I shift slightly, trying not to wake him, and glance across the room. Jace is on the couch with Parker tucked against his side, both of them holding Liam who is—despite the late hour and the trauma—still asking questions.
“—but how did you all meet?” Liam’s voice is small but persistent. “Were you friends when you were kids?”
“Something like that,” Jace says, his voice gentle in a way I rarely hear. “We grew up together. Me, Cal, Silas, and your Uncle Charles. Our families knew each other.”
“So you were like us?” Liam asks. “You and Uncle Cal and Uncle Silas? Like brothers?”
“Yeah, buddy. Like brothers.”
“And you were in gun fights when you were kids too?”
Parker’s entire body tenses. I can see her struggling with how to answer, how much to tell, how to balance honesty with age-appropriate information.
“Not when we were your age,” Jace says carefully. “But when we were older, yeah. Sometimes bad people tried to hurt us or the people we cared about. So we learned how to protect ourselves.”
“Were you scared?”
There’s a pause. Jace doesn’t lie—never has, not about the important things. “Yeah. Sometimes. But we had each other. And that made it easier.”
“Like how we have you?” Liam asks. “And Uncle Cal and Uncle Silas and Mommy?”
“Exactly like that.”
I watch Noah’s face as he sleeps, tracing the features that could be mine, could be Silas’s, could be Jace’s. The results are coming—tomorrow, the day after, soon. We’ll know which of us gave Parker which boy.
Except I already know Silas can’t be Noah’s father.
Can’t be Liam’s father either.
I’ve known for years. Ever since I hacked into the medical records of the private clinic Silas’s parents used. Ever since I found the file marked“Silas Vale - Permanent Contraception Procedure”dated three days after his eighteenth birthday.
He had a vasectomy. It was forced on him by parents who decided their son was too damaged, too violent, too much like his father to be allowed to reproduce.
They didn’t ask. Didn’t give him a choice. Just told him he was going to the clinic for a “routine procedure” and when he woke up, it was done.
I found out because Silas spent three days in our organization’s private infirmary after, and I was curious why someone who’d just had “routine bloodwork” needed that much recovery time and pain medication.
So I looked. Because that’s what I do—I find information.
And then I never told anyone. Because that’s also what I do—I keep secrets that aren’t mine to tell.
Jace doesn’t know. Parker doesn’t know. Charles doesn’t know.
Only me.
And I’ve watched for years as Silas carried that knowledge alone. As he built walls around himself, convinced himself he was too broken for anything soft or good. As he turned himself into the Reaper—efficient, deadly, emotionally distant.
Until Parker came back.
Until he met Noah and Liam.
Until he let himself love something knowing he could never claim it as biologically his.
That’s the thing that gets me, that makes my chest tight every time I watch Silas with these boys. Heknowshe can’t be their father. Knows with absolute medical certainty. And he loves them anyway.
No, not anyway. He loves themjust because. Because they’re Parker’s. Because they need protection. Because they’re good and innocent and everything he convinced himself he could never have.
Silas’s love for these boys is pure choice.
