by Kristie Cook
“Stop it! Both of you,” I finally yelled. “This is nonsense. I’m standing right here. Stop talking about me like I’m not. And stop being so damn stupid.”
They both finally shut up and looked at me as if they just remembered I was even in the room.
“Owen, you’re completely wrong. Yes, I was pissed off. I was pissed off at everyone—at Tristan, at Mom, at myself, at the Amadis, at the whole damn world! But I knew the blame was all on those bastard Daemoni who killed Stefan, who took Tristan, who took my whole life away.” I swiped at the tears and drew in a ragged breath. “But, really, I just want to be over it. Tristan’s back. We’ll be with Dorian soon. Just let me be happy. I’m happy now, okay?”
I stomped into the bedroom and threw myself on the bed. After a few minutes, Tristan sat next to me and pulled me into his arms.
“You just said you were happy,” he said quietly.
“I am happy, damn it!”
He chuckled. I did, too, through the tears.
“So why are you crying?”
“Because I feel absolutely horrible for both of you. I never meant for Owen to feel like I blamed him. And I had no idea what you saw at the park and how that must have made you feel.” The cold, hard feeling from last night started working its way in again. “I hate them. I hate them for ruining our lives. I hate them for doing this to us.”
“Ma lykita,” he murmured, “they haven’t ruined our lives. Not as long as we don’t let them. We’ve had to live through hell for a while, but we don’t have to let that ruin everything. We have many years ahead of us still. Many more than what they’ve taken.”
We sat in silence for a minute or two.
“How do you do it?” I finally asked.
“Do what?”
“Keep living through horrific shit like this and still be able to say that?”
“Ah.” He kissed the top of my head. “Because it’s been proven to me time and again that it can and does get better. After all, I have you. Again.”
I sighed heavily and caressed his cheek, trying not to let the anger well up again as my fingertips slid over the nasty scar. “I love you.”
“See? How can I hold on to anger when I get to hear that from your lips?”
I wiped my face against his shoulder, inhaled deeply, and headed back to the kitchen.
Owen still stood where he had been, his head bent over, looking at me through his lashes. He reminded me of Dorian when he had to tell Mom and me he’d been in another fight—guilty for disappointing us but not for the actual action.
“Sorry, Alex—” he started, but I held my hand up to stop him.
“I’m sorry, Owen,” I said. He opened his mouth to say something, but I went on, needing to relieve him of his unnecessary guilt. “I’m sorry I ever made you feel that way. I admit I sometimes wondered how you made it back and not Tristan. But I didn’t blame you for any of it. Of course I wished he’d come back and probably more than any of the others. But he’s my husband, Owen. He was—is—my life. He’ll always be my first concern. That’s just how it is. But that doesn’t mean I wished you’d never come back. You’re like a brother to me. Stefan was like a dad. I wished none of you ever left in the first place, but you did, and shit happened. It’s done now. Over with. Tristan’s here. You’re here. I get two out of three. Let’s just put it behind us, okay?”
Owen studied my face for a moment, looked at Tristan and then back at me. He finally relaxed and slumped back against the counter.
“Okay. It’s in the past.” He pretended to throw some imaginary object over his head, behind him. Then he looked at Tristan. “We’re good?”
“We’re good, bro,” Tristan said. Owen showed him the latest male bonding handshake—the fist bump.
“So . . . what’s up, little sis from a different miss?” Owen asked me, back to his normal self.
“A real celebration dinner?” I offered. “We have these beautiful steaks and all.”
He smiled. “I’ll accept that.”
I blew out a sigh of relief and got to work. Owen and Tristan stayed in the kitchen with me, Tristan helping me cook and Owen updating us on the consequences of my escapade last night.
“The Daemoni are really going ballistic now that the two of you are back together. I guess that blonde vampire chick went on a rampage. Apparently, your blood, Alexis, is like a super-potent energy drink for vampires. It made her more powerful than usual, and we had to do some damage control.”
I didn’t really want to know what he meant, and I appreciated that he didn’t explain.
