my fierce hold, and Mom took him. Tristan picked me up and half-carried me to our room. He sat on our bed with me in his lap, and the tears finally fell.
“I can’t take anymore,” I said after several minutes. “You two are my life, and everyone wants to take you both away. And this whole daughter thing . . . all this pressure. I feel like I’m losing it again.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” he murmured. “I’m here, Lexi. It’s a lot to deal with, but I’m here for you.”
I inhaled a jagged breath and nodded. His being here meant a lot. Everything, actually. Which was why I couldn’t lose him again.
I eventually calmed down, and Mom must have heard because she popped her head in our doorway to tell us she, Charlotte, and Owen were going to Captiva to do some damage control. Dorian came in as she finished, and she slipped away. He climbed onto our bed and into my lap, and wrapped his arms around my neck.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” he said. “I’ll never do that again.”
I wanted to tell him very bad men would take him away otherwise, but such a threat wasn’t enough to scare Dorian. So I simply said, “No, you probably shouldn’t.”
“Are you okay?” he asked quietly. “Because I don’t want you to be sad again. I don’t want you to be like when Dad was gone.”
More tears slid down my cheeks as I kissed the top of his head. “Don’t worry. You and Dad are right here, so I’m happy. I’m just having a bad day.”
He nodded. “Okay. I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too, little man, very, very much.”
“I’ll never leave you. Me and my wife and our kids will live with you, okay?”
“I would love that,” I said with complete sincerity. If only it were possible.
“I know what you need,” Tristan said, gathering us in his arms and standing up. He placed us on our feet, then took our hands and led us to the kitchen.
He popped open the bottle of wine Charlotte brought, poured us each a glass (well, a glass of juice for Dorian), and turned on some music. Then he started pulling food out of the refrigerator: ingredients for fajitas. And he was right. Cooking dinner together was exactly what I needed and a perfect way to celebrate our anniversary. Our kitchen wasn’t fully stocked with all the gadgets and gizmos I couldn’t wait to buy one day, but we had the necessities—good knives, pans, and food. Listening to 30 Seconds to Mars, feeling the knife move under my hand, tasting the wine, smelling the onions and peppers, and joking around with my two guys felt incredibly and necessarily normal.
Mom, Owen, and Charlotte, along with Blossom, returned just as we started searing the meat. I hadn’t expected Blossom, but it turned out she was a bit of a hero. When she saw Dorian spring a little too high for what was normal, she threw a cloak over him, so no one else saw his little flight on Captiva. It wasn’t a strong cloak because she wasn’t supposed to use magic out in the open, so Owen, a more powerful mage than her, was still able to see through it. He had been too worried at the time to sense the magic. With Mom and Charlotte here, she had been scared to come tell us what she’d done, but they finally tracked her down, and she confessed. When they finished telling me the story, I threw my arms around Blossom with relief. Her actions today laid a huge stretch of foundation for my trust.
“If Blossom’s from Daytona, that coven is her home coven,” Tristan said that night as we lay in bed. “We should take her with us.”
“Tristan, I don’t think—”
“You trust her, right?”
Because the subject always caused problems and I didn’t want to deal with yet another one right now, I’d given up on pressuring him about the stone and divulged all I knew about Blossom. I told him I felt better about her, but I still didn’t trust her fully.
“And I really don’t want to bring her into the middle of all this. It’s too dangerous.”
“Unless you can get Sophia to take us to the coven and persuade them to talk, Blossom’s our only hope. Owen can cloak the three of us, and Blossom can drive us without raising any suspicion. The Daemoni are looking for us, not her, and it wouldn’t be strange for her to