Seri met Severo’s gaze, and his stomach twisted as he spotted the man’s hesitation, not to mention the tears forming in his Dweller’s eyes. He hated that he was responsible for both.
Cupping one side of Severo’s face, he stretched upward and lightly kissed the man on the lips. “I’m fine,” he promised. “I was prepared for this. It doesn’t change anything. She is our baby,and she is just one of the Shadow Dwellers who I love with all my heart.”
“There’s…” the Dweller trailed off with a wince.
“More?”
“Mm?”
Seri sighed and just guessed. “How long has this been going on?”
“It hasn’t been that long, really! Just a week, just since last Wednesday. I would have told you sooner, but I felt it wasn’t the right time with what happened earlier that week.”
“You mean me freaking out about Skya wanting something pink?” he said with more than a little self-disgust.
“Yes…that…” Severo gripped onto his hand, which was still resting on the man’s cheek. “Seri…I?—”
“I’m fine,” he promised again, though he knew it was partially a lie.
The truth was, when he thought about how he felt knowing Skya’s powers had finally shown up, he was mostly okay. Sure, the fear had been instant, yet he hadn’t found it that hard to push it aside. It was just everything else—well, mostly just his gender issues.
Seri wasn’t sure how he managed to convince himself that his backwards thinking was not only right, but that it was the only way to keep Skya from experiencing the horrifying, identity-erasing shit he dealt with growing up, along with the added trauma that Preston gave his ass, but he had, and he’d been wrong… He just didn’t know how to handle that, or how to move forward and stop feeling like a total failure as a parent, while shoving down any negative emotions he had towards clothing, as he went about buying things for Skya.
Severo’s mouth opened, but the man hesitated, his eyes growing wide in concern as an odd alarm sound rang out loudly from the Dweller’s pocket.
Seri frowned. “What’s…?”
“Emergency call alarm,” Severo stated stiffly as he pulled from his hold, and hurriedly slipped his still ringing phone from his pocket. The man quickly released the screen, answering without hesitation while setting the phone to speaker. “What’s going on, Cyrus?”
“I’m so sorry…I didn’t…” the Fate rasped, the man’s voice sounding oddly hollow.
“What?! What’s wrong?!” Severo demanded, as the Dweller’s hand seemed to tighten dangerously around the device.
“Killian’s been taken by traffickers. Skya was with him—they took her too.”
“WHAT?!” the Dweller roared.
“No,” Seri rasped, before he found himself screaming in denial, “No, no, no, no. NO!!”
He gasped as tears flooded his vision, the world spinning around him when his chest constricted, while his heart felt like it had shattered into pieces.
Cyrus sat there in the back of the vehicle, trying to not think as he was driven to Haybridge Launch Pad—one of the Cryptid Enforcement Bureau’s private and rarely used shuttle launch sites nearest to them in Kansas.
Numerous calls had all been made over the last hour. With plans set, others were now likely reaching their own launch pads to follow any possible leads and paths. But he knew, or at least he hoped he knew, that the path he managed to see, after months of searching, hadn’t changed with his interference of the timeline. Cyrus was worried though. He had been sure of too much. He had, and still was, assuming too much!
Because despite what he’d done, what had happened and had been changed already, he was going forward as if there was nopossibility that the trafficker who had taken Killian had changed from Riker Amarant—a man who went by the codename Armor Ranti. And with that shaky fucking belief, he was going to follow the most likely path that made sense, and try not to let the fear of being wrong change his course. Because it was the only hope he had.
But the reality was that he knew nothing. Cyrus had once used the threads to see as much as he could, but now that he’d defied them and bent them to his will, he could barely see anything…
He was going in blind… Trusting things not to change when one thing, one horrible thing, had already shifted. And that was the thing about changing fate, the result was always an endless shifting of threads. And when he had done what he’d done…he had dragged Skya into the mess.
She…she shouldn’t have been with Killian. Skya wasn’t supposed to be taken… Even though he hadn’t managed to see the exact moment they’d grabbed Killian, even on the original timeline, Cyrus knew. The threads had mockingly let him know through feeling alone that Skya had been taken becauseHEhad interfered.
And all he could do now was pray to the threads that his greed and selfishness hadn’t just sacrificed her life for Killian’s. Cyrus…wasn’t sure he could live with himself if that was the case…
How was he even supposed to face Severo and Seri? His jaw clenched, while his fangs ground together. Cyrus couldn’t stop his body from stiffening when he reached the finding out stage of that question, as the car pulled through the gate and neared the loading area for the shuttle.
Severo and Seri were right there waiting for him, looking as if they were barely holding it together. Back in the distance was the large, spinning top-like spaceship that would take them off thisplanet. Based on the low amount of activity near it, he could tell they were almost ready to leave.