“Do they know we’re here?” Tristan asked.
“No, they still don’t know about this house. But as soon as they can get to one or both of you, they will. And they know once they’ve got one of you, they’ve got the other now. Rina wants us to go to your house in Atlanta. It’s probably safer there than here.”
Tristan stopped slicing onions—he’d always taken that job because they didn’t make him cry like they did to me and he’d naturally resumed it, just like old times—and stared at the counter for a few seconds. Apparently, he was exploring and weighing the options. Then he nodded.
“That’ll work perfectly with the plan,” he said, expertly moving the knife again.
“The plan Rina wants you to work on?” I asked. I’d passed on the message earlier, but I’d been too distracted to ask him what plan.
“Yeah,” he answered absently, focused on whatever he had brewing in his mind. “There will be a fire. We’ll have to make sure it’s complete, so when they find no bodies, the authorities could believe they were burnt to ashes. Maybe an explosion.”
I stopped in my tracks, holding the plate of steaks in front of me. “What? You’re going to blow up my house?”
“After the Ang’dora, A.K. Emerson can no longer exist,” he said simply, as if this fact were obvious. He took the steaks from me and headed outside to the grill. I stared after him.
It should have been obvious, that I could no longer be the famous author. Not with the changes I would go through. But I really hadn’t thought about everything that far. It bothered me how he said it so easily. Of course, he probably wouldn’t ever understand how much I had needed to be A.K. Emerson, how important that part of me was. He hadn’t been around for any of her existence.
I shook off the troubled feeling. Logic told me we would have to kill her—fake my death. Tristan would know the best solution because that was one of his abilities. And I’d been ready to give her up last night anyway. With the last book complete, I could let go. Apparently, I would have to let go. Besides, I enjoyed the writing—not actually being a famous author.
“With no bodies, we leave the possibility open of a disappearance, just in case anyone recognizes you in the future,” Tristan said when he came back into the kitchen. “However . . . we will have her reunited with the father of her son and married first.”
I felt my face light up and opened my mouth but Owen shook his head before I could say a word.
“Too dangerous,” he said. “Just moving you two to Atlanta will be bad enough.”
“Just some pictures and a slip to the media right before we have to disappear,” Tristan said. He looked at me and grinned. “We’ll make those assholes eat their words.”
I smiled back, but then sighed. “But she’ll never get to be Mrs. Tristan Knight.”
“Why not?” Tristan asked.
“Because then we can’t use that name later, right?”
He shrugged. “It’s just a name. You know it doesn’t mean anything. I picked it as a kind of tongue-in-cheek thing.”
Owen and I both looked at him expectantly, neither of us getting it.
“Tristan, the knight who fell in love with the one he could never have,” Tristan said.
“Tristan and Isolde?” I asked, stifling a laugh. “That’s where you got your name?”
“Just the Knight part. I chose Tristan for a reason, but the last names come and go.” He lifted
one shoulder in a half-shrug. “So if you want the author to be Mrs. Tristan Knight, then we’ll do it. You will always be Alexis Ames, anyway. I can even be Tristan Ames.”
I laughed. “I know that makes sense, since you really are an Ames anyway, but it’s not happening. To me, you are Tristan Knight, and I’ve waited forever to be your Mrs. I’ll keep Alexis Knight for myself. So you’ll need to be someone different for the author.”
He wrapped his arms around me and whispered in my ear, “Whatever you want, my love. To me, you’ll always be ma lykita.”
“So . . . pictures,” Owen said after clearing his throat. “We’ll take care of those tomorrow, before heading to Atlanta. I’ll need to get a camera.”
“We’ll need to go to Miami, too,” Tristan said.
“Dude! Did you not hear me? Getting you two to Atlanta is bad enough. That’s all.”
“Rina’s orders. She didn’t tell you?”
Owen exhaled a frustrated breath. “She said to make sure you got your affairs in order. I didn’t know it meant a stop in Miami.”
