Page 51 of A Witch-ish Guide to Protectors and Pendulums

‘She is with her mate. Do you not have another woman to subjugate now? Your concerns are with her. Leave this land now.’

‘You took my due.’

‘I took nothing but what was mine. I grew those children in my womb. I brought them into this world without help or kindness from you. I nurtured them. They aremine. They havealwaysbeen mine.’

‘Eve is useless. She holds no magic. I want my magic back. You will give me my due. Shoshana will marry my son. She will give us back our magic, which you stole.’

‘Shoshana has a mate. The magic was never yours. It was gifted tome. She will not marry your son. Children born to her will bring good upon the world, not the evil in your heart. This is your last chance, Adam. Go now and never return or I will end you?—’

‘Mother Lilith,’ Baruch calls to me, running from the home he shares with my daughter. ‘She needs you. Is time.’

‘Go now, Adam—your last warning.’

Zohar and my son, Peter—fathered by Adam—race down over the hillside with their hands raised, prepared to defend me and their homes. They need not a spear or sword, or to take up any such arms against the intruder, for their magic is enough to defeat him.

‘Mother Lilith,’ Baruch calls to me again. ‘Please.’

‘Go,’ Zohor says. ‘Help our daughter.’ Then he turns to Adam. ‘Leave or die.’

‘Peter?’ Adam asks. ‘You will come with me now.’

‘My home is here, with my family,’ Peter answers. I need to get to my daughter, but I worry for my dearest partner and my eldest son.

‘I am your father!’ Adam shouts.

Peter laughs humorlessly. ‘You were never anything but cruel. Zohor is my father.’ Then he shoots out his hand. A gust of strong wind blows Adam off his feet. ‘Never come back,’ Peter orders.

As Adam scrambles to his feet and runs away like the coward I always knew him to be, he calls over his shoulder, ‘You will be sorry you went against me.’

Once he is far enough away, I run up the grassy knoll to my daughter who needs me.”

It appeared that Agatha’s family grimoire was wrong. Lilith wouldn’t ever have left her son swinging. She loved him. That meant she cast her protection to her daughtersand sons. Her daughters simply held more magic.Womenheld more magic. And that had to be why men spent so much effort trying to keep women down. All thanks to Adam.

“Wow,” I said, wiping my face. “Adam was a real piece of work.”

“So much makes sense now,” Connor teased. “So much. Good thing our kids won’t have a dick for a dad.”

That got me. We’d never discussed kids. Not that there had really been time since we’d hooked up. But still… “Our kids?”

“Yeah, I figured we’d have a couple eventually. Don’t you want kids?”

“Is it possible for me and you to have them, given you’re a death hound and I’m whatever I am?”

“It’s very possible, baby. The universe wouldn’t have paired us if it weren’t. And besides, it might be a good idea to bring a couple more protectors of the world into the world.”

He had me there. “Can we discuss this topic when we no longer have men trying to kill us? I’m a little jaded at the moment.”

“Simone, I won’t let them hurt you. You’re mine to protect and I will do that until my last breath.”

“Which I’m hoping won’t be for seventy or eighty more years.”

“Seventy or eighty?”

“Well, I’m guessing I’ll be tired of your old, wrinkled Shar Pei butt by then.”

“Woman.” He shook his head before pulling me onto his lap. “What am I going to do with you?”

I nestled against his chest. “Thank you for not being Adam, well, at least not now. You were kind of an Adam when we first met.”

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