I come with his name caught in my throat and my forehead pressed to his. He follows right after, groaning into my shoulder, holding me down on him as release takes us both apart.
For a long moment after, neither of us moves. Then, from down the hall, the baby monitor crackles.
We both freeze. There’s one small rustle. Then silence again.
Aleksei exhales slowly. “That was a warning.”
I start laughing so hard I nearly fall off his lap.
He catches me automatically.
EPILOGUE
ZATANNA
Two years later,my son thinks shoes are optional, boundaries are a joke, and every serious conversation in this house should be interrupted by a plastic dinosaur.
So, naturally, he is exactly like his father.
“Ari,” I say, watching him sprint barefoot across the rug with one sock on and a wooden spoon in his hand, “why do you have that?”
He looks at me with complete innocence. Then he yells, “Sword!”
And runs faster.
From the kitchen, Aleksei says, “That is my fault.”
“It is absolutely your fault.”
He steps into the living room in rolled-up sleeves, coffee in one hand, looking deeply unfair for a man who spent half the night up with a toddler who decided sleep was for the weak. He watches our son dart behind the couch and shakes his head once. “He has my instincts.”
“He has your refusal to listen.”
“That, too.”
Ari pops up from behind the couch, points the spoon at his father, and says, with great seriousness, “Fight.”
Aleksei takes a slow sip of coffee. “Not before breakfast.”
This is my life now. And most days, it still feels a little unreal.
Not the hard parts. Those were very real.
The easy parts took longer to trust.
Ari is two now. Busy, loud, stubborn, and somehow always sticky. He has dark hair, serious eyes, and a habit of studying people before deciding whether they deserve one of his smiles. When he does smile, the whole room changes.
He also adores Aleksei in a way that would be embarrassing if it weren’t so sweet.
Everything is “Papa.”
Everything is “mine.”
Everything is also, somehow, “no.”
He follows Aleksei around the house like a very judgmental bodyguard. If Aleksei takes a call, Ari takes his toy phone and paces too. If Aleksei is reading a report, Ari brings over a picture book and sits beside him like they are both managing an empire.
In fairness, one of them probably is.
