“Hey!” Cullen walked in with a loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese in hand. “And just to think, I was gonna cook for you two.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” They all started laughing together, the little ones watching on with approval.
Soon, his babies would be in that group.
Wow.
“Come on, let’s cook.” Cullen winked at him. “I’ve been craving grilled cheese.”
Corbin snorted softly. “I think I’ve moved beyond craving—I’m just starving all the damn time. I think I’m eating for forty.”
“Fifty maybe.”
Corbin got himself moving with a little bit of help from Cosmo, and they headed into the communal kitchen.
Aspen was with Evander, but little puppy Blaze was rolling around on the floor with the kids, playing, and everyone seemed safe as houses.
“Do you have any butter, brother?”
“Oh, I’m sure I do.” Evander liked his creature comforts, and butter was at the top of that list. Butter slathered on fresh bread was an amazing thing.
They set to making sandwiches. and it felt so good to just be hanging out with his brothers.
How long had it been since they were just together laughing and being idiots?
It had been something that he had almost lost in this whole silly drama that was life, and he just didn’t?—
A sharp scream sounded, jerking everyone upright. Corbin’s hand went to his belly, the move instinctive. “What the fuck was that?”
Cosmo gasped. “Isabelle.”
They ran as one to the children.
What if she’d fallen into the fireplace? There wasn’t a fire laid, but still it was scary and she could hurt yourself on the grate, on the poker.
What they saw when they rounded the short hallway and arched door into the big great room wasn’t Isabelle getting into something she shouldn’t be.
It was a man, a pale, ugly skeleton of a man. He had Isabelle squeezed in one hand, almost crushed in his palm, and Elliot dangling from where he held him with the other hand by the little foot. Tisi was lying on the floor, Serena wrapped around him as if she was shielding him.
The scent of carrion on the air made him stop, rear back.
Cosmo didn’t hesitate, didn’t monologue. He just launched himself toward the asshole, but as he got closer, the hand aroundIsabelle’s throat tightened, and her scream disappeared, crushed out.
Red eyes flashed in the cream-cheese-carved face, bloodless lips pulling away from the sharp teeth. “I suggest, strongly, that you re-think that.”
“Cosmo!” Cullen grabbed Cosmo, yanked him back, and wrapped him in a tight embrace even as Cosmo fought like a banshee. “Easy, easy.”
HELP US!Corbin threw out the alarm, not caring who came.PLEASE! THE VAMPIRES ARE HERE.
Two of them were pregnant, for fuck’s sake, and that creature had Cosmo’s babies.
“What the fuck do you want?” Cullen snarled, holding Cosmo so hard that his muscles popped out in cords visible through his long-sleeved T-shirt.
Someone was coming. Corbin could feel it.
He knew it.
All he had to do was distract this motherfucker for a little bit, and they would come.
