Donuts.
Four boxes.
Logan is religious in the way he loves me.
And once he unleashes the boys into the wild, he locks the door behind them. He feeds me, watches me polish off almost a dozen of those glazed confections all by my lonesome, and then when I’m good and full, he fills me with himself.
Logan makes love with his entire body as he does his best to fuse our souls together. And he achieves the feat again and again. We are tethered, secured, interlocked, unmovable, unshakable, grafted onto one another’s living souls for all of eternity. The enemy broke all of our proverbial bones and in doing so we healed stronger than concrete, stronger than steel, titanium, than the arm of any celestial being. We have come to be. We are. And we will be forever.
This, right here, is the springtime of our love.
“Logan,” I whisper his name like a secret as I press my cheek over his heated chest. “It’s happening, isn’t it?”
He nods. “Yes. We’re about to birth two things: our child and a new era in human history. Are you ready?”
“I don’t have a choice. My body insists. The safety of my people insists. There’s no turning back from either scenario. What do I tell them at the Faction meeting?”
“Nothing.” He runs his fingers softly through my hair. “You tell them nothing, Skyla.”
Nothing.
It will all come as a surprise, just like the day and the hour of birth. I am about to inflict labor pains over the entire planet. Grown men will fall to their knees. It will get messy. There will be blood. I must do this. And once the pain subsides, we will be left with something beautiful as it arrives screaming into this world. But I will quell it. I will nurse my people and watch them grow into this new era in Nephilim history.
It is a daring move.
So very brave.
Nothing can go wrong.
Nothing.
It’s the tail end of October. A season of witches, pumpkins, and ghosts. Paragon is host to every horror known and unknown to man. Logan and I shower and dress before heading downstairs where the entire Landon clan is gathered. Drake and Ethan sit on the sofa—their official office—with video game controllers in hand, and little Beau Geste is in the middle with his own controller. It would be adorable if it weren’t so scary how well Drake is molding him into his mini-me. On the opposite sofa, my mother sits hunched over with a blanket over her chest, fully focused on whatever it is she’s doing, and out of a level of unnatural curiosity I head that way and note a tiny pair of feet hanging out the other end of that blanket—feet far too small to belong to Ella.
My own baby does a large lumbering roll in my belly.
“Oh my God, you’ve kidnapped Laken’s baby!” It’s the first thing that comes to mind so I go with it.
Mom rolls her eyes as she pulls the blanket back, revealing a shock of dark hair, that fake boob filled with formula attached to her own chest as the baby suckles off the tip, which is frighteningly close to my mother’s nipple. It’s a contraption she’s used before on my own children.
“This is Chloe’s baby,” she all but mouths the words, and that box of donuts I shoved in my stomach churns at the thought of Gage’s new child taking up residence on my mother’s person.
She points to the kitchen, where I find Chloe noshing on a donut herself along with Bree, Em, and Logan. I waste no time in heading in that direction.
“What in the hell is going on?” I ask point-blank to the dark-haired witch who looks amazingly slender and, dare I say, stunning today. It only makes me hate her all the more.
“Good morning, princess,” Chloe mewls. “Logan was just regaling us with stories of how he hooks a donut onto his junk and makes you work for your meal.”
I gasp so hard the baby kicks me in the diaphragm as if trying to teach me a lesson.
“Knew it.” Chloe rolls her eyes—an apparent ocular epidemic in the Landon house this morning.
Logan shakes his head as he lands a kiss to my cheek. “She’s just a really good guesser. I’m getting some coffee. You want decaf?”
“No thanks,” I say as he takes off.
Em lands a hand over my belly just as the boys come running through with Ember.
“Almost time,” Em says it somber as if it were a grievous event that was about to occur. “I need to be there for the birth.”
