FOUR MONTHS LATER
“Emma! You’re going to be late for school if you don’t move your butt right now!” I called up the stairs while tapping my foot on the floor impatiently.
Eagle chuckled from the dining room table as he just watched on in amusement, making no effort to help.
“I’m coming,” she said as she jogged down the staircase, her long maxi skirt billowing with her. Emerald had decided that when we moved into this house that this was her new start, so out went the name Emerald and in came Emma. “You don’t need to yell,” she said with a passing grin.
And with Emma, I had officially taken responsibility for a teenage girl.
Lord help me.
Beep, beep.
“Meyah is waiting, so… go, go, go!”
I hurriedly pushed her toward the front door, and she leaned back, pecking me on the cheek before calling over her shoulder, “Bye Eagle!”
“Later kid,” he called back casually.
I literally wiped the sweat from my brow as I strolled back into the kitchen and switched the coffee pot on for the second time this morning, and it was only 7.30 a.m. “You are absolutely no help in the mornings, and we both know she’d listen to you if you told her to get her ass into gear faster,” I grumbled, standing at the kitchen window and watching the girls drive out the driveway.
Emma was eighteen now, but she was in her sophomore year at school because despite her being super smart, she still was behind for her age. Meyah was finally finishing up high school as a senior in a month or so, and the two girls with one meeting had become quick friends. Meyah was patient with Emma and the way she was still growing, and Emma was someone who Meyah could really rely on and trust.
My sister still had her quirks. She still refused to wear anything above her knee, she’s shy around anyone she doesn’t know but had come out of her shell like nothing I’d ever seen before around members of the club. She had nightmares, she was seeing a counselor, but Eagle had helped her a lot dealing with her guilt about taking a person’s life. He’d really been there for her, a male figure that she had never had in her life before. One she could rely on to support and protect her.
Delilah hadn’t fared as well, unfortunately. She spent nearly four weeks in hospital and was now in live-in physical therapy trying to get the function back in her leg. It was getting there, but only slow progress was being made. She missed her mother and the Colony, and we were trying to give her the best environment so she could prosper and grow, but even with everything the Colony did to her she still hadn’t put all the puzzle pieces together due to her age.
Therapy, therapy, and more therapy was going to be required to get my little girl to where she needed to be. The thing about family was you could rely on them, and I would be doing everything in my power to make sure Delilah was a strong, healthy and adjusted little girl moving forward.
Was the process going to be long? Hell, yes, but she was worth every ounce of effort Eagle and I were putting into her.
My other sisters and brothers—they were a different matter.
Basically, I was tasked by Child Protective Services to help with my other sisters and brothers. My father had six wives, and I had thirteen sisters and nine brothers all ranging in ages from six months to twenty years old.
The elder children had the most trouble adapting to their new lives. Of course, they had to find jobs and work to support themselves as well as find a way to adjust to the new world they were thrust into. Some of them chose to have their blood brothers and sisters live with them. I was helping as much as I could from the sidelines, but I already had two of my sisters living with me, and I couldn’t support anymore.
Basically, all I could do was to make sure they were doing okay with their foster parents or siblings, and they were all told they could come to Eagle or me at any time if they needed help. All the children were being provided with counseling and therapy, as well as being taught life skills they never learned while they were in the Colony.
It was going to be a long road, and they had only just started down it, but I could see progress, and I was happy with how things were traveling so far.
Two strong arms wrapped around my waist from behind and instinctually I leaned back into them. His beard brushed at my skin, the sensation one that I’d come to love so much that it instantly sent tingles between my legs.
“I gotta head into town. I told Megan I’d take Cleo to daycare so she could take an early shift at work,” Eagle murmured in my ear, pressing soft kisses to my neck. Megan and Cleo had also become permanent fixtures in our lives and I loved it. Not just because they were beautiful souls, but because I was excited for all these girls to have someone like Eagle to look up to. He was too young to be their dad, but he treated them all like they were his and most importantly, he offered that safety and protection as a strong male figure in their lives that they were really missing.
The relationships he had with Megan, Emma and Delilah, made my heart so damn full, and the way he doted over Cleo made me so excited to have our own babies and know that he would be the most amazing father.
It had taken us all of four weeks to figure out that we hated the arrangement that we had going, and that we just wanted to be together, damn it. I think we both knew in our gut that this was it.
He was the man I wanted to have in my life. Eagle was the one I wanted to tell bad jokes to in hopes of making him smile because his smile was damn near everything. Eagle still had episodes, maybe a few times a week. I was true to my word when I said I didn’t want to fix him.I knew no matter how much I wished he’d never been through that pain, that it would never change the fact that he had. So I took him as he was. Every crack. Every scar. Every nightmare. And he did just the same for me.
The decisions we made they were made together.
I wasn’t just his.
He was mine, and he wasn’t afraid to let people know it either.
I wiggled my hips back against him. “Are you sure you have to go right now, because I don’t have class until ten,” I asked sweetly, biting my lip.