Untamed - A. G. Howard Page 0,66

tear-streaked face begs silently for help as she looks at David where he’s still standing guard over his grandchildren. He scoops up Scotty and moves to the other side of the bed beside his sister, leaving Alisia to fuss over her pop-pop’s enchanted hair.

David taps the dimple in Victoriana’s chin reassuringly, then leans down to let Scotty dig through the pictures. David’s head almost touches his sister’s. They both inherited their father’s dark hair and green eyes. In fact, had it not been for the two years’ difference in their ages, and my daughter’s delicate loveliness—so different from her brother’s masculine, muscular features—people would’ve thought them twins.

Victoriana pokes his shoulder with the corner of the picture. “Ick, don’t get my clothes wet! It feels gwoss! You were such a wimp, bro.”

A bittersweet smile creeps over me. There are times she reminds me so much of her aunt Jenara, I ache from the nostalgia.

David snorts. “Well, at least there’s such a thing as nude beaches for people with my . . . sensitivities. On the other hand, there’s no escaping birds. They’re everywhere.” He finds a snapshot of his nine-year-old sister running from a chicken at a petting zoo and holds it up for everyone to see. Victoriana Violet Holt: learning to fly is written on the sticker. “Yeah, Vic.” David grins. “I was the wimp.”

“Hey,” she elbows her brother. “I don’t have ornithophobia, jerk. I like birds fine . . . just can’t stand for things to flap their wings around me. Especially bugs.” She shudders and turns to little Scotty where he’s propped on his grandfather’s waist. Joining her hands to form wings, she flutters them around the child’s chubby cheeks. He snickers and snorts, then grabs her hands and wrestles them.

David laughs again. “Right. All because a moth got stuck in the kitchen once. Most kids who live in the country survive that kind of trauma without any long-lasting effects. It didn’t affect Jack.”

Jackson sweeps a curtain of blond bangs from his forehead and pushes his glasses up on the bridge of his nose, at last setting aside his sketch. Blue eyes like mine dance behind the round, brassy frames, and his mouth lifts to a wide smile with a crooked incisor that matches his dad’s. “Uh, I wasn’t born yet, Dave.” He stands and walks over to me, putting an arm around my shoulders. I lean into him, breathing in his cologne—a mature version of the little-boy scent of sweat and outdoors that used to cling to him in his skateboarding days.

“Yeah, our handsome Jackson Thomas was still tucked safely inside Mom’s uterus back at the time of the great moth caper,” Vic pleads her case, her dimples deepening as she casts a teasing smirk at me.

Jackson holds me closer, nose wrinkled. “Really, Vic? Do you have to paint such a vivid picture?”

I laugh halfheartedly.

“Oh, right,” Victoriana says. “David’s the famous artist. I should leave the painting to him.”

David rolls his eyes. “Sculpting and painting are completely different animals. Just like chickens and bugs.”

Everyone laughs—Jeb the loudest of all, which triggers another bout of giggles from Alisia.

“That moth was big enough to eat a chicken!” Of course, Vic isn’t letting it go. Her tenacity is part of what makes her such a good mechanic, and part of why she’s the official owner of her father’s garage now. “Also, I was five. Hard to get past a memory like that.”

“Tell me about it,” I say, under my breath. Jeb, hanging on to Alisia’s ruffled dress to keep her anchored on the mattress, catches my gaze. His green eyes are still as expressive and clear as they’ve always been, in spite of how pale his skin is and the weary bags under his lower lashes. He knows what’s going through my head. After almost sixty years of marriage, he could write on the pages of my mind without ever needing an eraser.

We’re both remembering secret things the children will never know. It was the only time Morpheus ever visited our family, and it was due to some emergency Red Court business I needed to attend. Had Jeb not been magic once, too, and come to love Wonderland as a part of himself, he might’ve helped our oldest son swat the giant moth with his plastic nunchuks, especially considering Morpheus had said he would steer clear of the human realm. Instead, Jeb captured the moth to rescue him from David’s “sticks of wrath,” then put Morpheus in our room until