Tobie,OctoberEdinger is the daughter I had with the beast known as Chloe Bishop. Chloe was my wife for about a year, but it felt like a millennium, and not in a good way.
Tobie’s long dark curls fall over my face as I pull her down to me and kiss her on the cheek.
“Where’s Mommy?” She jumps down next to me, nearly taking out my eye with her rogue knee. Tobie had taken to calling Laken Mommy. And Laken was very much a mother to her.
“Mommy is with Charlie and baby Wes. You’ll see them soon.” I’ll make sure of it. I’m sure some will accuse me of weaponizing my kids in order to garner close proximity with Laken—and they would be right. But I won’t need to weaponize anything because Laken has a genuine love for Tobie, and I’d like to think she has that for me as well.
It was thought for a time that Laken and I shared Charlotte—Charlie—our sweet baby girl, but as the recent paternity tests have proven, she belongs to Cooper. I may have coerced Ezrina not to identify the truth about Charlie’s paternity way back when. In fact, I told her to keep the truth from me as well. Instead, on the day of Charlie’s birth, the day Laken was determined to know who the father was, I made it clear to Ezrina that no matter what the outcome, I was the right answer. I knew Ezrina would comply. Ezrina loves Tobie as if she were her own because, well, she is her own, considering the fact Chloe had her while in Ezrina’s body. And then there is Elias—Eli—the baby boy who happened to be born on the exact day as Charlie. I share him with Kresley, a girl I dated way back in high school. Kres has been a bit obsessive with me but I haven’t exactly returned the favor. And then I’ve got sweet baby Mally, Tobie’s full-blooded sister who is just a few months old, and last but never least, there is little Wesley Cooper. I wasn’t all that thrilled with the middle name, but I am more than grateful to have a child that will forever connect me to Laken.
Tobie gives my hair a merciless tug.
“I want Mommy. Not mean Mommy.NiceMommy.”
Bymean mommyshe is most definitely talking about Chloe. It is a universally known principle that Chloe is a wicked witch who has overstayed her welcome on Paragon, and perhaps planet Earth as a whole. There is no love lost between us, and that will never change.
A gentle knock erupts at the door and I sit up to find Kresley waving as she heads inside. Baby Eli sits content at her hip before she launches him into my arms. Eli shares my dark hair and blue eyes. Little Wes looks just like me, too.
“Here we go.” I blow a big elephant kiss over Eli’s belly and he explodes with laughter.
“Give me him!” Tobie pulls Eli to her as if he were a doll. And to her he is exactly that. Her living doll. “I likes Eli, but I want Charlie.” I find her affinity to pluralize words too adorable to correct.
She glowers over at me as if she somehow innately understands I’m the sole reason Laken and Charlie have taken a step out of our lives.
Kresley sits at the edge of the bed and shakes her head at me.
Kresley Fisher and I met at boarding school, a boarding school that the Fems ruled like puppet masters, come to find out. They had wiped my memory of everything that was real—my life in Kansas, Laken as my one and only true love, my death and resurrection. And they flooded me with new memories. They gave me a brother who wasn’t a relation at all—Blaine who I haven’t heard from in years. They pointed me to a girl and told me to love her—that would be Kres—and they somehow convinced me she was the one. Okay, so I don’t know if that last fact is true or not, but it was my reality.
I thought I had fallen for Kresley. In some ways it felt right. Wesley and Kresley, even our names seemed to fit in some ridiculous fashion. She was a stunner, dark hair, killer eyes, overall pretty. She’s still a stunner but in a slightly altered fashion.
A little over a year ago I convinced her to let Ezrina rearrange her features until she became Laken’s look-alike in every way. And, since Kresley’s obsession with me knows no bounds, she was quick to comply. What she didn’t realize was just how wicked my intentions were all along. I had planned to have Laken kidnapped by the government and sent to Raven’s Eye for supernatural observation. I knew they needed a body, a victim, someone to study the markers in-depth. Originally, I thought of sending Kresley in alone. But it was too tempting not to work Laken into it.