“That’s where a lot of my affairs are,” Tristan said. “It won’t take long. We’ll go tomorrow. You can take pictures of the author and her baby daddy while we’re there. Then we’ll head to Atlanta the next morning.”
“This will be fun,” Owen muttered, the sarcasm heavy. He shook his head slowly. “Sophia and Rina will meet us in Atlanta. I think they’re leaving in the morning and will get in late tomorrow night.”
“That’s foolish,” Tristan growled. “They should stay where they are. Do they realize how much danger they’re putting themselves in?”
Owen nodded. “Sure they do, but they want to be here. And we’re going to need all the help we can get . . . just in case . . .”
He glanced over at me.
“This is so absurd,” I said. “They shouldn’t be coming if they’re putting their lives at risk—from me or anyone else. I thought the whole point of me being here is to keep me away from them.”
“Sophia was coming no matter what. She never meant for you to be alone for long, but she wanted to make sure Dorian was safe first,” Owen said. “And I guess Rina’s decided she needs to be here, too.”
“So we just lay low in Atlanta for another couple weeks?” I asked, remembering Mom saying the Ang’dora takes several weeks to complete. “What about Dorian?”
“Dorian’s in the safest place he could be,” Owen answered. “And Rina’s not sure about it taking that long. From what I’ve told them, they think you’re going faster than usual. That’s why they’re coming so soon.”
Once they settled on a plan, they both started talking enthusiastically about my abilities and the Ang’dora. According to my ancestors’ experiences, I should have been gaining power gradually, but as far as I knew, I couldn’t do anything I couldn’t do before, except see farther and run faster.
“You can flash, right?” Owen asked. “That’s how you got back last night.”
“Huh?” I asked, confused.
“No, I brought her back by myself,” Tristan said.
“You can flash with someone else?” Owen sounded impressed.
Tristan shrugged. “Never have before, but I guess so. It was necessary, and it just happened.”
“Huh. Cool. Alexis, have you even tried?”
I looked at him as if he’d just asked me to fly. He may as well have—for me, flashing seemed nearly as impossible. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Just think of where you want to be and let yourself go. If the desire to be there is strong enough, it just happens.” He nodded at the balcony. “See if you can get out there.”
“I thought the shield prevented flashing.”
“We can flash within it, just not through it. No going in and out.”
I furrowed my brows and narrowed my eyes, concentrating hard on wanting to be on the balcony, but nothing happened. I felt like an idiot.
“Guess not,” Tristan said with a chuckle. I shot a look at him. “But you look adorable trying.”
He winked at me, and I forgave him . . . I couldn’t remember the problem.
“We’ll try some things in the morning,” Owen suggested. “You might have powers you just don’t know about yet, and it would be good to know before we go on this asinine trip to Miami. Of course, we’ll all have to go. I’m not leaving either of you alone.”
Neither Tristan nor I argued with his point. Only a major catastrophe could split us up right now. We weren’t willing to take the chance of another long-term or permanent separation.
Tristan retrieved the steaks from the grill while Owen and I gathered the rest of the food and took it out to the balcony. With plans made, Tristan and Owen slipped into a lighter conversation, discussing topics requiring a Y-chromosome to understand, or at least, to care about. I couldn’t keep my eyes off Tristan while they talked. I still couldn’t believe he sat right here next to me. And Tristan constantly touched me—my hand, my leg, my back, somewhere—as if he, too, wanted to be sure I really sat by his side.
Owen caught Tristan up on all the things that had gone on in the human world . . . well, mostly the sports world. Then they talked about the newest cars. Tristan’s eyes lit up when he discussed what he should get to replace the Ferrari. Owen had brought the car back from Key West this morning, but he said the Daemoni had left it in ruins.
“I’ll take the damaged goods,” Owen offered. “There’s nothing I can’t fix.”
“I think we can work that out,” Tristan said, glancing at me and back at Owen. “It’s the least I can do.”
“Hey! I like that car,” I protested.
