I would love to tell you that there isn’t, but there is. But, hey, listen to me.” Their attention was rapt, on me. “Me and those other wolves you saw will fight them all off.”
“What if they hurt Mommy again? We hear her crying a lot. Even when the bad guys aren’t there.” That was Marie, her wide eyes looking so sad for her mom.
“Mommy… The bad guys are different for her,” I said. “Do you remember the man in the story with the princess? In that story, the man had to leave to go on a fierce battle. But he never got to say goodbye to the princess in case it hurt her more.”
I didn’t know how much they would understand, but they all listened, their attention firmly on me. Joseph snuggled closer, his hands fisted in the wolf toy’s fur.
“So Mommy is the princess?” Hallie asked. “I knew she was beautiful like the princess!”
“Exactly,” I said. I swallowed. “And the man that can turn into a beast… Do you know who he is?”
All three of them shook their heads.
“Is it you?” Hallie asked.
I didn’t know if I was allowed to answer that. I couldn’t sweep in and tell them, not without Harper there. She had raised them alone for years—I couldn’t do this alone.
“Its… I’m sure Mommy will want to finish the story with you instead of me,” I said. It broke me not to claim them as my children to their faces, but I had to respect Harper. I would talk to her tomorrow about it. “Hey, listen, why don’t we get you all back to bed? The bad guys won’t be coming back tonight.”
I herded them upstairs, carrying Joseph when he, once again, lifted his hands up. The four of us retreated to bed. They all scrambled to tuck in. Joseph, with his wolf toy, Marie and the cat, and Hallie, had a panda bear.
I took up a spot in the armchair in the corner of this room.
“My own mom used to sing a song for me when I could not sleep,” I told them. “It might sound a little different to what you know music to be, okay? And I’m not the best singer, so bear with me.”
Hallie giggled. Joseph’s eyes were heavy, though he kept them open stubbornly.
There had been an old Spanish lullaby my mom had sung to me on the nights when my father’s stories had kept me awake. Nights of fearing my first shift, even if I knew it was my natural DNA and wouldn’t hurt the way I now knew. Back then, I didn’t know that it would be okay.
I began singing my children a lullaby.
I let it be soft and gentle, not wanting to wake them, while thinking of how my mom had sat me on my lap. As I sang, I kept watch over them. I had never known I even had one child, let alone three. I hadn’t been there for the crying and screaming, the diaper changes, the first birthdays, or Christmases. But I was here now.
As I stood up, gazing out at the sleeping triplets, I knew nothing would ever take me from them, or from my mate. A peace had settled in me—peace I hadn’t felt since before I walked away from Harper.
“Goodnight, mis angelitos ,” I murmured.