He turns to take off and I shake my head in disbelief. “Why?” I bark it out like a threat.
Dudley takes in a deep breath, doesn’t bother turning around. “Because what’s ordained must come to pass. Let’s speed things along and keep our focus, shall we? There are children to be had, a planet to rescue, a Barricade to destroy. Don’t disappoint me. If you fail to do these things in a timely manner, I must step in.” He spins around and pins those bloody eyes on mine. “That is, after all, why I’m here.”
My blood runs cold. Dudley is here to replace me in the event I can’t perform. A celestial insurance policy of sorts. He’s both a safety net and a nuisance. I’m not sure how I feel about that.
He takes off for the back, walks right through an enormous window, and appears on the other side, unharmed. The glass vibrates as if it were made of water.
Dudley is powerful. He is capable. Skyla does love him. He could very well produce children with her, save a planet, or destroy a Barricade or two.
But so can I. And I will. There is no living being, created or born of nature, that I will allow to take my place.
I love Skyla. She is mine. She is my soulmate, my other half, the piece of the puzzle that completes me, that makes my heart beat, makes me take my very next breath. I died fighting for her. Came back so I can help her, love her, build a life with her. She always has been, and she always will be my everything.
Skyla and I are on the road to recovery. We’re family. We’re going to have children.
Children?
My heart gives off a few riotous beats. Skyla and I were promised a child. A girl. Our precious Angel. We met her not too long ago and I want her back with everything in me. I want her in my world, in my arms. But Dudley saidchildren. Adrenaline spikes through me at a dangerous clip.
Holy hell, I’m going to be a father. Something loosens in me. A weight lifts off my chest, a boulder that’s been lying over me since the day I asked Gage Oliver to protect her, to pretend she was his everything, to keep her safe.
It’s my turn to protect her because she is my everything. I’m going to keep Skyla, our people, and our children safe.
Our children. I can’t help but smile as I take off into the gray Paragon day.
Life is good again.
It just is.
12
Wesley
Eversor.
Ever sore. That about sums up my brother.
Gage has invited me up to discuss God knows what, and here I sit on his enormous sofa, in his enormous living room, next to a wall of fire that under no circumstances can be quantified as a meager fireplace while he stands before Sage, my very feisty, very ornery niece and delights her with his morphing abilities. A newly defined skill for a new day and he’s exercising the living shit out of it. As his powers grow in strength, so does his ego. And an ego can be a very dangerous thing. I should know.
“Do that old grump Mother lives with.”
Gage groans, closes his eyes and his features, and his entire frame molds into Tad Landon.
“I’m tired of your rear sticking out of my refrigerator!” he riots, sounding perfectly like the ass himself.
Sage giggles like an innocent schoolgirl, the exact thing she must never be underestimated as.
“Do your father,” Sage gurgles with a dark laugh before the show ever begins.
Gage takes a breath, closes his eyes, and his features rearrange until the exact representation of Barron Oliver appears before us. I will admit, there is something calming about his presence. Something soothing. He is, in fact, the quintessential father, and for a moment, I’m struck with a pang of jealousy over the fact Gage had the perfect upbringing, perfect parents.
Demetri slept with my mother and left both her and me for dead before reappearing in my life just when he could use me the most.
Sage tilts her head at him. “I knew you’d choose him. You’d never claim Demetri as your father. He’s sort of an afterthought to you. Like some mean bully who came into your life and told you what to do, what to say.”
Gage bends over in all of his Barron glory. “Nobody tells me what to do or what to say. And don’t let anyone do those things to you either. We have our own minds, our own will.”
“The hell we do,” I mutter into the glass of five-hundred-year-old whiskey Demetri gifted Gage as a housewarming gift. God only knows what he’ll give him after the coronation.