Tristan fingered the key on my necklace. “As long as you have that key, we can get another one or anything else you want.”
He winked again. He knew how to make me forget to argue with him.
“Cool. That car’s a chick magnet,” Owen said, grinning.
“Yes, it is.” Tristan chuckled. He seemed to be recalling a memory that didn’t include me because he gave me a guilty look. “Although . . . I found motorcycles attract the best ones.”
“We definitely need to get a new Harley,” I said with a laugh.
Owen shrugged. “I think I can make-do with the Ferrari.”
I looked at him and smiled. Although I’d never considered him as attractive as Tristan, he was far from ugly. He could be pushing a shopping cart around as his only wheels and a number of girls would jump right in. He could probably get just about any girl simply by existing. Not only because he was good-looking, but because he was plain good. “Owen, you can’t seriously have any problems attracting girls.”
“Attracting isn’t really the issue.” He sighed. “I just haven’t found the right one.”
“Never? That’s kind of sad. And you’re how old?” I could be that way with Owen. He was like a brother—the older brother I’d always wanted, someone to stand up to the kids who teased me because I wouldn’t do it myself.
“I’m only sixty-eight.”
“Really? I thought you were ancient like everyone else.” Oops! I threw my hand to my mouth and looked guiltily at Tristan. He just chuckled. “You don’t look sixty-eight, of course, but you do look a tad older than when I met you. By a couple years, anyway.”
“Yeah, well, unlike you guys, I still age. Just very slowly.”
“You don’t seem like you’re almost seventy, though. Mom doesn’t seem like her real age, but she feels older than she looks. So does Rina. You know what I mean? But you don’t.”
He pondered my question for a moment. “I look at it this way—if I get to look young, why not enjoy it and act like it, too? I have the looks, the body, and the expectation to live carefree like a twenty-five-year-old bachelor. I’ll eventually have to act older and mature to match my looks, and I’ll be old and decrepit one of these days, so why not make the most of it now?”
“That’s what I’m talking about.” Tristan held his fist up, and they bumped knuckles again. I roll
ed my eyes.
“You’re not a bachelor,” I reminded Tristan. “And you have a family. You have to be mature now.”
“Ah, just a little . . . and just for a few years. Then you and I can go back to living like young newlyweds.” He grinned and gave me a squeeze.
That’s when it hit me—the whole not-aging thing. I was changing over, which meant I would look and feel like I was perpetually in my mid-twenties, based on how I looked right now. Experience would develop my mind and my emotions, but my body would never change. I’d always thought I would be like Mom and Rina—mature yet timeless. Owen and Tristan had a great outlook on the situation, but . . . they were male. What male ever wants to grow up? They had a life men dreamt about—to know what they do at sixty-eight, or even two-hundred-sixty-eight, but be allowed to live the life of a twenty-two-year-old. Of course, I had a man every woman dreamt about—worldly and wise, considerate and loving, yet forever young. And devastatingly gorgeous, of course.
“Hmm . . . we don’t ever have to stop living like newlyweds,” I said, smiling impishly at him. And nearly forgetting Owen was even there.
“Oooh-kaay . . . time for me to go.” Owen pushed himself away from the table. “Thanks for the steak, Alexis. I have to admit, I was a little worried. I’d forgotten you even knew how to cook.”
Tristan looked at me with questions in his eyes. I shrugged. I hadn’t cooked anything except hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, and eggs since he had left. I’d been a little worried myself as I prepared the steaks and roasted potatoes, hoping I hadn’t forgotten how to cook a real meal.
“What? Did you think I’d burn the house down or something?”
“That or food poisoning. But the house is still standing, and I’m still alive. Go figure. And it was even delicious.”
Ignoring the taunt, I threw my arms around his waist. “Thank you, Owen. For everything.”
“It’s good to see you happy again,” he said, hugging me back.
“Am I forgiven then?”
“Hmm . . . yeah, I guess.” He snickered. “It’s not like I could hold a grudge against you. Just, uh, do us all a favor—don’t ever do that again.”