Page 85 of Samhain

“She can’t come back with us,” Lex said. “Even if we could explain her away as an adopted niece or something, we’re too public facing. The shit will raise eyebrows.”

“Not to mention what will happen if Alberich ever gets out of Faerie.” Ivy sighed and shook her head.

“She needs to be hidden,” I agreed. “At least for a little while.”

“If he comes looking, he’ll come right for us.” Ivy rubbed her hands over her eyes, just as exhausted as I was.

“When he comes looking,” Lex corrected.

“We don’t know that,” I said. “He’ll have to get through Miri’s thistles first and then the force field he’s supposedly cursed from entering.”

“You still have the ring, Ivy?” Lex turned to her, but she opened her mouth and shook her head, patting down her clothes.

“Fuck.” She turned her pockets inside out and looked around the room, checking the floor.

“Are you serious?” Lex threw his hands up in the air.

“I had it. I swear I did.” She pushed her hair behind her ears. “You saw it at the ruins.”

“Did you drop it?” Like he didn’t believe her, Lex also patted her down, coming up short.

“How?” Ivy shook her head, astounded and confused. “It was only a short walk from there.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “If he doesn’t find the ring, he’ll find some other way to get out. Like you said, there have to be other methods, especially if he’s got Siobhan.”

Lex looked at Poppy and ran his hands through his hair, picking at something brown and cruddy stuck on the strands. “Let’s table this. We need showers and sleep.”

“Right.” Ivy shucked her jeans down to the ground and pulled her shirt over her head. “Ladies first.” She pointed at the two of us before heading to the bathroom. “Don’t kill each other while I’m gone.”

I pursed my lips and refocused on my husband, if I even wanted to call him that. I understood where he was coming from, but I did not agree. My mom used to tell me if someone asked for my help and I refused, that said more about me than it did about them, especially if that person was a child. The silence stretched on forever, the inches between our bodies and hearts turning to miles.

“Do you remember the promise we made in the woods all those years ago?” he finally said, his voice low and gravelly while he spoke. “The one the morning after Midsummer, where we said we would be each other’s home, that we would try to make it work.”

“Yeah,” I murmured.

“I decided that day all of you were mine,” he said. “My husband, my wives, forever.”

I thought about the morning he’d taken me in the gym—how he’d owned me, how he’d made me promise to come home and forced me to tell him I was his.

His, his, his.

“I had visions of the four of us at Miri’s cottage together,” he went on. “Raising our children. Growing old as a family.”

I wanted that more than anything in the world, and maybe Lex read this on my face because he slung an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close, touching our foreheads together.

“Hear me now, Chicago.” He spoke slowly, his lips moving millimeters away from mine. “I will do whatever I have to do to protect what’s mine. You are mine. Miri is mine. Ivy is mine. If it means doing things you don’t like, so be it.”

He kissed me, hard, deep, and all-consuming. I almost wilted for him, almost sank to my knees and begged him to fuck me to prove it. But I didn’t. I curled my fingers into the mattress under me to keep me rooted to the spot.

“Because you’re right,” he continued. “I am heartless. I am soulless. Someone has to be.”

I didn’t believe Lex when he said things like that. Yes, he loved us, and he’d only tried to leave Poppy behind because he wanted to protect us, maybe even protect her. But he believed himself to be a decrepit, horrible monster, unworthy of love, all that terrible shit his dad put inside his head. But Lex’s heart beat hard and pure, just like the rest of us.

He kissed me again before rising to join our wife in the shower. I watched him saunter away, the gait of a man used to people doing what he wanted. It was an invitation for me to join them, maybe take both of them if I chose.

I sat there and stared at Miri and Poppy, ruminating and brooding. I protected what was mine, too, and the second the queen shoved Poppy into my arms, I felt it between her and I. That little girl belonged to me, now.

Mine to protect.

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