Once that plan was set into motion, I took Kresley and planted her in Laken’s place, thus rescuing my true love.
It fulfilled two purposes. One, it would give the government a taste and a hunger to hunt down the Nephilim. Of course, that’s when I was supposed to step in with a serum to hide the markers that outed my kind but didn’t. And in doing so, I would have become a savior to the Nephilim, thus destroying Celestra’s standing. But serum withstanding, the latter was carried out by my true brother, Gage himself, one Halloween night as he eviscerated Celestra so badly they were booted off the celestial pedestal.
The second purpose, and perhaps the most important detail of them all, I would have been a savior to Laken. I had rescued her, after all. It was no small or supernatural feat. It was all sheer love and determination on my part. And well, that part of the equation played out well for me.
What I did not expect was the incredible bonus I received. Laken’s memory was wiped clean—or pretty darn close—and her love for me reawakened exactly as it had been in the beginning.
It was me she had an affinity for, not Cooper, her then-husband. It was me she wanted to spend forever with. She let me know the other night right before she spit in my eye that she was willing to forgive me for the fact I altered Charlie’s paternity in my favor. She was going to stay with me.
What she couldn’t forgive me for was what I had done yet again in secret—marrying Chloe for Gage. Sleeping with Chloe for Gage. Giving Gage my child to raise—a daughter, Maleficent—named by her wicked witch of a mother. Mally, as we now lovingly refer to her, is here with me, too. She is one hundred percent mine, abandoned by her mother just the way she abandoned Tobie. Little Mally and Wesley Cooper were both born last summer. Eli and Charlie just turned one last August, and Tobie just turned three this last Halloween. Five under five. Although Cooper would deny me the right to claim Charlie. He would be right, but that won’t stop me. She’ll forever be my girl, if just in my heart.
Kresley stretches out like a cat. It was Logan Oliver who eventually rescued a very pregnant Kresley from Raven’s Eye.
After she was rescued from government detention—something I felt ambivalent about—she had Ezrina reconstruct her face to a similar version of what it was before. She’s prettier perhaps than the original, but her nose is a bit off, too small for her face. Nobody will complain, nor will any man kick her out of bed for eating crackers. But one thing remains the same—her obsession with me is still on, stronger than ever. As soon as she learned Laken was out of the picture, she asked to move into the main house and watch the kids for me. Kresley is officially the nanny of the house to Tobie and Mally. To Eli she’s just plain ol’ mom.
“Mally is still sleeping.” Kres gives my foot a pinch. “She’s a good baby. I wish Eli was that easy at her age. I think we have a keeper.” She gives a sly wink.
I stare over at her a moment too long. The calloused heart in me wants to inform her that there is no we. There never will be a we. This is the exact same reason I chose Kresley to go to Raven’s Eye to begin with. I find her obsession with me stifling, cloying. And in my defense, she harped day in and day out how she would give anything to help the Steel Barricade, and Raven’s Eye was my solution to making that happen for her.
So don’t tell me I’ve never done anything for you, Kres. I made sure all of your dreams came true.
But I do appreciate Kres and all she’s doing for me, so I keep my mouth shut. God knows I’m not up for midnight feedings followed by three a.m. feedings. My only other alternative was to pay Lizbeth Landon a hefty sum a month to take the nightshift, and perhaps a few daylight hours as well. She would have taken the gig. I know for a fact Demetri shoved her husband, the laughable Tad Landon, into prison, or at least he will be soon enough, under the pretense of rigging the lottery in his favor. The poor jackass never saw that one coming. But then, with Demetri, no one sees the blows he delivers until it’s too late and you’re on your back, bleeding out.
“Let her sleep,” I say. “At least someone in this family can find some rest.”
Her lips curl at the thought. “We are a family, aren’t we, Wes?”
