Chapter 22 - Harper
I knew I was rolling, spinning through the living room until I collided with the coffee table leg. I felt hands on me, turning me onto my back, but before I could blink or do anything, my vision blurred, darkening at the edges.
Had I hit my head?
Distantly, I was aware of the leash being cut from my body, a voice that was familiar but not Alex’s telling me it was all going to be okay.
But I was already losing grip on my vision.
The last sound I heard was a wolf’s roar, unleashed, bringing what I hoped was vengeance to the demons ruining mine and my children’s lives here in Azure Cove.
I mumbled, “Keep them safe, keep my babies safe.” I didn’t know what was happening, but that swirling black mist came for me, drowning me. The darkness dragged me under.
***
I entered a dark dreamscape, lit only by a blazing blue light. A voice echoed overhead.
What does your future look like, Harper Thollin?
Before I could even find my voice to answer, I was pulled into a place where I saw the life I had once talked about, eloping with Alex…
The rain battered down in the dark street, and night was pressing in on us.
“You got it?” he whispered.
“I’m good!” I insisted, glancing around. “How are we getting this beast to start quietly?”
“She doesn’t.” He grinned, patting the motorbike.
“Not exactly the most inconspicuous to leave without detection.”
We were both risking everything to do this. Alex was sneaking out of undercover confinement, and I was just out of confinement altogether. But we were eloping, running off. He had two matching silver bands in his pocket. We were going to have that life we had talked about. I secured my backpack safely onto my back, huddled in one of Alex’s leather jackets, barely shielded from the rain but uncaring about it. How could I when the rest of my life was about to properly begin?
We laughed together, climbing onto the motorbike. Alex slid on first, and I followed suit. I had left my phone back in Alex’s apartment. We had broken so many Haystock rules. However, Alex was technically from outside this town, so he only broke military rules. He really had given everything up for me.
The bike roared to life, and we set off, down the main road leading out of Haystock. We drove until we hit the tenth motel on the road, far away enough from town that we wouldn’t be questioned yet. We got checked in, fell into the bed, and languished in sex and new love.
Tomorrow, I would break the news to him of my suspected pregnancy. I’d do a test with him to be sure.
Tomorrow, we would be married.
And we were. We woke up the next day and went to get our marriage license. Alex smooth-talked through any problems, and I searched for a beautiful place to get married. And that’s exactly what we did.
After a small ceremony, our only witnesses were strangers in the National Park we had picked in Cleveland, Alex and I were married. And I couldn’t be happier. I told him that night, our hands intertwined, our bands brushing against one another.
“Alex, I think I’m pregnant.”
And we made love endlessly that night, Alex claiming me as his mate. We would spend the rest of our lives together. We would figure it out. Years later, I saw Alex with a toddler on his shoulders, running down a city sidewalk in the early morning hours while I headed to work. He was taking care of the triplets while I was going on a mini cave excursion to dig out some historical secrets.
We figured out everything, even if I no longer talked to my parents and accepted the disowning.
***
The dreamscape shifted nauseatingly. I was moved to another scene, one more familiar than comfortable. How had the demon gotten inside my mind? My heart broke for the future I had never got to have. A future where Alex changed careers, a future where I became a historian, and our triplets we raised with stability and love.
But then it all changed.
I was in Azure Cove. The triplets were going into sixth grade. There was a middle school on the island, and they were all completely at odds. I had raised them in similar clothes but choosing their own colors but now they were branching off. Marie was quiet and studious, always reading, always wanting to learn. Joseph fought other kids on the playground, talking about his dad who’d ‘kick everyone’s ass’, and Hallie was a tearaway who liked to talk back. I knew they were everything I had expected but things could still change.
With tears in our eyes, Alex and I saw them off to their first day back after summer.
Afterwards, we kissed on our way back to the cottage, where we had stayed.
“When’s your next deployment?”
Alex grinned. “I’m on desk duty until the New Year, querida. Honorary desk time so I can go through reports and do tech-based surveillance. Hector’s been teaching me a few new things about the applications we use for records.”
I smiled, cuddling into his side. “Wow, my caveman husband, learning things about tech.”
“Hey!” he scoffed. “This husband will make you eat those words when I show you what I can do with that tech.”
I kissed his jaw. “I’d much rather see what you can do in bed.”
Alex, his hair sporting more of a naturally curled crew cut now, scooped me up and took me back to the cottage. We were expecting the triplets to shift for the first time any day now. Alex had already prepared them as well as they could. Joseph was excited, Hallie was already planning to attack her brother, and Marie woke up crying some nights, but Alex was always there to comfort her. They still had the wolf toy from their childhood. Marie didn’t admit she cuddled it at night, but it was always on her bed.
We entered the cottage. There had been no demon activity in a long time. It wasn’t entirely quelled, but it would never truly go away. Before we could head upstairs, a voice rang out. Adalyn walked through the front door, grinning back at her fiancé, who stepped in through after her.
Life had finally fallen into place.
***
“Stop,” I mumbled. “Please—it hurts.”
This could be yours, Harper Thollin. If only you could learn to trust. If only you believed that it could be that way. Do you believe? Which do you prefer? The future you still mourn or the future you are not yet giving a chance?
And then the worst happened. I saw the future I’d almost had if I had returned home.
Diego, raising Alex’s children, playing the part of a doting husband while I winced every time he kissed me. Diego and I had a child he loved and spoiled, but ultimately, he would teach that child the ways he had learned. The ways of a shifter killer, wiping out every shifter like he had tried to with Alex years before. I smiled, knowing he was tiring of me and I was on borrowed time after birthing him a son.
I had almost returned to that…
The thought made me feel quite ill.
But there I was, in church on Sundays, being the good wife my parents had raised me to be. Not all men were Diego, but Diego was the one I was stuck with. Shackled to a man through an arranged marriage my parents thought was the best for me. How? Nobody ever saw the worst in men like Diego, but I did. I now knew the truth of what he’d threatened me with. How he had threatened Zephyr, Alex, and every other shifter, and was now a target for the military.
My triplets would have been raised by a man, not their father, and a man I didn’t love, either.
I always had to protect them from that, no matter what.
Every doubt, every question, filled my head—it erupted in my mind and I screamed, breaking free from the world of darkness.
***
I came back to consciousness in Alex’s arms, his voice soothing in my ear. He was running.
“We’re going back to them,” he said. “We’re all safe. We’re going back to our babies.”
Those were the best words I had ever heard in my life.