By the time the worst of the panic eased, I was exhausted again, but too awake to go back to sleep. The nightmares were a mixture of pregnancy-related fears and the literal reminders of what happened, so there really was no escape from them now. We’d been warned this would likely be the case once we settled into a new normal life. My midwife said I shouldn’t expect it to be easy now that it was over.
In my head, I was still in fight-or-flight mode. Probably would be until after I gave birth. Fear didn’t know logic—it just knew the threat.
And the threat was alive.
Imprisoned, but alive.
I closed my eyes and leaned into Hawk, who moved to sit behind me. “Same nightmare?” he asked quietly, curling his arms around me.
I nodded once as I felt Orion drop his hands down to my thighs. “Yeah,” I murmured, flinching from the images that replayed in my head.
The sadistic smile of the creature holding the whip.
The pain demon who gloated about having abused Elias.
The female I’d trusted with my baby sisters glaring at me while standing over my mate.
I scrubbed a hand down my face before opening my eyes again. “It’s hard to forget.”
Hawk dropped a kiss to my temple. “I know.”
Sometimes, he had memory fog. Even though the snapping of our bond had brought all his stolen memories back, it’d only been a band aid in reality. Sometimes, there were days where he looked at me and I could tell he recognised me, but not as someone he knew intimately. It was only brief, and then it would disappear, and he’d be Hawk again.
Blythe and a few other mind witches were coming together not just to help Hawk, but others who’d been tortured in the same way. There were a lot of soldiers, and two of them had been Cato and his brother.
They hadn’t always been Dante’s followers. At some point, they’d had other lives, and they’d forgotten it all. The memory wipes had completely altered their minds, and they’d acclimated to the new lives Dante had curated for them. They hadn’t been the only ones, and they still struggled with the knowledge they had pasts before Dante took them.
Orion eyed my belly before lifting his stare to meet mine. “Sleep is irrelevant, anyway.”
The corners of my lips twitched into a smile. “Sleep is for normal, functioning people.”
He shrugged, also smiling. “It’s a good thing you don’t necessarily need it. You could tap into your bond with Maeve and simply run on reserves.”
“Except,” Hawk growled, “we were toldnotto encourage that.”
It was true, but Orion wasn’t much for rules, anyway. Unless he knew it would explicitly harm me in any sort of way. Then he was a little better at listening to what the midwife had to say.
I huffed, shifting uncomfortably as pain flared in my hips. “Okay. Well, there’s no point trying to go back to sleep. Please help me up.”
I felt their concern through the bond, but neither fought me on it. It wasn’t their first rodeo dealing with my awful sleep schedule.
And they were about to get a rude awakening once the twins were born.
Both males got out of bed with me, though thankfully, neither joined me in the bathroom. Yay for boundaries. Now, if Maisie could understand why I neededsomeprivacy while I peed, that would be fantastic.
When I left the bathroom, I found Hawk pulling a sweater over his head and Orion sitting on the edge of the bed. Both looked at me when I entered the room, and through the bonds, I got the sense neither were planning on sleeping. Part of it was concern for me; the other part knowing they wouldn’t be able to sleep without me, anyway.
Bonds were a double-edged sword sometimes, and so was trauma.
Once the pair were clothed, they guided me onto the balcony overlooking the front of the house. In the months since calling this our home, we’d set it up with comfortable patio furniture that could withstand the summer storms. Thank the Goddess for magic.
Hawk kept one arm around me as I sat, while Orion grabbed the accompanying stool for my feet. “Thank you,” I murmured, leaning back against the cushion.
“Don’t worry about it, Princess,” Hawk grunted, dropping onto a chair beside me and taking my hand as Orion took up a seat on my other side. “We have maybe an hour and a half before the sun rises.”
That was slowly becoming one of my favourite things to do here on the island; just watching the sun rise over the water in the distance as it called in a new day of peace and safety. No one to run from. No need to hide. Just us against the world.
“Have you and Kingsley finished those charms yet?” Orion asked, leaning forward and pressing his elbows into his knees. “We only have a month and a half before…” His eyes dropped to my stomach, a small smile pulling at his lips.
