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Seri
I tucked the baby monitor into my pants pocket, its smooth plastic edge pressing against my hip bone. A reminder that in the room behind me, two of my husbands lay unconscious, recovering from a battle they’d fought for me.Becauseof me.
The thought sent an uncomfortable lump to my throat as I adjusted the device, making sure the volume was high enough that I could hear even a whisper from our bedroom.
I didn’t want to leave them, but Koa insisted we needed a break and fresh air and food.
Brummy lay sprawled in the hallway outside our bedroom door, a living barricade of teeth and charcoal fur. His blue eyes tracked my movements with vigilance, his tail offering a single thump of acknowledgment. I crouched to stroke his head.
“Good guardian,” I whispered. “The best boy.”
He huffed agreement, stretching his neck to lick my hand once before settling his head back on his paws, resuming his self-appointed duty.
I made my way downstairs where Koa was preparing tea in the kitchen. When he saw me fidgeting with the monitor yet again, his expression softened into something almost teasing.
“You know,” he said, placing a steaming mug in front of me, “most people use those to monitor actual babies. Not grown men who could bench press our SUV.”
My small smile grew when my eyes darted to his hair. While we watched Zane and Casimir sleep, I’d woven Koa’s shoulder-length locks into dozens of tiny braids while he read Emily Dickinson’s poems to me, both of us holding each other together.
And he’d left the braids in.
“Well, they’re my big babies now.” I cradled the mug between my palms. “I’m just glad you had a baby monitor in that hoard of gadgets you cannibalize to make your techo-wonders.”
“Zane will pop up fresh as a daisy,” Koa scoffed. “He’s like a rubber ball; he always bounces back. Give him a few more hours of sleep, and he’ll be demanding beer and wings like nothing happened.”
“I made sure we have both. The wings are marinating as we speak.”
“Smart girl.” He reached across the counter to tuck a curl behind my ear. “They’ll both recover with time.”
“It’s just, I’ve never seen Simmy like this,” I whispered, fear threading through my words.
My stomach twisted at the memory of Casimir’s collapse, how he’d dropped to his knees after we’d secured Amabel, his face gray as cemetery dust, sweat beading on his brow despite his skin turning cold as river stones in winter. His body had simply given up, shutting down system by system until Koa and Zane had carried him upstairs, tucking him into bed with the kind of gentle reverence they typically reserved for handling explosives.
“That’s why I called Angelo,” Koa said. “If anyone would know about magical trauma, it’s someone from a family with both witches and shifters.”
Angelo della Morte was my husbands’ friend, a skilled fighter who came from a family of witches and belonged to a wolf pack called Five Fangs. Angelo was a monster hunter, too, despite not being a shifter himself, something he called a “glitch” in his genetics. I’d met him when Zane called and invited him to Evermere to heal my injuries.
I’d watched Koa’s face during that call, how the fierce lines of worry had etched themselves deeper as he’d described Casimir’s symptoms. Remembered the tinny voice through the speaker, its heavy Italian accent somehow reassuring in its confidence.
“His body is responding correctly to something intense, to something that threatened his most precious. Let him sleep. Sleep is medicine.”
“And the fever?”
“Is his body fighting what his mind cannot,” Angelo had replied. “The fever burns away the fear. You know this,amico.”
Then had come the warning, the part that still lingered in my thoughts as I watched the baby monitor like it might suddenly sprout fangs.
“Be prepared when he wakes. He will panic,si? He will need to see all of you safe with his own eyes. The trauma, it stays with men like Cas. Men who take protection as their purpose.”
I’d hugged my arms around myself at those words, knowing them to be true. I’d seen it in the haunted look in Casimir’s eyes, the raw fear that he’d failed to keep us safe. That he’d lost us.
“You’re sure we shouldn’t take Simmy to a hospital?” The words tumbled out of me for the tenth time today.
“Positive.” Koa’s thumb traced small circles against my leg, a physical tether to keep me from spiraling into panic. “There’s nothing human doctors could do for him, Seri.”
My eyes filled with a familiar guilt bit at me. My poor Zoodle and Simmy, both collapsed in our bed because of me. Because of what my toxic stepfamily had done to us. To them.
