It was what I was meant to do.
The screen door, tattered and rusted, opened with a drawn out screech. Aubrey was up and running toward it just as I saw a policeman come out holding a stricken little girl’s hand.
The little girl shook her head full of long, dark hair yes and no as they asked her questions. She never opened her mouth, like she’d gone completely mute.
When an officer leaned in to her, she jerked away quickly and glanced around. Aubrey reached her then, and the little girl’s body practically lunged for her.
Her arms went around Aubrey’s neck as Aubrey caught her and fell back into the gravel. Aubrey hugged her so tightly, no one would have been able to separate them even if they tried.
When the officer stepped toward them, Aubrey grew two sizes, ready to envelop the little girl with her body as a shield of indestructible love. No one was allowed in that shield she’d built around her and the girl, not even me.
When she lifted her head to take in those around her, glistening emeralds with so much determination stared back at us all.
I was wrong to think her eyes shone like her father’s. They were both vicious, but hers were more threatening. They held the look of a mother protecting her child. Dangerous. Fierce. Merciless. It was the first time I saw her ready to lose everything.
It made me want to have children with her. Want to protect her protecting others, and it made us both more dangerous than we’d ever been before.