EIGHT #6
"It's nothing. You're safe. You're home.
What's a couple hundred years hanging out with those old, stuck-in-their-ways fucks?
Come, your mother must be beside herself," he reminded me, releasing my shoulder to lead me back to the square where the crowd had split in two.
There was an inner circle of people allowed breathing room by the much larger outer group.
I couldn't see faces, but I knew.
That inner group was my family.
My stomach knotted, twisted so hard that it made me stumble back a step even as my heart pounded frantically in my chest.
We were all of twenty feet away when someone pointed, making the whole inner group turn.
And they swarmed.
I was pulled from every side, arms closing over me, tears soaking into me, so many voices speaking all at once that I couldn't make a single one out.
But they all seemed here.
My heart swelled at that, at realizing I hadn't lost anyone, that no one had passed without me being able to say goodbye.
There were my parents, a bit more wrinkled than when I had left. Two aunts, uncles, cousins. My two sisters. Their mates, men that were vaguely familiar, but their names lost in time to me.
Not only were they all there, but there were new additions too.
My older sister, Nesta, had a baby at her hip, another clinging to her leg, both possessing the same green flecks in their eyes as their mother.
My younger sister had a belly swollen with what seemed to be her first. I wondered if it would inherit the unique purple accent to its eyes as well.
"Let him breathe, let him breathe," my father insisted, pulling my mother back as she cried, mumbling things so fast that all the words were tumbling together. "Son, we never gave up hope," he told me, blinking away the moisture in his eyes.
Seeing it, I needed to do the same.
"Mama," Nesta's oldest called, tugging at the edge of her jacket. "Who is that?" she asked, sticking a pudgy hand out, pointing toward the fire pit.
My gaze followed, finding her turned to face us, tears falling down her cheeks with abandon. She didn't even attempt to wipe them away.
"Amy," I breathed out, moving away from the crowd of my family, making my way back over toward her, pulling her close as soon as she was in arm's reach. "What happened? Are you alright?"
"My family took you from them," she cried into my chest. "They love you. And we took them from you."
"Not we, honey. You had nothing to do with that. You gave me back to them."
"This is she," Kieran declared, moving in beside me, making Amy pull back a few inches to look over at him. "She doesn't look like she could even lift a chain," he added.
I opened my mouth to defend her, but surprising me, she stiffened, reaching up to swipe her cheeks with the sleeves of her jacket. "And you don't look old enough to be considered an elder. Looks can be deceiving."
Kieran's lips curved up at that, appreciating honesty. "Apparently so," he agreed. "Our appreciation knows no limits," he went on, shaking his head. "For bringing him back to us. You're shaking," he observed, brows drawing low. "Is she unwell?" he asked, directing the question at me.
"It has been a long, cold, snow-filled journey."
"You must have a chill straight through to your bones," my mother declared, moving into the space to Amy's side, pressing a motherly hand to her cheek.
"Drake, come. Bring your girl," she added, and neither Amy nor I corrected her.
I couldn't help but wonder if it was simply embarrassment on her part, or something more.
"We will settle you two into our home for now.
Get you fed and changed. Let you rest. What is your name again, angel?
" she asked, pulling Amy away from me to cluck over her on the short walk back to my family home.
It was Kieran who hung back a few feet who had the good sense to clarify. "Is she your girl?"
"I'd like for her to be," I admitted as we fell into step a dozen paces behind my family, my mother and sisters fawning over Amy like their long-lost daughter and sister.
"She know that?"
"Not yet."
"You sure it's actual feelings, not just all the craziness of her rescue and now you saving her and all that?"
It was a fair question.
Even if a part of me bristled at the words, I understood Kieran's motivations. After all, we mated for life. You wanted to make sure you made the best choice.
"Well," I said, watching as my mother rushed Amy into the house I had grown up in, made smaller with time.
It almost seemed unlikely we would all fit inside the building that was perhaps one and a half of Amy's apartments in the city, only being larger than most because my father and I had put the sweat into it to expand it for my sisters.
It was the same, in most ways, as I remembered it - the same wood my father had felled when he had wanted to mate with my mother, the same ones that my father, Kieran and I had felled when he decided to expand.
The shutters were closed over the windows that would be thrown open in the summer to let the fresh air in.
The roof looked new, but with the same combination of wood and greenery that had always been there.
Smoke huffed happily out of the chimney, inviting us into its warmth.
"I guess time will tell."